David Dinkins

David Norman Dinkins was born on the tenth of July 1927 in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of William Harvey Dinkins Jr., a barber and real estate agent, and Sarah "Sally" Lucy Dinkins, a domestic worker. His parents separated when he was six, and he was raised by his father, moving for a time to Harlem before returning to Trenton, where he graduated from Trenton Central High School in 1945.

He served in the United States Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946, among the pioneering Montford Point Marines, the first African Americans admitted to that corps. He then graduated cum laude from Howard University with a degree in mathematics in 1950 and earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1956, entering practice in New York City.

Rising through Harlem's Carver Democratic Club, Dinkins was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1966 and later served as city clerk and, from 1986, as Manhattan borough president. In 1989 he won the mayoralty, becoming the first and only African American to lead New York City. Sworn in on the first of January 1990, he served a single four-year term, championing his vision of the city as a "gorgeous mosaic" of peoples.

Though defeated for reelection in 1993, he remained a devoted public servant, teaching at Columbia University and mentoring a generation of leaders. David Dinkins died on the twenty-third of November 2020 in Manhattan, at the age of ninety-three. May the dignity he carried into the highest office of his city be honored for all time.