An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
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Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Coleman Young arrived in Detroit with his family when he was five. The Colemans settled in the working class neighborhood of Black Bottom (East Detroit), where his father operated a dry cleaning business and his mother was a schoolteacher. Early in his life Coleman suffered various forms of racial discrimination from denial of scholarships to a racially motivated firing at an automobile plant.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 4, 1927 to Reverend Whitfield and Captilda Nottage, C. DeLores Tucker attended the highly competitive Philadelphia High School for Girls and then matriculated to Temple University where she studied finance and real estate. In 1951 she married businessman William Tucker and became an activist who at the time was counted among the 100 most influential black Americans.
Andrew Young came into prominence as a civil rights activist and close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the civil rights movement in the United States. Young worked with various organizations early in the movement but his civil rights work was largely done with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) where he served as an executive director and later executive vice president. Young served on the Board of Directors until 1972.
A child of the early post- reconstruction south, Oscar DePriest was born in Florence, Alabama on March 9, 1871. In 1878 his family moved to Salina, Kansas. Sometime in the late 1880s DePriest moved to Chicago where he found work as a house painter and decorator. DePriest created his own contracting business and became active in local civic affairs.
Born in New Orleans, Ernest Morial grew up in the city’s Seventh Ward. His father was a cigar maker and his mother was a seamstress. Graduating from Xavier University, a historically black Catholic institution, he became the first African American to receive a law degree from Louisiana State University. Battling segregation in the courtroom, he was elected president of the local NAACP chapter, and later elected to the Louisiana State legislature, becoming the fi
The great-grandson of slaves, Maynard Jackson, Jr. was born in Dallas, Texas. When Maynard was seven years old his father, Maynard Jackson, Sr., a politically active clergyman, moved the family to Atlanta, Georgia, where he assumed pastorship of the Friendship Baptist Church. After graduating from Morehouse College in 1956 with a B.A. degree in political science, he earned a J.D.
Jerry Butler was born to sharecropping farmers in Sunflower, Mississippi, but at the age of three his family joined the Great Migration and moved to Chicago, Illinois (to an area now known as the Cabrini-Green Housing Projects). His initial introduction to music began as a choir boy in church in Chicago, where he met Curtis Mayfield, and the two joined a rhythm and blues (R&B) group called The Roosters in 1957. Later in 1957 the group changed its name t
Carl Burton Stokes was Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio (1967 to 1971), the first black mayor of a major American city. He was born June 21, 1927, in Cleveland, and died April 3, 1996 in Cleveland.
Ronald Vernie Dellums was born on November 24, 1935 in Oakland, California to Willa Terry Dellums and Vernie Dellums. His father Vernie Dellums was a longshoreman, and his mother was a labor organizer. As a child, Ron attended St. Patrick Catholic School in Oakland.
On January 17, 2007, Sheila Dixon became the first woman mayor of Baltimore, after former Mayor Martin O’Malley was inaugurated as Maryland’s governor. Born on December 17, 1953, Dixon is a lifelong resident of Baltimore having grown up in the Ashburton neighborhood of West Baltimore. Her father was a car dealer and her mother a homemaker. Dixon was educated in the city’s public school system and later earned a bachelor’s degree from Towson University. She received a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Dixon first worked as an elementary school teacher and Head Start program educator for adult instruction. She then spent 17 years with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, as an international trade specialist.
Shelia Dixon’s political career began in 1986 when at 33 she was elected to the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee to represent the 40th Legislative District. At age 34 she was elected to the Baltimore City Council, representing the 4th Council District, a position she would hold for 12 years. During her years on the Council Dixon advocated programs that improved the health of children. She particularly emphasized the need for a nutritious diet and regular exercise to combat the growing problem of childhood obesity.
In 1988, she married Thomas E. Hampton. The couple had two children, Jasmine and Joshua, before they divorced in 2006.
Hulan Edwin Jack was born in 1905 in St. Lucia but migrated with his parents to the United States from British Guiana (now known as Guyana). The family settled in New York City.
Best known for being the first black woman to be elected to Congress in the state of North Carolina, Eva Clayton, a Democrat, became known as a vigorous advocate for the concerns of African Americans and for social improvement.
Best known as the first African American Mayor of Philadelphia, Woodrow Wilson Goode was born in 1938 into a family of tenant farmers near the town of Seaboard, North Carolina. Goode moved to Philadelphia with his family in 1954.
Reverend Emanuel Cleaver II, born in Waxahachie, Texas in 1944, is best known as the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. Cleaver, who grew up in a public housing project in Wichita Falls, Texas, graduated from Prairie View A & M University in Texas with a B.S.
Lee Patrick Brown, known as “The Father of Community Policing,” also became the first African American Mayor of Houston, Texas in 1997.
In 1989, David N. Dinkins defeated his challenger, former federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, to become the first African American mayor of New York City.
Although he has served as a public school teacher, attorney and Michigan State Supreme Court Justice, Dennis Archer is best know as the Mayor of Detroit and the first African American to become president of the American Bar Association.
Born on January 1, 1942 in Detroit, Michigan, Dennis Archer graduated from Western Michigan University in 1965 with a B.A. He taught disabled children in the Detroit Public Schools for five years while attending the Detroit College of Law. Archer graduated with a J.D. degree in 1970 and began practicing law.
Dennis Archer was first appointed a Justice on the Michigan State Supreme Court in 1985. He then won election to the Supreme Court post later that year and served until 1990. In 1993 he ran for mayor of Detroit, succeeding Mayor Coleman Young, the first black mayor of the city. Archer was not popular with many Young loyalists and did not receive the majority of the African American vote. Archer, however, eventually won over many of his critics and was elected to a second term in 1997 by a wide margin.
As mayor Archer promoted economic growth in the most impoverished areas of the city by persuading the federal government to make Detroit one of the first cities to receive federal Empowerment Zone status. He also initiated Detroit’s downtown “renaissance,” a controversial plan to develop the downtown area to lure businesses and residents back into the city. He also promoted new downtown stadiums for the Detroit Lions football team and the Detroit Tigers baseball team.
Born Perle Yvonne Watson on October 5, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, Yvonne Burke became the first black woman elected to the California legislature (1966), the first black woman elected to Congress from California (1972), and the first black woman to serve as Chair of the Los Angeles County Supervisors (1993). 
Born in Richmond, Virginia on January 17, 1931, Lawrence Douglas Wilder was the first African American to be elected governor in the United States of America. For four years Wilder served as the governor of Virginia (1990-1994). Currently he is serving as the mayor of Richmond, Virginia.
Unita Blackwell, a civil rights activist and the first black female mayor in the state of Mississippi, was born the daughter of sharecropping parents in Coahoma County, Mississippi on March 18, 1933. She worked throughout the civil rights era urging and recruiting blacks to register to vote, while holding positions in numerous organizations to fight for black civil rights in the United States.
Sharon Pratt Dixon was born on January 30, 1944 in Washington, D.C. to parents Carlisle Pratt and Mildred (Petticord) Pratt. Carlisle was a Washington, D.C. Superior Court Judge. Mildred Pratt died of breast cancer when Sharon was four years old. Pratt’s father played a major role in her life by instilling certain values and encouraging her commitment to public service. Sharon Pratt attended public schools in Washington, D.C.
An activist, politician, and leader of her community, Sharon Sayles Belton was the first African American and first woman mayor of the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A St. Paul native, Belton was born on May 13, 1951. For most of her life she fought for racial equality, women, family and child care issues, youth development and neighborhood development. 
Lucien E. Blackwell, U.S. Congressman and labor official, was born in Whitset, Pennsylvania. He attended West Philadelphia High School, but left before obtaining his diploma. Blackwell also served in the United States Armed Forces during the Korean War, and received the National Defense Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars, a Meritorious Unit Commendation, and the Good Conduct Medal. 
Freeman Roberson Bosley, Jr. (1954- )
Richard Arrington, the first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, was born in Livingston, Alabama on October 19, 1934 to sharecroppers. He received a Bachelor's degree from Miles College (Alabama), a M.A. in Biology from the University of Detroit, and a Ph.D. in Zoology and Biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma. 
Dr. Willie W. Herenton was born on April 23, 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee and is currently the mayor of that city. Dr. Herenton is a graduate of LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis and the University of Memphis.
Blanche Kelso Bruce was born a slave in 1841 in Prince Edward County, Virginia but was raised in Missouri. Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Bruce fled to Kansas, becoming a free man before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
After the Civil War he returned to Missouri and founded the first school for African Americans in Hannibal. Bruce briefly attended Oberlin College, but out of funds, began working as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River. Hearing Mississippi gubernatorial candidate James L. Alcorn speak, Bruce decided to move to the state in 1869 to enter politics.
Mentored by white Republicans, his political rise was swift. He was sergeant at arms in the State Senate, then Sheriff and Tax Collector of Bolivar County in 1871. As Bolivar County Superintendent of Education, he started more schools. Financially successful due to his job as Sheriff, he bought a 640-acre plantation in Floreyville, Mississippi in 1873.
Bruce was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1875 and served to 1881. Although he was the second black Senator, after fellow Mississippian Hiram Revels, he was the first to serve a full term. When the Democrats gained control of the state in the same year he was elected, Bruce became increasingly isolated politically. Through the remainder of his term he supported freedman’s issues against the backdrop of Democratic rule of Mississippi.
After graduation, Barrett, now married, began a career in criminal justice. She worked as a criminal justice planner in East Point, College Park, and Hapeville, Georgia.
Z. Alexander Looby was among the small cadre of African American lawyers who began practicing in the southern United States during the 1920s and 1930s.
Kurt L. Schmoke, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1949, came from a middle class background. His father, Murray, a civilian chemist for the U.S. Army, was a graduate of Morehouse College, and his mother, Irene was a social worker.
First elected to the Congress in 1870, Josiah T. Walls became Florida’s first elected African American Congressman. Walls was born a slave in Winchester, Virginia on December 30, 1842. He was conscripted by the Confederate Army and captured in Yorktown by Union forces in 1862. Walls then enlisted in the U.S.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Wayne Keith Curry’s father, Eugene, was a schoolteacher and his mother, Juliette, was a homemaker and later a secretary. When the family moved to Cheverly, Maryland in the 1960s, they encountered various forms of discrimination, including exclusion from a white neighborhood, prompting his mother to campaign for open housing. Curry graduated from Bladensburg High School in 1968, and Western Maryland College
James Charles Evers was born on September 11, 1922 in Decatur, Mississippi to parents Jesse Wright and James Evers. Growing up in Mississippi during the era of Jim Crow, Evers witnessed the effects of racial discrimination and prejudice firsthand. At the age of ten, he witnessed a horrific lynching of a black man who had been accused of insulting a white woman. This lynching left a lasting impression on Evers, who vowed, along w
Born into slavery in Henderson, North Carolina, Henry Cheatham was the child of an enslaved domestic worker about who little is known. An adolescent after the American Civil War, Cheatham benefited from country’s short lived commitment to provide educational opportunities to all children. He attended public school where he excelled in his studies. After high school Cheatham was admitted to Shaw
Former Missouri Democratic Congressman William L. Clay Sr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 30, 1931, one of seven children. Clay excelled in school and at the age of thirteen began working as a janitor in a clothing store. He later became the tailor for the store. Clay graduated from St. Louis University in 1953 with a B.S. degree in history and political science, and then served in the military.
U.S. Congresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 13, 1939 to Lunar N. and Vera (Jones) Richardson. Collins attended Wayne State University in Detroit. Her career began at Wayne State University where she served as business manager, worked in the Physics department, and worked in neighborhood relations. Prior to being elected to Congress, she also served as a board member in Detroit’s School Region I between 1971 and 1973. 
James Meredith and Constance Baker Motley, 1962
Henry “Hank” Johnson Jr. represents Georgia’s Fourth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. The district includes DeKalb County, where Johnson has lived and worked for the past several decades, as well as parts of Gwinnett and Rockdale Counties.
rd Gordon Hatcher, the first African American mayor of Gary, Indiana and one of the first African Americans to serve as mayor of a major city, was born on July 10, 1933 in Michigan City, Indiana. Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary Indiana in 1967 and served in that capacity for the next 20 years.
Born in Huntsville, Alabama, on the 6th of August, 1912, Illinois Congressman Bennett McVey Stewart was the son of Bennett Stewart and Cathleen Jones. He attended local public schools in Huntsville and Birmingham before entering Miles College in Birmingham. There he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1936. His first job after graduation was assistant principal of Birmingham’s Irondale High School, from 1936 until 1938.
Yvette Diane Clark won her first political office when she was elected a member of the New York City Council representing part of Brooklyn in 2001. Clarke succeeded her mother, former City Councilmember, Dr. Una S.T. Clarke, making them the first mother-daughter succession in the history of the New York City Council.
Lionel Wilson, lawyer, judge, and politician, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 4, 1915 to Jules and Louise Wilson. In 1918 the family moved to Oakland, California, where his parents believed a smaller and less-noticeable black community would afford them greater freedoms and less discrimination. Following his elementary schooling Wilson attended McClymonds High School in Oakland, a predominantly white institution.
James Poindexter clergyman, abolitionist, politician, and civil rights activist, was born in Richmond Virginia in 1819. He attended school in Richmond until he was about sixteen when he started to apprentice as a barber. In 1837 Poindexter married Adelia Atkinson and the coupled moved to Columbus, Ohio where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Marion Barry Jr., an activist and politician, was born on March 6, 1936, in Itta Bena, Mississippi. His parents, Marion Barry and Mattie Barry, were sharecroppers; the family lived in relative poverty. When Marion was eight years old, his mother took the family to live in Memphis, Tennessee.
Cory Booker, The First 100 Days: Newark, 100 Day Plan Report (Newark: Newark Public Information Office, 2006); Kendra Field, Race, Identity, and Legitimacy in Context: Cory Booker v. Sharpe James (Cambridge, Mass.: John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2002); www.corybooker.com; David Segal, "Urban Legend How Cory Booker Became Newark's Mayor: By Being Almost Too Good to Be True" The Washington Post, July 3, 2006
Robert Wood is believed to be one of the first African American mayors in the United States. He served as mayor of Natchez, Mississippi in the early 1870s. Wood was born in 1844 to Susie Harris, an African American housekeeper, and Dr. Robert Wood, a white doctor from Virginia. His parents never married, but lived side by side. According to oral histories, Wood was never a slave and lived mostly with his father, a former mayor of Natchez himself.
Mississippi Governor James L. Alcorn appointed Robert Wood as mayor of Natchez, Mississippi in 1869. He later was elected mayor in 1870. His election was part of the “Black and Tan Revolution,” a short-lived political shift in Mississippi in which citizens of Mississippi elected many African Americans to state offices between 1868 and 1875. At its peak in 1873, half of Mississippi's state elected officials were black.
David Duncan Collum, Black and Catholic in the Jim Crow South: The
Stuff that Makes Community. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2006);
Mike Brunker, “Race, Politics and the Evolving South: A Black Mayor,
130 Years Later” MSNBC.com. Aug. 17, 2004.
Can Kwame Kilpatrick Grow Up, Steven Gray/Detroit Thursday, Sep. 20, 2007, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1663791,00.html; Kwame Kilpatrick, M.J. Stephey, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, /www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1854335,00.html; Kwame Kilpatrick exits, with Barack Obama holding the door, Edward McClelland September 4, 2008, www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/04/detroit/; Resources for Elected Officials, DLC, Profile, May 15, 2003,100 To Watch :: 2003 The Next Generation of Leadership, www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251633&kaid=104&subid=210.
John Jenkins is the former mayor of Lewiston, Maine and the recently elected mayor of Auburn Maine. Jenkins is the first African American to serve as mayor in both cities. He served as mayor of Lewiston from 1993 to 1995. He has held the mayor's post in Auburn since 2008. 
William Burney, a business consultant who lives in southern Maine, was elected as the first black mayor of Augusta, Maine, the state capital, in November 1988. He served two four-year terms in this position until 1996. 
Henry Marsh is a prominent political figure, black activist, and lawyer in Richmond, Virginia. He was born on December 10, 1933 in Richmond but when his mother died at age five, he was sent to live with relatives in rural Virginia. Marsh, who attended Moonfield School, a racially segregated one room school with seven grades, one teacher and 78 students, knew first hand the consequences of school segregation. 
Adrian Malik Fenty was born to Philip and Jan Fenty, an interracial couple, on December 6, 1970, in Washington, D.C. Fenty’s parents were both runners and they owned the athletic shoe store Fleet Feet in Washington, D.C. Fenty graduated from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Washington. While attending Oberlin College in Ohio, Fenty gained his first political experience as an intern for Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum. Fenty also interned for Massachusetts Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, and District of Columbia delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. 
Percy Sutton, attorney, politician, civil rights activist, and businessman, was born on November 24, 1920 in San Antonio, Texas to school teachers Samuel and Lillian Sutton. Percy Sutton attended Prairie View A&M University, Tuskegee Institute, and Hampton Institute. In 1942 Sutton joined the military. He became a skilled World War II pilot, serving as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He also earned combat medals as an intelligence officer.
Walter Edward Washington, attorney and politician, was born in Dawson, Georgia, on April 15, 1915 to Willie Mae and William L. Washington. After his mother’s death in 1921, Washington moved with his father to Jamestown, New York. Washington excelled academically and athletically in the public school. His trumpeting skills in school also earned him the nickname Duke II. In 1934, he enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Washington earned his B.A. degree in 1938 and his law degree from the same institution in 1948. While attending law school, Washington met and married Benetta Bullock.
Following law school, Washington was employed as a supervisor for the District of Columbia’s Alley Dwelling Project. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy named Washington the executive director the National Capitol Housing Authority, becoming the first African American to hold that position.
Bennie G. Thompson, United States Representative from Mississippi's Second Congressional District, is the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and as such is one of the most influential African American members of Congress.
Thompson was born in Bolton, Mississippi on January 28, 1948 to Will Thompson, an auto mechanic, and Annie Lauris Thompson, a teacher. He earned a BA in political science from Tougaloo College in 1968, and then earned MS and MA degrees from Jackson State University in 1972. He worked for one year as a school teacher in Madison, Mississippi after graduating from Tougaloo.
Thompson became interested in politics while a student at Tougaloo College where he spent time as a grassroots campaigner and voter registrar. Soon after graduating in 1968, he successfully ran for alderman of his hometown of Bolton and now is the longest-serving African American elected official in Mississippi. In 1973, he was elected mayor of Bolton. During his tenure as mayor, he commissioned a property reassessment effort that uncovered deliberate devaluation of property owned by the city’s white officials to avoid higher taxes. In 1980 he was elected to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, and in 1993 he successfully ran for Congress, winning the open seat in the Second District after Congressman Mike Espy vacated it to become Secretary of Agriculture in the William Clinton Administration. Thompson defeated Henry Espy, brother of the former congressman, and James Meredith, a noted civil rights activist.
Harvey B. Gantt, architect and politician, was born January 14, 1943 in Charleston, South Carolina to Christopher and Wilhelmenia Gantt. In 1961, Gantt attended Iowa State University. After one year of study, he returned to South Carolina and soon afterwards sued to enter racially segregated Clemson University. On January 16, 1963, the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Clemson to admit Gantt who became its first African American student. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Clemson with honors in 1965. In 1970, Gantt earned a M.A. in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During the 1970s Gantt worked at various architectural firms in Charlotte, North Carolina where he settled after receiving his degree from MIT. Between 1970 and 1971 he collaborated with civil rights activist Floyd B. McKissick to design Soul City, North Carolina, an experimental interracial community in eastern North Carolina. In 1971 Gantt left the Soul City project, returning to Charlotte to launch an architectural firm with Jeffrey Huberman. Some of the firm’s projects include the construction of the Charlotte Transportation Center, Transamerica Square, and First Ward Recreation Center.
Shirley Clarke Franklin became Atlanta, Georgia’s first African American female mayor in 2001, as well as the first woman to be a mayor of a major southern city. Clarke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 10, 1945 to parents Eugene Haywood Clarke and Ruth Lyons Clarke. She attended public schools in Philadelphia. In 1963 at the age of 18, Clarke participated in the March on Washington where she saw and was inspired by Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. 
Michael B. Coleman is the first African American Mayor of Columbus, Ohio. Coleman was born on November 18, 1954 in Indianapolis, Indiana to John Coleman, a medical doctor, and Joan Coleman, a local civil rights activist. His family relocated to Toledo when Michael turned three. 
Social activist and black labor leader Nellie Stone Johnson was born Nellie Saunders Allen in Lakeville, Minnesota in 1905, the eldest daughter of an activist farmer, William R. Allen and a schoolteacher, Gladys Allen. As a child, Nellie worked on her family’s farm near Hinckley, Minnesota. On her way to and from school, she distributed flyers for the Non-Partisan League, a radical rural organization of which her father was a member.
On December 1, 2005, Mark Mallory was sworn in as the first black mayor elected by popular vote in Cincinnati, Ohio. Three other black mayors preceded him but were chosen by the City Council. Born on April 2, 1962, and raised on the West End of Cincinnati, Mallory attended high school at the city’s Academy of Math and Science and earned a BS in administrative management from the University of Cincinnati in 1984. Before becoming Mayor of Cincinnati, Mallory replaced his father, William L. Mallory Sr., in 1994 in the Ohio General Assembly. In 1998 Mark Mallory was elected to the Ohio Senate eventually becoming the assistant minority leader.
Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento, California, was born in California's capital city in 1966. He graduated from Sacramento High School, where he led the state in basketball scoring during his senior year, with a point average of 32.5 points. Johnson then played college basketball at the University of California at Berkeley. While there he became the all-time leader in scoring for that varsity team. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1987, Johnson was drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA).
As the seventh round draft pick, Johnson was chosen by the Cleveland Cavaliers, but was quickly traded to the Phoenix Suns in 1988, where he remained for the duration of his career in the NBA. Johnson played point guard, and with his high point-scoring, was considered by many teams as a threat. The Phoenix Suns' overall record improved with his selection and so did Johnson's performance.
During his first year with Phoenix (1988-1989), Johnson was named the NBA's most improved player. He also competed in all-star games in 1990, 1991, and 1994 and played on the U.S. Olympic Basketball team (Dream Team II) which won a gold medal in Toronto, Canada in the 1994 World Championship of Basketball. Kevin Johnson officially retired from the NBA on August 8, 2000 after 13 years in the league.
Carl Brewer, mayor of Wichita, Kansas, is a native of that city. Brewer, who was born in 1957, is the first African American to be elected as the mayor of the largest city in Kansas. He previously served on the Wichita City Council from 2001 to 2007. Brewer is the second African American to hold the post of Mayor. A. Price Woodard served as mayor from April 14, 1970 to April 13, 1971.
Brewer was raised in Wichita, and attended North High, where he graduated in 1975. After high school, he attended Friends University, also located in Wichita. Prior to serving on the city council, Brewer was employed as a Spirit Operations Manager for Boeing aerospace manufacturing, a Manufacture Engineer for Cessna aviation, and as a Captain for the Kansas Army National Guard. Brewer is also a member of multiple organizations, including the Arkansas Valley Masonic Lodge, the African American Catholic Council, the National Guard Association, and the Boeing Management Association.
Carl Brewer began serving on the Wichita City Council in 2001, representing District 1. He is a member of many governmental associations: the National League of Cities Board of Directors, the National Black Caucus, the Regional Economic Area Partnership (REAP), and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, to name a few.
Brewer challenged incumbent mayor Carlos Mayans and on April 3, 2007, won a landside 61% to 37% of the vote. Once elected he was required to resign from his post on the city council to take his oath as Mayor.
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