Madame Mayor makes history
This week's column.
Wearing a smart lavender suit and an easy smile, Yvonne Johnson settled gently Tuesday night into the chair outgoing Mayor Keith Holliday had occupied for the last eight years.
A cluster of photographers fired away as she blissfully sat there, framed by an array of grandchildren who had lined up in front of the council dais. She reared back and took it all in.
For at least a moment, the chair seemed more like a family room recliner than one of the hottest seats in the city.
Johnson, 65, is the first African American mayor in Greensboro's nearly 200-year history. But her victory was neither a surprise nor an upset.
If there was any surprise in the election, it was that Johnson hadn't won by an even bigger margin over her likeable, but overmatched, challenger, Milton Kern, whom she defeated with 57 percent of the vote.
Her election bears testament to her ability to connect to all types of people. It also speaks volumes about Greensboro. Even as the city wrangles with issues of trust and race, it's still forward-thinking enough to judge a leader by the content of her character.
Now comes the fun part.
Johnson listed among her priorities for the next two years making Greensboro more business-friendly; producing a well-educated work force; celebrating the city's diversity; and capitalizing more effectively on the city's "untapped resources," including younger people.
Foremost she called for an end to the debate over the resignation of former police Chief David Wray. The racially charged issue has split the city down the middle.
Johnson has pledged to hold forums for citizens to have their say on the controversy. Along the way she surely will call somebody "sweetie."
Wrapped in a tender drawl, that word has been bestowed by the new mayor upon everyone from corporate chiefs to newspaper editors.
Of course, Johnson is much more than a charmer. She speaks her mind. She gets things done. She is equally as comfortable in a southeast Greensboro church revival as in a northwest Greensboro country club.
That's probably why no one made that big a deal about Johnson's race in this year's election. But make no mistake, Johnson's election was a huge deal.
"There are not many cities this size that could do what Greensboro just did," Johnson's good friend and fellow council member Robbie Perkins said last week after the new council's swearing-in.
Still, Johnson's first term will be challenging. Her election brought to mind a recent rebroadcast of the Public Radio program, "This American Life," which revisited the tumultuous tenure of Chicago's first black mayor, the late Harold Washington. The show's thesis: that Washington carried many more burdens into office than a white mayor would. And that all black candidates for such offices bear that burden to some extent.
Washington was an outsider. He faced a council and a big-city political machine that, at first, defied him at every turn, even though most were fellow Democrats.
And he carried heightened expectations from black voters that now it was "their turn," stoking fears among white citizens that they would be shortchanged.
Washington, to his credit, won over many of his skeptics, in part by delivering basic services. If you got people's streets paved, he discovered, it didn't matter as much what color you were.
Sadly, Washington died in 1987, after being elected to a second term.
Johnson faces few of the types of obstacles Washington saw.
As a 14-year council veteran, Johnson is a well-known quantity. She was mayor pro tem three times and elected to an at-large seat on the council seven times.
She already has built bridges Washington was forced to erect from scratch.
And not insignificantly, the new council seems to genuinely respect Johnson's experience, skills and vision.
Despite the daunting to-do list, you have to like her odds.
Comments (1)
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Good luck, Yvonne Johnson. The best thing she's said so far is that we need to move on from the David Wray thing, even if that means we simply agree to disagree. Wray is quickly becoming the white poster boy for "No justice, no peace" (read: "if we don't get our way, we'll pitch a fit"). There are too many "No justice, no peace" folks out there: too many "healing" advocates who want you to take their medicine and follow their prescriptions. There aren't enough people who just agree to disagree.
Posted on December 10, 2007 12:43 PM