HARLEM WEEK 2021: David Dinkins - The life and times of New York City’s first Black mayor

HARLEM WEEK 2021: David Dinkins - The life and times of New York City’s first Black mayor

By Herb Boyd
New York Daily News
August 3, 2021

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, now officially the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary, often invokes the late David Dinkins, New York City’s first African-American mayor, as his idol. He said that if elected mayor, “My administration will look like what David Dinkins’ looked like.”

When questioned about Dinkins’ political legacy, Adams said, “He was the one who started the Safe Streets initiative by bringing in more law enforcement.”

Taking Dinkins as your role model and walking in his illustrious footprint is a formidable task; the former mayor’s legacy took him years to shape and refine.

Some intimations of this process surfaced very early in his youth. Dinkins recounts portions of that beginning in his memoir, “A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic,” which he wrote with Peter Knobler.

“When I was around seven years old, I used to sell shopping bags. At the corner of 125th St. and Eighth Ave., men sold fruit and vegetables from pushcarts. This open-air marketing was the very personal way of shopping in Harlem. And because nobody had any money, you didn’t get a shopping bag in which to place your groceries, you had to buy one,” wrote Dinkins. “Little entrepreneur that I was, I would buy bags from a wholesaler three for a nickel and sell them to shoppers at two cents apiece.

“It took quite a while, but when I finally made ten cents,” Dinkins continued, “I went to the five-and-dime and bought a present for my mother. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.”

It was certainly a defining moment in a life and odyssey that was studded with highlights — from his coming of age in Harlem and Trenton, N.J., to graduating cum laude from Howard University and becoming a U.S. Marine, following the steppingstones of political achievement. An inevitability seemed to mark his path to becoming the mayor of a city he called a “gorgeous mosaic” — mainly a determination to overcome setbacks and not rest on his laurels.

His mission, his quest for greatness, could have very well ended after the debacle with his state income tax returns, or he could have been content to be the City Clerk, and be assured a lifetime job with anonymity. But that would not do, particularly after he was inculcated in an orbit of powerful political partners such as Charles Rangel, Basil Paterson and Percy Sutton — the legendary and influential “Gang of Four.” All were mentored by city Democratic Party boss J. Raymond Jones, known as the “Harlem Fox.” Critical, too, in his development was his wife, Joyce, who he courted at Howard, and her father, Daniel Burrows, himself an astute businessman and legal mind.

The final link in this chain of accomplishment was Dinkins’ association with Bill Lynch, affectionately called the “Rumpled Genius.” They were a dauntless and peerless duo, and without Lynch’s wise counseling and political instincts, Dinkins would have never emerged from the vineyards of local politics. How they built a powerful and effective coalition is itself a remarkable story.

Many of the attributes Adams could have summoned about Dinkins were evident during his four years as mayor — his imaginative approach to governing the city began with hiring the right people to head the various departments and then knowing when to convey the right vision to perfect dealing with housing, policing, and all the complexities of nation’s largest municipality. If it were a matter of attaching feathers to his cap, it would be a veritable bonnet of achievements: his revamping of the public health system, creation of an innovative program to remove abandoned vehicles, dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis, and finding fiscal dividends for his passion, the United States Tennis Association.

Unfortunately, that same alacrity and concern for details deserted him during the 1991 Crown Heights riots, and like the secessionist movement in Staten Island, it was a critical factor in his failure to win reelection in 1993.

Dinkins’ ingenuity and the capital improvements on the city infrastructure have been lauded far and wide, but it was his ability to keep New York City free of the havoc raging in most cities in the wake of the Rodney King verdict that became a defining characteristic.

The summer of 1992 had all the portents of being like the Red Summer of 1919 when blood flowed in the streets of America in the onslaught of race riots — mainly African-American blood. In California, the police officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King were acquitted, and city after city saw upheaval, with angry protesters vandalizing stores and later setting them on fire. It was a good thing Dinkins had already established his “Increase the Peace Volunteer Corps” (IPVC) and the members were able to prevent or stifle any outbreak of the violence sweeping across the land. New York City was basically spared, but not Westchester. At least one newspaper, Newsday, saluted David for his action, anointing “Mayor Cool.”

Sometimes Dinkins’ aplomb — an unruffled coolness — was mistaken for a slowness or a frozen incapability to act promptly. But he was a man and a statesman-like leader who, down to his final breath on November 23, 2020, at 93, always seriously weighed every consequential act, every decision, and how it might impact others. And this is an attribute that Mayor Adams can add to his repertoire.