Every success has a foundation and the cornerstone to the rise of Black political leadership in New York belongs to Andrew W. Cooper (1927-2002), the little-known civil rights hero who blew open the door for Black politics in Brooklyn and New York State.
Cooper, born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was working for a Brooklyn-based beer company when the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. At the time, however, New York had its own voting rights issue in that even though the majority of Bedford-Stuyvesant was Black and Puerto Rican, the neighborhood was divided among five congressional districts, each represented by a white Congressmember.
In 1966, Cooper successfully challenged this gerrymandering in federal court, Cooper v. Power, resulting in the Feds stepping in to create a special Voting Rights District. It was in this district that in 1968, trailblazer Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. Cooper went on to found the Trans Urban News Service and The City Sun, (1984-1996). In 1987, the National Association of Black Journalists awarded him Journalist of the Year.
Fast forward to the present, and the city and state have a number of Black-Americans who now stand on the shoulders of unsung heroes like Cooper and others, who now hold the very top of elected offices representing all people. Here is our top five:
Eric Adams
Office: Mayor of New York
Age: 61
How he got there: Adams’ first attempt at public office was an unsuccessful attempt to unseat former Congressman Major Owens. He registered as a Republican in 1997, before switching back to the Democratic Party in 2001, and won his first elected seat in 2006 as a state senator representing Brooklyn’s 20 Senate District. He served four terms until he was elected Brooklyn Borough President in 2013.
First Civil Rights Moment: “Clifford Glovers shooting by Officer Shay and Reverend Herbert Daughtry leading the protest.”
What does upholding the Black American legacy mean to you, and how is applicable to your position now as mayor? “Using the office to make structural changes to inequality and ending institutional poverty. And using the bully pulpit to have conversations that people don’t want to have.”
Letitia (Tish) James
Office: New York State Attorney General
Age: 63
How she got there: James went to NYC public schools, and received her J.D. degree from Howard University School of Law. She started in politics working on former New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s Task Force on Diversity in the Judiciary, and then served as counsel for former Assemblymember Albert Vann, and Chief of Staff for former Assemblymember Roger Green, followed by a stint in the administration of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. She served two terms in the city council (2004-2013) and as the City’s Public Advocate (2014-2018) before becoming Attorney General.
Quotable: “At a young age around 14, my brother was falsely arrested. And my mom took me down to criminal court. And I was the younger girl in criminal court and everyone in the courtroom except the defendants did not look like me. And I can always remember a court officer who told my mother to sit down and to shut up simply for asking the question, ‘Where is my son?’ And I vowed at that point in time, to never allow any mother or grandmother to be disrespected in a courtroom, and that the scene that I saw, and the faces that I saw, would obviously reflect more of the city that I love, the state that I now represent. So that began my career,” James said on a WBLS radio station YouTube interview.
Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Office: Majority Leader of New York State Senate
Age: 71
How She Got there: After working 20 years in the private sector, Stewart-Cousins, and then was elected as a Westchester County Legislator representing Yonkers (1995-2006) before becoming elected to the Senate in 2006. She became the Senate Majority Leader in 2012, becoming the first woman to lead her conference in the New York Legislature.
Quotable: “I often say that if you can see it, you can be it. I am standing on the shoulders of Black women in politics who came before me, I look towards women like Shirley Chisholm who took on insurmountable challenges and made it possible for people like me to reach powerful places. While I may be the first Black woman to serve as a leader of a legislative conference in New York State, I must not be the last. We will continue to break glass ceilings here in the legislature, it is imperative that we show the younger generation of Black women leaders that this is attainable to them too.” – Andrea Stewart-Cousins as told to PoliticsNY.
Carl Heastie
Office: New York State Assembly Speaker
Age: 54
How he got there: Born and raised in NYC, Heastie’s background is in mathematics and finance. He is the former chair of the Bronx Democratic Party (2008-2015) and was first elected to the assembly in 2001, and became Speaker in 2015.
Quotable: I have an MBA in finance, but I took management classes, and they talked about three types of leaders. There’s a dictator, but that only gets you so far because, at some point, people get tired of being dictated to. Then you have laissez-faire, which is anything goes, and that’s just organized chaos. But the other type is a democratic leader, and I always felt that was the best way to lead. I think when you get a bunch of smart people in a room and everybody freely gives their opinion, usually pretty good ideas come out of that room.” Heastie from an interview with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Jumaane Williams
Office: Public Advocate
Age: 45
How he got there: Born and raised in Brooklyn, Williams began his career as a community activist before being elected to the City Council (2010-2019), and then to the Public Advocate (2019-present).
Quotable: “I remember people clutching their purses as I asked for the time, being followed in stores. You live with this, and it drips, and drips and drips, and it gets into a bucket, and that bucket will at some times overflow. As an elected official I try to make my overflow as constructive as possible.” As told to PIX11 on being Black in America.
