African American Mayors Association 2024 Conference photo
New York Mayor Eric Adams has vowed to fight the five-count federal indictment handed down by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 26. He also says he will not resign and hold on to control of one of the world’s most influential cities.
Embarrassing as it may be that Adams is the first sitting New York mayor to be indicted, a broader view of the problems facing mayors shows chief executives in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, and a slew of other Black-led municipalities are also facing an avalanche of negative media headlines, questions about their leadership, and federal or local criminal scrutiny.
The pattern is troubling enough that a veteran attorney who once filed a petition to the United Nations to probe attacks on Black elected officials and an association that advocates on behalf of Black mayors has raised a cause for concern.
“The indictment of a sitting mayor is a serious charge that calls for scrutiny. Like every American, Mayor Adams deserves the presumption of innocence and the right to defend himself in court,” said Phyliss Dickerson, chief executive officer of the African American Mayors Association (AAMA).
The AAMA, based in Washington, D.C., is the only organization exclusively representing African-American mayors in the United States.
“That principle is central to the administration of justice in the United States of America, even though our criminal justice system has not always been just to Black Americans––and Black mayors are often held to a different standard,” Dickerson told the Crusader.
The expressed concern does not suggest Black elected officials should not face criticism or be held accountable for bad decisions, misconduct or criminal activity. The focus of advocates and concerned citizens is on the amount of negative headlines and the frequency with which African American political leaders are investigated and/or charged with and convicted of crimes.
Observers believe harmful propaganda campaigns are routinely launched against Black officials in an attempt to undermine their credibility, derail their leadership, and weaken African American political power.
Mayor Brandon Johnson
“There is no question about it: The pattern of harassment remains constant, and it includes not only the DOJ but also corporate media,” Atty. Mary E. Blevins Cox said in a lengthy interview. “The media plays a major role in undermining Black leadership by painting negative, repetitive, unflattering and sometimes racist portrayals of African American political leaders.
In 1990, Cox drafted a groundbreaking petition with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights alleging that Black elected officials and their staff were being harassed, targeted, and maliciously prosecuted by the DOJ. As a result, the lawyer argued, African American voters were being denied voting rights to be represented by the persons of their choice, thus depriving citizens of effective elected representation.
The campaign was part of Attorney Cox’s broader efforts to document and challenge systemic racism and injustice in the American legal and political systems. She had been active in Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and was a well-known activist in the South African anti-apartheid movement. Central to the complaint was the question as to whether there was a coordinated effort by the U.S. government and mainstream media to undermine Black leadership
At the time of the filing, the attorney cited a research report that found that 42 percent of Black elected officials had been “harassed by the United States Department of Justice–(and) were being targeted for… removal from office,” she said.
The UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, officially accepted the petition, and Cox and a handful of aides opened an office and began a national investigation. The effort was derailed, she said, when members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others “took over the case and things became muddled,” she said, noting the status of the decades’ old case remains unresolved.
The petition was filed at the height of the “Trial of the Century,” in which the U.S. government charged Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry with 14 counts of various drug offenses. The case gained national attention when the DOJ released a snippet of a sting video purportedly showing the mayor in a hotel room with a female acquaintance smoking from a crack pipe. The woman turned out to be a government informant.
Seconds after hitting the pipe, FBI agents burst through a fake wall and placed him under arrest. The incident, repeated often on TV news, sent shockwaves across the country, stunning Black America and rattling the old Civil Rights Vanguard. Barry’s comment at the point of arrest – “The bitch set me up!” – became cannon fodder for late night talk show hosts and comedians such as Chris Rock who branded him as a sort of crackhead.
According to Cox, the DOJ told Barry that if he resigned from his mayoral post, it would accept a plea deal, and he could possibly avoid prison time. Instead, the popular mayor and civil rights leader refused and went to jury trial. He was acquitted of all but one misdemeanor of drug use and sentenced to six months in custody. Without a felony conviction, Barry was able to win public office again as both mayor and later as a member of the D.C. City Council, where he served until 2012. He died of cardiac arrest in 2014.
“I filed the UN petition because I noticed a pattern of malicious persecution happening to Black elected officials across the country,” Cox said. “Just before the sting, Mayor Barry had been subjected to relentless attacks by the media as a sort of precursor. That’s why I began writing a column in a Black-owned newspaper to counter the ill effects of the smear campaign they had launched against him.
“I knew those stories and the repeated use of that video could influence a jury,” she explained. “It was important to tell the other side–which was the truth. The Black Press fought the prevailing narrative about who he was. They wanted to embarrass him, attack his reputation and embarrass his wife. They wanted him to lose the support of the people who put him in office.”
Cox credited her articles in the Capitol Spotlight, along with the inability of federal witnesses to tie him to drug crimes and jurors viewing the entirety of the sting video as the reason for his acquittal. “It was entrapment,” she told the Crusader. “They saw through the campaign of misinformation, lies and propaganda the press and prosecutors launched at him.”
Though her UN Human Rights Commission action was filed 34 years ago, the famed criminal defense attorney said she believes it remains relevant today and should be revisited. Cox would not comment on the pending Adams case, but said she has noticed a consistent uptick in negative stories and criminal filings against Black elected officials and staffers over the past few years.
For example, weeks before the U.S. Rep. Karen Bass was elected as Los Angeles’ first African American female mayor in 2022, she faced an investigation, public scrutiny and salacious headlines.
Reportedly, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) launched an investigation into Bass’ receipt of a $95,000 scholarship from the University of Southern California (USC) when she served in Congress. According to published reports, two LAPD detectives claimed Police Chief Michael Moore ordered them to investigate Bass (the then-mayoral candidate) weeks before her election that December. The directive led them to file a complaint with the city’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
Bass was quickly tainted by the press as potentially corrupt despite no evidence of wrongdoing. “LA mayoral candidate Karen Bass linked to USC bribery and fraud case,” screamed the September 8, 2022, headline in the LA Daily News. In 2023, the OIG dismissed the complaint and found no evidence of a crime.
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has been consistently lambasted by mainstream media and malicious social media users since taking the city’s helm in 2023. Leading the press attacks is the 177-year-old Chicago Tribune. Headlines from September editorials tell the tale: “Brandon Johnson uses race to try to preempt legitimate criticism” (9/7/23);“With ShotSpotter’s looming demise, Brandon Johnson turns his back on neighborhoods whose votes made him mayor” (9/19/24); “The alliance against Mayor Brandon Johnson on zoning is justified” (9/9/24); and “CPS crisis is mobilizing establishment Chicago against Brandon Johnson’s agenda.” (9/26/24).
Mayor Marty Small
Mayor Brandon Scott
In contrast, an August 25th Tribune editorial titled “Chicago and the Democrats both rebranded together in a dazzling show of DNC strength” touts the success of the Democratic National Convention as the city’s “best week ever” and showcases who and what made the event a success but doesn’t mention the mayor at all.
Despite negative headlines and well-publicized attacks that might lead people to believe the progressive mayor has been inefineffective, his administration made a number of accomplishments, most of which have been underreported. Though his “agenda” has been lambasted by some media pundits and political critics, his plan calls for significant investments in workers, homeowners, disinvested communities, youth, public safety and mental health.
In addition to doubling paid leave for workers, Johnson passed the One Fair Wage ordinance, eliminating the subminimum wage for over 60,000 tipped workers. After passing the largest economic and community development bond in the city’s history, the mayor said he would invest more than $600 million into affordable housing, green social housing, homeownership, small businesses, neighborhood and workforce development, and other community initiatives. He has ushered in more than $20 billion in new business investments and launched the first comprehensive plan to address homelessness.
“Upon being elected as mayor, Mayor Brandon Johnson promised to invest in people, and our administration is proud that over the past 15-plus months, we’ve been able to do that,” a mayoral spokesperson told the Crusader, citing his reopening of mental health clinics, a reduction in citywide violence and other success during his short tenure. “ …We have much work ahead, but we are hopeful and determined to build a city that works for all its residents—by remembering our past, addressing our present, and looking forward to a brighter, more equitable future.”
Like his predecessor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and two other African American mayors before, Eugene Sawyer and Harold Washington, Chicago’s predominantly white media establishment has been accused by African American citizens of being racially biased in their coverage of Black political leaders and aiming harsher lens toward their administrations.
Less than 22 miles outside of Chicago, the leadership of Dolton, IL, faces increased scrutiny and is the subject of national media ridicule. Mayor Tiffany Henyard, the first Black female mayor of the suburb, has become the poster child of bad press for her handling of village funds. In addition to repeated sensational stories about her leadership and personal affairs, it has not helped that key members of her administration have been indicted for various federal crimes. The mayor, despite her denials of wrongdoing, is also under investigation.
Just 30 miles outside of Chicago, another Black mayor has been touched by the long arm of the law. Mayor Charles Griffin of Ford Heights, IL, resigned in September after being convicted of embezzling funds between 2014 and 2017. First elected in 2009, Griffin was found guilty of felony theft and official misconduct in a bench trial before Cook County Judge James Obbish. He maintains his innocence and has vowed to appeal the verdict.
Illinois’ Black mayors aren’t alone.
On the East Coast, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Mayor Marty Small and his wife were indicted on child endangerment and terroristic threat charges, after prosecutors found that they allegedly beat their 15-year-old daughter to the point of losing consciousness. La’Quetta Small is the Atlantic City School District superintendent.
Vowing not to resign, the mayor told reporters in September, “I want to make it clear this has nothing to do with my job as mayor of the great City of Atlantic City,” he said. “This is a personal family matter just as you have had personal family matters that never got out. But, because I am who I am, and my wife is who she is, it got out,”
After a barge destroyed the Frances Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott was attacked in social media as the “DEI hire,” and the attack was picked up by local and national press, thereby turning a non-story into a news story. The term was meant as a slur to imply a Black person is employed only to fulfill a diversity, equity and inclusion opening.
“We know what they want to say, but they don’t have the courage to say the N-word, and the fact that I don’t believe in their untruthful and wrong ideology,” Scott said on MSNBC. “And I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from; it scares them because me being in my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk, and they should be afraid because that’s my purpose in life…”
In 2020, the year he was elected, the Baltimore Sun wrote a commentary about the size and style of Scott’s hair, concluding, “…sorry folks, the Afro is a keeper.”
In the South, where Black mayors hold office, it has been no different. In 1992, Mayor Willie Herenton became the first African American mayor of Memphis. He too, faced unfounded accusations of corruption. Though he was never charged or convicted of a crime, he opted not to run for re-election in 2009.
In 2013, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was indicted on 21 federal corruption charges after scathing reports in the Times-Picayune newspaper. He was convicted on 20 counts, sentenced to prison, and released in 2020. Many of his constituents thought his prosecution was retaliation for his denunciation of President George W. Bush’s dismal efforts during Hurricane Katrina, which claimed 1,836 lives.
In July of this year, Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has come under recent fire for suggesting the water crisis that rocked the city two years ago, was an effort to “make the city no longer Black.” His comments were secretly recorded by a former employee and made public during a wrongful termination trial.
“We absolutely believe that there’s a coordinated effort to take this water treatment facility and that effort … it’s bigger than the little politics that we get into,” Lumumba was recorded as saying, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “If that happens, that is going to be the first step of trying to make the city no longer Black. I’m not talking about some large conspiracy. It’s what happened in Detroit, right? Detroit (isn’t) as Black as … it used to be. It’s a change in politics, and the reason that happened is they know that is the way you finance and support everything you do. You’re going to go bankrupt if you don’t. So, you know, while … they’re making their efforts, we have to make sure that we don’t aid them in their efforts. I know that that’s easier said than done … So we need to make sure that our communication is so sound.”
The Crusader reached out to Lumumba for comment but did not receive a response before the press deadline.
Speaking of Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was often criticized by local newspapers for his flamboyant leadership style. He was convicted of public corruption and served seven years of a 28-year sentence before being released in 2021.
The above cases may appear episodic, but Atty. Cox says these patterns show that few can deny that African American mayors have experienced harsher scrutiny and more salacious headlines than their white counterparts. In addition to mayors, Black members of Congress, judges, prosecutors, and other officials have faced similar scrutiny.
“The goal is to stop Black political power and make our people vulnerable,” she said. “If Trump is elected, he’s already talked about the country returning to full states’ rights. That means governors will have total power over what happens to the people in their state. Black mayors will be the last vanguard in cities with predominantly (African American) populations.”