He was the first African-American to hold the position. Our editors will review what you have submitted and determine if they should review the article. After graduating from high school in 1945, Dinkins tried to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, but was told that the “black quota” had already been met. He was eventually drafted and served in the Marines.
He went to Howard University with the Bill of Rights G, I. He studied mathematics (B, S.). In 1953, Dinkins entered Brooklyn Law School and was introduced to politics when he married Joyce Burrows, the daughter of an assemblyman from the state of New York. He joined a law firm and became increasingly involved with the Democratic Party.
Dinkins took office at a time of racial discord after the 1989 shooting death of Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager who was attacked by young people in a predominantly white neighborhood of Brooklyn. Dinkins was a founding member of the New York State Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus and of The One Hundred Black Men. In 1989, David Dinkins won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, ending Mayor Ed Koch's candidacy for a fourth term. He began his career in New York City politics in the 1960s, rising to city clerk and president of Manhattan County, before becoming the first African-American mayor of the Big Apple in 1989. Back in New York with a degree in mathematics, Dinkins married his college sweetheart, Joyce Burrows, in 1953. Elected for a term in the state assembly in 1965, he later served as president of the New York City elections, as city clerk and as Manhattan borough president before his successful run for mayor in 1989. In 1972, Dinkins was appointed a member of the New York Board of Elections, and became the first African-American to hold the position of president.
He served on the boards of directors of the Association to Benefit Children, Children's Health Fund, Coalition for the Homeless, The Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, New York City Global Partners and Posse Foundation. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Advisory Board of the International African-American Museum and was part of the steering committee of the Association for a Better New York and the Advisory Council of the New York Urban League. It managed to launch Safe Streets in New York City, publish more police offers on the streets through the Safe City Program, and encourage greater community participation through the Beacon Initiative. During Dinkins' tenure, the city's finances were in bad shape due to a recession that cost New York 357,000 private sector jobs in its first three years in office.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on July 10, 1927, Dinkins was the city's first black female mayor from 1990 to 1993. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who broke barriers by being the state's first black woman elected to state office, said that Dinkins' example inspired her throughout her own political career. In 1975, he had been appointed City Clerk of New York, which led him to run to become president of Manhattan County. In his inaugural speech, he fondly spoke of New York as a “magnificent mosaic of race and religious faith, of national origin and sexual orientation, of people whose families arrived yesterday and generations ago, passing through Ellis Island or Kennedy Airport or on buses to the Port Authority.
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