‘WORK TO DO’

Ferguson Elects the City’s First Black Mayor, Ella Jones

Jones said following her victory: “When you’re an African-American woman, they require more of you.”

The Missouri city of Ferguson—which erupted in protest in 2014 after a white police officer shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown—has elected its first black mayor, Ella Jones. “I’ve got work to do—because when you’re an African-American woman, they require more of you than they require of my counterpart,” Jones told reporters following her triumph. Jones is a Ferguson City Council member and a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was the first black woman elected to the City Council and lost in a previous mayoral election in 2017. According to The New York Times, she said at the time that many black residents had told her that they didn’t believe electing her would change their lives. Jones reportedly said three years ago: “When you’ve been governed by fear and people telling you that the city is going to decline because an African-American person is going to be in charge, then you tend to listen to the rhetoric and don’t open your mind to new possibilities.”