Sharon Sayles-Belton

In 1983, Sayles Belton was elected by the Eighth Ward to the Minneapolis City Council. She was inspired by working with mayor Donald M. Fraser. She represented the state at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, where Minnesota politician Walter Mondale was nominated for President of the United States. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Sayles Belton was elected city council president in 1990. In 1993, she announced her candidacy for mayor. With the help of three phone banks and a staff of ten, she was elected, the first African American and the first female mayor in the city's 140-year history, defeating DFL former Hennepin County Commissioner John Derus. She was reelected in 1997, defeating Republican candidate Barbara Carlson. Sayles Belton held the position for two terms, from January 1, 1994, to December 31, 2001.[3] W. Harry Davis, a fellow civil rights supporter and the city's first African-American mayoral candidate, said she had a difficult job ahead of her, "because crime was running rampant" in the mid-1990s. The city was able to reverse the crime wave by allocating resources to public safety from other departments and importing a computerized strategy used in New York City that sent officers to high crime areas. Although the initiative drew accusations of racial profiling, under police chief Robert Olson the rate of serious crime had dropped 16% by 1998, the best one-year reduction in twenty years.[5][6]