Lori Lightfoot’s Historic Win Invokes Trailblazer Ida B. Wells
April 2, 2019 will go down in history as a day that transformed Chicago and the nation. The city elected Lori Lightfoot, its first African American woman mayor. Not only is Lightfoot the first openly gay woman to hold the office, she is in an interracial marriage and has an adopted daughter. Lightfoot managed to win every single of Chicago’s fifty wards in a smashing victory against a veteran politician — another African American woman — named Toni Preckwinkle. At just over five feet tall, Lightfoot is brown skinned with a short afro. She is a very successful prosecutor and unlikely politician. Indeed, she has never held an elected office.