USA Today: 'I am making history:' Kim Janey becomes Boston's first Black and first female mayor

N’DEA YANCEY-BRAGG, USA TODAY

Kim Janey has been sworn in as acting mayor of Boston, making history as the first Black person and first woman to lead the city.

Janey, who was the City Council president, automatically replaced Democrat Marty Walsh after he resigned Monday to be President Joe Biden's labor secretary. The city will hold a mayoral race in November, and Janey hasn't said whether she'll run against the five other candidates, all of whom are people of color.

Janey, who at 11 years old had rocks and racial slurs hurled at her school bus during Boston’s desegregation era, is widely seen as ushering in a new chapter in Boston’s political history. She pledged to lead the city with "bold, courageous leadership."

“Today is a new day. I stand before you as the first woman and the first Black mayor of Boston, the city that I love,” Janey, a Democrat, said Wednesday during the City Hall event. “I come to this day with life experience that is different from the men who came before me.”

Justice Kimberly Budd, who became the first Black woman to lead the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2020, administered the oath of office during a ceremony presided over by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, the first Black woman to serve on the City Council and to be elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Janey called them part of "long line of Black women in our city who have broken down barriers."

Janey, 55, said six generations of her family have lived in Roxbury. Her grandfather, Daniel Benjamin Janey, was a member of Twelfth Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. worshiped while attending Boston University. Her father was one of only eight Black students to graduate from the city’s prestigious Boston Latin School in 1964. 

The Rev. Willie Bodrick II, senior pastor at the Twelfth Baptist Church, delivered the invocation at her swearing-in.

Janey said she was first called to give back to her community by volunteering on the campaign of Melvin King, the first Black person to run for mayor of Boston.

"Now here I am making history of my own," she said. "To paraphrase Vice President Kamala Harris, every little girl watching today can see that Boston is a city of possibilities."

As a young single mother, Janey began her career with Massachusetts Advocates for Children, pushing for policy changes she said were aimed at ensuring equity and excellence for public school students in Boston.

That work led her to the City Council. In 2017, she won a 13-candidate race and became the first woman to represent her district, which includes most of Roxbury and parts of the South End, Dorchester and Fenway areas of the city.

Janey pledged to help the city emerge from the pandemic by helping children recover "academically and emotionally," increasing testing and vaccinations in neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19, and working to close the city's wealth gap in part by ensuring that minority-owned businesses have a fairer shot at city contracts. 

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