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Showing posts with the label Mayor

Harold Washington (1922-1987)

Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago, Illinois, was born on April 15, 1922, to Roy Washington, a lawyer, Methodist minister and one of the first black precinct captains in Chicago.  Washington’s mother Bertha Washington was a well-known singer in the city.  Washington attended segregated public schools including the newly completed DuSable High School where he set records as a track star.  Despite that success, Washington dropped out of high school at the end of his junior year and worked in a meat packing plant until his father helped him obtain a job at the U.S. Treasury office in Chicago.  There he met Dorothy Finch, his future wife.  The couple married in 1941 when Harold Washington was 19 and Dorothy was 17.  They divorced  ten years later . In 1942 Washington was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent overseas as part of a segregated unit of the Air Force Engineers, then part of the U.S. Army.  Washington served...

Aja L. Brown

Aja L. Brown  (born April 17, 1982)  currently serves as Mayor of  Compton, California . On June 4, 2013, Aja Brown made history as Compton's youngest mayor ever to be elected. She won the election by a landslide, defeating both incumbent mayor  Eric J. Perrodin  and former mayor  Omar Bradley . Aja Brown grew up in  Altadena, California . Her mother, Brenda Jackson, raised her and her twin brother as a single parent. While attending  University of Southern California , she began working for the City of  Gardena, California  in 2004 as an Economic Development Analyst. She soon graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor's Degree in Public Policy, Urban Planning and Development. Just a year later in 2005, she earned a Master's Degree in Urban Planning with a concentration in Economic Development. In 2006, Brown began working for the City of  Inglewood, California  as an Urban Planner. In 2009, she began working for the city of ...