Mary Sheffield is Detroit’s new mayor-elect.
For the first time in 12 years, Detroiters elected a mayor other than Mike Duggan, who announced earlier this year that he would forego a bid for a fourth term as mayor and instead run for governor of Michigan in 2026.
Sheffield’s opponent in the race, Triumph Church pastor Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr., was unable to make up his 30-point deficit from the August 2025 mayoral primary and was defeated soundly, with the race being called in Sheffield’s favor just after 9 p.m. on Nov. 4.
This election was historic for several reasons. For the first time in the city’s history, a woman – and a Black woman – will be its mayor. In a broader history-making moment, Sheffield became the youngest Black woman in U.S. history elected to lead a major U.S. city – one with a population of more than 250,000.
Now, as the youngest Black woman ever to lead a major U.S. city, Sheffield carries both a title and a lineage. Detroit has known every version of recovery from corporate, political, and developmental — but this moment reaches deeper.
The roots of her leadership trace back generations. For her family, service was the work expected of anyone who loved this city. And for Sheffield, that inheritance has become her blueprint for power.
The Weight of a Name
In Detroit, the name Sheffield is less a legacy than a living record. It runs through church pulpits and picket lines, through kitchens where neighbors gathered when policy failed them. Long before Mary Sheffield held a title, her family had already been doing the work that governments often forgot.
Her grandfather, Horace Sheffield Jr., fought for Black workers when labor unions treated them like outsiders. Her father, Rev. Horace Sheffield III, carried that fight into the pulpit, turning sermons into organizing blueprints and ministry into social infrastructure.
Mary Sheffield was raised in those rooms. She grew up on stories of strikes and prayer circles, of city budgets discussed alongside Sunday dinners.
“I like to believe this work is something I was born into,” she said. “On both sides of my family, service has always been the standard.”
Her mother grounded her in a different language of service — care.
“On my mother’s side, everyone was a nurse,” she said. “She taught nursing for years at Wayne County Community College, and she showed me what compassion looks like—how to care for people when they’re at their most vulnerable. That balance of advocacy and empathy shaped everything about how I see leadership.”
That mix of protest and patience, the fight from her father and the tenderness from her mother, became her way of governing.
Continuing a Legacy of Detroit’s Leading Ladies
Long before Mary Sheffield won an election, Detroit was being held together by women who led because the city needed them to.
Rev. Dr. JoAnn Watson turned sermons into strategy, using faith as a blueprint for policy. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick carried Detroit’s urgency to Congress, making sure working families were heard in Washington. Erma Henderson, once called “Detroit’s most powerful woman of her time,” broke the council’s color line in 1972 and spent 16 years shaping city policy — twelve of them as its president. Maryann Mahaffey fought for women’s rights from the same chambers, creating Detroit’s first rape crisis center and pushing through an ordinance against workplace sexual harassment. And Brenda Lawrence, who rose from the mayor’s office in Southfield to the halls of Congress, continued the work of expanding representation for a region still finding its balance between progress and equity.
Their names mark a lineage of service that shaped how Sheffield understands power.
“I really do see myself as part of that line of bold, compassionate women who kept this city going,” she said. “They didn’t wait for someone to give them the green light — they just showed up and made things happen. I’m here because of them, and I just want to make sure what they built keeps growing.”
Her grandmother’s story is the bridge between those women and her own work.
“My grandmother was born at home in a two-family flat right here in Detroit,” Sheffield said. “She remembers when the Jeffries Projects were being built, because at that time there was a major housing shortage. Developments like the Brewster Homes were a big deal — yet even then, there was never enough for the families who needed it most.”
Her grandmother taught her resilience. Her mother taught her empathy. Those lessons now shape every policy Sheffield writes, while understanding that leadership isn’t just boiled down to being first – it’s about honoring those who never had the chance to be seen and widening the path for those who will follow.
The women who governed this city long before it ever gave them a title are the reason she can.
A First Who Refuses to Be the Last
Now that she is officially elected, Sheffield has stepped into a history that has denied women — and especially Black women — the seat at the city’s highest table. She understands what that symbol means, but she’s careful not to let it stop there.
“Being the first woman — and the first Black woman — to lead this city is not just about breaking a barrier; it’s about holding the door open for those who will come after me,” she said. “For every young girl who’s been told her voice is too soft or her dreams too big, I want her to see that leadership can look like her too.”
That sentiment carries the weight of her family’s sacrifices.
“I lead with them in mind,” she said. “My job is not just to make history, but to make change — to ensure that the women and girls watching don’t have to be the ‘first’ again, but can simply be the next.”
Love, Fight, and Faith
When Sheffield talks about this campaign, she returns again and again to three words: love, fight, and faith. They read less like slogans and more like survival tools.
“When the next generation of Detroit women looks back at this moment, I want them to understand that everything I’ve done has come from a place of deep love — for our city, for our people, and for the women who came before me,” she said. “The fight has never been easy, but it’s always been fueled by faith — the kind that believes in Detroit even when it’s been counted out.”
She hopes her legacy will prove that leadership can be both firm and tender — that power, in a city built by working people, can still look like service.
“I hope history will say that I didn’t seek power for its own sake, but to shift power — to give voice, visibility, and dignity to those left out of the story,” she said. “That I governed with heart and conviction, that I fought for equity not as a slogan but as a standard.”
Other Women Have Walked Similar Paths
In Alexandria, Virginia, Mayor Alyia Gaskin knows something about firsts and the weight they carry. Last year, at just 35, she became the first Black woman ever elected mayor of the historic port city.
She took office in January 2025, stepping into the same halls where enslaved people were once bought and sold. That proximity to history, she says, shapes how she governs and how she watches leaders like Mary Sheffield rise.
“When I first found out I won, all I could think about was the joy — but also the pressure and responsibility,” Gaskin said. “My office looks out on a market where slaves were once sold, and so I feel a deep sense of duty to deliver for long-term Black residents who built and shaped our city.”
Before her election, Gaskin served on the Alexandria City Council, bringing her background in public health and urban planning to issues of housing, safety, and community infrastructure. Her path into leadership came through proximity to struggle.
“No matter how hard my mom worked,” she said, “we still struggled to make ends meet. And so I started thinking — who’s actually changing the systems that make that struggle inevitable?”
That question, she said, drives her still and it’s what she recognizes in Sheffield’s approach to governance: a determination to make structural change, not just temporary relief.
“When I see her (Sheffield) rising, I’m filled with joy,” Gaskin said. “We are the ones the world has been waiting for. We bring an experience, an energy, and a passion but also a record of results. I hope all of us in this new generation of mayors show that leadership doesn’t have to look like business as usual.”
Their cities are hundreds of miles apart, but the parallels are unmistakable: both women leading places marked by Black labor and loss, both determined to redefine what progress looks like for the people who built those cities from the ground up.
“She knows her city best,” she said. “Lean on those stories, those relationships, those people. Use whatever the moment calls for — grit, grace, or something else. Just lean into that and activate it when it’s needed.”
As someone in a similar seat as a Black woman leading a blue city in a red state, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell detailed what it meant to govern when she came to Detroit to be a part of Michigan Chronicle’s May 2025 Pancakes & Politics forum of mayors. The panel included three mayors from across U.S.
“[My administration was] about doing the job. A part of my…method is just staying laser-focused and making sure that my people see that because I’ve been under fire since day one,” she said. “They clapped about me being the first woman mayor, and I’m a Black woman, too, so it’s celebration one day and it’s crucifixion the next day. So, my whole focus has just been staying focus – do not be distracted – because that’s been a part of the orchestration to distract and make you believe you’re not getting anything done.”
Cantrell reminded the crowd that when Black women lead with conviction, it’s too often labeled as aggression rather than passion. Her words didn’t just land—they settled deep, especially among Black women in the audience who knew that dual reality all too well.
“It does appear that the future is going to be female in Detroit. But what I have to say is – and it’s not so much to the mayor-elect as it is to the community – support her; have her back. It’s important. The presence of a Black man is important, too, when you’re in these roles. And when you don’t have that advocacy, it’s like you’re giving permission to everybody to come and slap her and disrespect her. So, when I say you go from celebration on one day to crucifixion, that was my experience in not having that presence. It’s not that I didn’t have support, but it shows up differently when you’re the first and when you’re a Black woman.”
The Measure of History
Detroit has birthed movements and broken myths. It has been counted out and risen anyway. Sheffield is asking to write its next chapter with the same tools that built its past — work, care, and an unshakable belief in people.
She will be remembered as the first. She will also be remembered as the youngest. But if she has her way, she will be remembered most as the daughter of a city that finally saw itself reflected in its own leadership — not as a comeback, but as a continuation.
“Progress isn’t born out of perfection,” she said. “It’s born out of persistence.”
And Detroit, like Mary Sheffield, has never lacked for that.
