Chokwe Antar Lumumba (born March 29,1983) is an American attorney,activist,and politician serving as the 53rd mayor[1] of Jackson,Mississippi,[2] the 7th consecutive African-American to hold the position. In 2024,Lumumba and other officials in the state were indicted on corruption charges.[3] He is the son of former mayor and Black nationalist activist Chokwe Lumumba,who served briefly as mayor of Jackson before his death in 2014.[4]
He was first elected in 2017. In the primary election,Lumumba soundly[5] won the Democratic nomination,defeating both incumbent mayor Tony Yarber and State Senator John Horhn.[6] Lumumba went on to win the general election in a landslide. He is a self-described progressive and socialist.[7][8] Lumumba has also referred to himself as a political revolutionary.[9]
Mayor of Jackson,Mississippi
Lumumba was elected mayor in June 2017 with 93% of the vote. The Nation commented that "Lumumba lit up the left press with his promise—delivered later that month in a speech at the People's Summit in Chicago—to make Jackson 'the most radical city on the planet.'"[10]
In summer 2018,Lumumba attended Michael Bloomberg's "Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative."[11][12] The City of Jackson noted that the Initiative was created by Bloomberg to train leaders to "manage the complexities of running a city,and to have opportunities to learn from one another." Four months later,in November 2018,Bloomberg gave the City of Jackson $1 million to create art spotlighting food insecurity.[13] Lumumba won reelection in 2021 with almost seventy percent of the vote.
Jackson Zoo crisis
In April 2018,when the Jackson Zoo announced plans to consider moving from its current West Jackson location,Lumumba joined Working Together Jackson,the Zoo Area Progressive Partnership,Rosemont Missionary Baptist Church and other community groups,in an effort to prevent the zoo from moving. He described the proposed plan as disingenuous and disrespectful.[14] A city investigation discovered that the Jackson Zoological Society had mismanaged funds and failed to pay $6 million in water bills.[15]
Lumumba took direct control of the zoo and approved $200,000 to renovate it.[16] The zoo reopened in August 2020 under city control.[17]
In 2019, over 3billion U.S. gallons (11 gigaliters) of raw sewage was released into the Pearl River, leading to the local government telling residents to avoid contact with the water by swimming or fishing. In 2020, following a record-breaking amount of rain during the early months of the year, the city's sewage system once again overflowed and led to 1⁄2billion U.S. gallons (1.9 gigaliters) of raw sewage, as well as 5.7billion U.S. gallons (22 gigaliters) of treated sewage, being dumped into the Pearl River.[18]
In March 2021, Lumumba wrote to Mississippi state governor Tate Reeves requesting $47M in aid[18] needed to make the urgently needed repairs and updates to the water infrastructure system in Jackson. In August 2022, Lumumba declared a water system emergency following the failure of the largest water treatment plant in Jackson. The crisis was caused by decades of mishandled and out-of-date water and waste infrastructure that led to at least 2,300 U.S. gallons (8,700 liters) of sewage overflowing into the Pearl River. Overflowing water from the Ross Barnett Reservoir and the Pearl River caused the water treatment plant in Jackson to completely fail. With the system down, many of the 153,000 residents of Jackson were left without clean drinking water, or with poor water pressure.[18]
On January 6, 2023, Lumumba announced that they had secured the funding needed to begin repairing and reconstructing the water systems in Jackson.[19] Nearly $800 million in funding was pulled from the $1.7 trillion federal omnibus bill that was passed back in late 2022. The EPA would work closely with the mayor and officials of Jackson to handle the funding and project.
On November 5, 2024, Lumumba was indicted by a federal grand jury "on bribery and related charges".[23] Lumumba is accused of accepting bribes in exchange for favors benefiting alleged real estate developers. The Justice Department stated that such corruption undermines public trust, and it is committed to prosecuting these abuses.[23] The mayor denied all wrongdoing.[24]
Lumumba has two children with his wife, Ebony.[26] His wife is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Speech Communication at Jackson State University, a position she has held since 2020, two years after receiving her doctoral degree. [27]
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