At the top of the heap
Celebrating the rise of New York’s Black elected leaders
BY STEPHEN WITT
Every success has a foundation
and the cornerstone
to the rise of Black
political leadership in New
York belongs to Andrew W.
Cooper (1927-2002)., the
little-known civil rights hero
who blew open the door for
Black politics in Brooklyn and
New York State.
Cooper, born and raised in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, was working
for Brooklyn-based beer company
when the Federal Voting
Rights Act of 1965 was passed.
At the time, however, New York
had its own voting rights issue in
that even though the majority of
Bedford-Stuyvesant was Black
and Puerto Rican, the neighborhood
was divided among fi ve
congressional districts, each
represented by a white Congressmember.
In 1966, Cooper successfully
challenged this gerrymandering
in federal court, Cooper
v. Power, resulting in the Feds
stepping in to create a special
Voting Rights District. It was in
this district that in 1968, trailblazer
Shirley Chisholm was the
fi rst black woman ever elected
to the U.S. Congress. Cooper
went on to found the Trans Urban
News Service and The City
Sun, (1984-1996). In 1987, the
National Association of Black
Journalists awarded him Journalist
of the Year.
Fast forward to the present,
and the city and state have a number
of Black-Americans who now
stand on the shoulders of unsung
heroes like Cooper and others,
who now hold the very top of
elected offi ces representing all
people. Here is our top fi ve:
Mayor Eric Adams
Mayor Adams’ fi rst attempt
at public offi ce was an unsuccessful
attempt to unseat former
Congressman Major Owens. He
registered as a Republican in
1997, before switching back to
the Democratic Party in 2001,
and won his fi rst elected seat
in 2006 as a state senator representing
Brooklyn’s 20 Senate
District. He served four terms,
until he was elected Brooklyn
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Mayor Eric Adams, Attorney General Letitia James, State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Borough President in 2013.
Quotable: “When we uplift
the African Americans and acknowledge
Black History Month,
we’re acknowledging that this
is a country where everyone
has the opportunity to aspire.
When you can leave the slave
plantations and then become the
mayor of this important city, that
says to every group in this country
that the possibilities are endless,”
Adams told CBS2’s Marcia
Kramer.
Attorney General
Letitia James
James went to NYC public
schools, and received her J.D.
degree from Howard University
School of Law. She started in
politics working on former New
York Governor Mario Cuomo’s
Task Force on Diversity in the
Judiciary, and then served as
counsel for former Assemblymember
Albert Vann, and Chief
of Staff for former Assemblymember
Roger Green, followed
by a stint in the administration
of New York Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer. She served two
terms in the city council (2004-
2013) and as the City’s Public
Advocate (2014-2018) before
becoming Attorney General.
Quotable: “At a young age
around 14, my brother was
falsely arrested. And my mom
took me down to criminal court.
And I was the younger girl in
criminal court and everyone in
the courtroom except the defendants
did not look like me. And
I can always remember a court
offi cer who told my mother to
sit down and to shut up simply
for asking the question, ‘Where
is my son?’ And I vowed at that
point in time, to never allow any
mother or grandmother to be
disrespected in a courtroom,”
James said on a WBLS radio
station YouTube interview.
State Senate Majority
Leader Andrea
Stewart-Cousins
After working 20 years in the
private sector, Stewart-Cousins,
and then was elected as a Westchester
County Legislator representing
Yonkers (1995-2006)
before becoming elected to the
Senate in 2006. She became the
Senate Majority Leader in 2012,
becoming the fi rst woman to
lead her conference in the New
York Legislature.
Quotable: “I often say that
if you can see it, you can be it.
I am standing on the shoulders
of Black women in politics who
came before me, I look towards
women like Shirley Chisholm
who took on insurmountable
challenges and made it possible
for people like me to reach powerful
places. While I may be the
fi rst Black woman to serve as
a leader of a legislative conference
in New York State, I must
not be the last.”
Assembly Speaker
Carl Heastie
Born and raised in NYC,
Heastie’s background is in
mathematics and fi nance. He
is the former chair of the Bronx
Democratic Party (2008-2015)
and was fi rst elected to the assembly
in 2001, and became
Speaker in 2015.
Quotable:” I have an MBA
in fi nance, but I took management
classes, and they talked
about three types of leaders.
There’s a dictator, but that only
gets you so far because, at some
point, people get tired of being
dictated to. Then you have
laissez-faire, which is anything
goes, and that’s just organized
chaos. But the other type is a
democratic leader, and I always
felt that was the best way to
lead,” Heastie from an interview
with the National Conference
of State Legislatures.
Public Advocate
Jumaane Williams
Born and raised in Brooklyn,
Williams began his career as a
community activist before being
elected to the City Council
(2010-2019), and then to the
Public Advocate (2019-present).
Quotable: “I remember
people clutching their purses as
I asked for the time, being followed
in stores. You live with
this, and it drips, and drips and
drips, and it gets into a bucket,
and that bucket will at some
times overfl ow. As an elected
offi cial I try to make my overfl
ow as constructive as possible.”
As told to PIX11 on being
Black in America.
Schneps Media February 17, 2022 15