St. Louis Elects Tishaura Jones as City’s First Black Woman Mayor

Tishaura Jones has made history as she will be St. Louis’ third Black mayor and the city’s first Black woman mayor.

St. Louis next mayor is Tishaura Jones

Jones, 49, will be sworn in on April 20. The former city treasurer won the election Tuesday (Apr. 6) against Alderwoman Cara Spencer, winning 52 percent of the vote over her opponent’s 48 percent.

Tishaura Jones Photo by New America, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tishaura_Jones_New_America_2017_1.jpg

Statement

“St. Louis: This is an opportunity for us to rise,” Jones said in her victory speech Tuesday night. “I told you when I was running that we aren’t done avoiding tough conversations. We are done ignoring the racism that has held our city and our region back.”

Critical of the city’s “arrest and incarcerate” model, even amid a rise in violent crime, Jones has vowed to restructure the police department and allocate more funds to substance abuse and mental health services.

“We need to declare gun violence as a public health crisis and address it as such, just as how we’ve addressed this current pandemic,” Jones said in an interview with KDSK. “We need to have that same laser-focused attitude of looking at the root causes like we did with the pandemic, we need to address that same sort of root cause, focus on gun violence and public safety.”