Pandemic Power: Black female mayors shine during COVID-19 crisis

Governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andrew Cuomo of New York and Mike DeWine of Ohio have been the most high-profile politicians leading the country’s fight against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. However, as effective as these governors have been, there is also a group of female African American mayors of large U.S. cities who also have been at the forefront of the battle while leading their cities through this crisis of a lifetime.

Mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans by most accounts have demonstrated grit, determination and the kind of leadership needed to help their citizens navigate the ravages of the disease at a time when there is a lack of national leadership to help them. And, in the case of Mayor Bottoms, her own governor is working against the public health interests of her city.

The former judge and city Councilmember wrote in a recent article for Atlantic Magazine that her city was not ready to resume business as usual even as her state’s right-wing neo-Confederate Gov. Brian Kemp was impulsively ending Georgia’s state of emergency and shelter-in-place order enacted just a few weeks earlier.

“As the mayor of Georgia’s largest city, I expressed opposition to Gov. Brian Kemp’s recent order allowing certain businesses—dine-in restaurants, gyms, hair and nail salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys—to reopen before health experts say doing so is safe. I hope the day for Atlanta to endorse such a move will come soon, but it is not here yet,” she wrote.