Preceded by Donald M. Fraser Succeeded by R. T. Rybak | Name Sharon Belton Role American Politician | |
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Born May 13, 1951 (age 72)
Saint Paul, Minnesota ( 1951-05-13 ) Occupation Senior Fellow, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice Political party Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party Education Macalester College, Saint Paul Central High School | ||
Sharon Sayles Belton Bronze Tribute
Sharon Sayles Belton (born May 13, 1951) is an American community leader, politician and activist. She is Vice President of Community Relations and Government Affairs for Thomson Reuters Legal business.
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She served as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 1994 until 2001, the first African American and first woman to hold that position.
Early years
Sayles Belton was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as one of four daughters of Bill and Ethel Sayles. After her parents separated, she lived for one year with her mother in Richfield, Minnesota, where she was the only African American in East Junior High School, then moved to south Minneapolis to live with her father and stepmother. She attended Central High School, volunteered as a candy striper at Mount Sinai Hospital, and later worked as a nurse's aide. She served briefly a civil rights activist in the state of Mississippi.
Sayles Belton attended Macalester College in Saint Paul, where she studied biology and sociology. She later worked as a parole officer with victims of sexual assault. Like her grandfather Bill Sayles, she became a neighborhood activist. She is married to Steven Belton, with whom she raised three children: Kilayna, Jordan, and Coleman.
Career
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 woman mayor in the city's 140-year history. She defeated 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.
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.
Sam Grabarski of a downtown business council told Minnesota Public Radio that Sayles Belton was capable of convincing investors that downtown is a "safe haven for investments of the scale that it takes to build one million-square-foot office towers." She helped to bring a Target retail store, the U.S. Bancorp Center, and the American Express Business Center to the Nicollet Mall. She helped to create the Block E entertainment and shopping redevelopment on Hennepin Avenue, where for ten years a parking lot had occupied prime downtown real estate.
The city also addressed archaic utilities billing, outdated water treatment and neighborhood flooding. By the end of the decade, Minneapolis had increased property values, the city had its first increase in population since the 1940s, and there was reversal of a "50-year economic slide." Fraser credits Sayles Belton with stabilizing neighborhoods amid racial tensions, supporting the school system, and being an able and savvy city manager. Critics opposed the use of city subsidies for downtown development, said to total $90 million combined for the Target store and Block E.
Sayles Belton continued to enjoy broad support from poorer constituents but lost popularity among the more affluent. In the 2001 election she lost her party's endorsement and the primary. She was defeated by R.T. Rybak, a fellow DFLer.
After leaving the mayor's office, Sayles Belton became a senior fellow at the Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice. The center is part of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
More recently, Sayles Belton worked in community affairs and community involvement for the GMAC Residential Finance Corporation, headquartered in Minneapolis. In 2010, she joined Thomson Reuters as vice president of Community Relations and Government Affairs, based in Eagan, Minnesota.
Associations
Sayles Belton is involved in race equality, community and neighborhood development, public policy, women's, family and children's issues, police-community relations and youth development. In 1978 she co-founded the Harriet Tubman Shelter for Battered Women in Minneapolis. She is a co-founder of the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She contributed to the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, Clean Water Partnership, Children's Healthcare and Hospital, the American Bar Association, the Bush Foundation, the United States Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, and Hennepin County Medical Center by chairing or serving on their boards.