David Norman Dinkins (10 July 1927-23 November 2020) was the Democratic Borough President of Manhattan from 1 January 1986 to 31 December 1989 (succeeding Andrew Stein and preceding Ruth Messinger) and Mayor of New York City from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 1993 (succeeding Ed Koch and preceding Rudy Giuliani).
Biography[]
David Norman Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1927, and he was prevented from enlisting in the US Marine Corps during World War II due to the Marines filling their quota of Black soldiers. Dinkins practiced law in Harlem, New York City from 1956 to 1975, with Tammany Hall sachem J. Raymond Jones being his mentor. Dinkins served in the State Assembly in 1966, as president of the New York City Board of Elections from 1972 to 1973, as city clerk from 1975 to 1985, as borough president of Manhattan from 1986 to 1989, and as Mayor from 1990 to 1993. His tenure as mayor was marked by skyrocketing crime rates, the HIV/AIDS and crack epidemics, and racial tensions (such as the Crown Heights riot, during which he supported the acquittal of a Black man who had murdered an innocent Jew in an anti-Semitic attack). He became a professor at Columbia University in 1994, and he died in 2020.