Introduction

David Dinkins's victory created hope. As borough president of Manhattan, he was the city's highest-ranking elected African American official. In a career that spanned more than a quarter of a century, he had built a reputation as a politician able to reach across New York's growing racial divide with unusual skill. Dinkins's election had national implications too. President George H. W. Bush sat in the White House, heir to the Reagan Revolution, which included a pledge to reduce the role of the federal government. Republicans launched policies to unravel Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, which above all intended to help people of color and other disadvantaged citizens to gain full access to the American Dream. In the midst of an environment that seemed increasingly hostile toward African Americans, the election of a black mayor for the first time in the country's premier metropolis—its most cosmopolitan and diverse city, an key arbiter of national tastes and television trends on special significance.