Thomas Bradley (29 December 1917-29 September 1998) was the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles from 1 July 1973 to 1 July 1993, succeeding Sam Yorty and preceding Richard Riordan.
Biography[]
Thomas Bradley was born in Calvert, Texas in 1917, and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1924. He joined the LAPD in 1940, and he became a lawyer on his retirement from the police department, and also became involved in local Democratic politics. He served on the City Council from 1963 to 1973 and as Mayor from 1973 to 1993, defeating the conservative Democratic incumbent Sam Yorty. Bradley oversaw the construction of the city's light rail network, the expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport, the hosting of the 1984 Summer Olympics, and rising traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and rising crime. In 1992, the Los Angeles riots broke out after the acquittal of the LAPD officers who brutally beat Black man Rodney King following a car chase; Bradley insisted that the officers had indeed committed a crime and publicly denounced the verdict. This did not prevent thousands of Los Angeles residents, most of them Black or Hispanic, from rioting for a week and causing $1 billion in damage, while leaving 63 people dead and 2,383 injured. Bradley left office in 1993, and he died of a heart attack in 1998.