First published April 8, 2021.
Tishaura O. Jones became the first Black woman elected mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, on April 6, 2021. The city treasurer beat Alderwoman Cara Spencer by 51.7% to 47.75%, a margin of just over 2,000 votes out of roughly 58,000 cast, and was sworn in on April 20, 2021. She served one term: in April 2025 Spencer defeated her in a rematch.
Jones was not the city's first Black mayor. That distinction belongs to Freeman Bosley Jr., who took office in 1993. Her milestone was the first time St. Louis elected a Black woman to lead it, and it came only four years after Lyda Krewson became the city's first woman mayor. Getting that detail right matters, because the real story of 2021 is about who had been missing from the top job for more than two centuries of city history.
Who Tishaura Jones is
Jones was born in St. Louis on March 10, 1972. She studied finance at Hampton University, graduating in 1994, and later earned a master's degree in health administration at Saint Louis University in 2001. In 2015 she also completed a state and local government programme at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Her political career began in the Missouri House of Representatives, where she represented the 63rd district after winning election in November 2008. In January 2013 she became St. Louis city treasurer and held the post until the day she became mayor. Jones was 49 when she won the mayoralty and arrived with a reputation as an outspoken progressive.
How the 2021 election worked
The 2021 race was unusual for a reason that had nothing to do with the candidates. In November 2020, St. Louis voters approved Proposition D with about 68% of the vote. It scrapped the old partisan primary, in which the Democratic nominee almost always went on to win, and replaced it with a single nonpartisan primary using approval voting. Voters could mark as many candidates as they liked, and the two with the most approvals advanced to a runoff. Jones supported the change; Krewson opposed it, and later chose not to seek a second term.
In the March 2, 2021 primary, the city's first election under approval voting, Jones was approved on 56.96% of ballots, Spencer on 46.35%, Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed on 38.56% and businessman Andrew Jones on 14.42%. Because each voter could back several names, the figures add up to more than 100%.
The April 6 general election was a straight contest between two Democrats with different styles. Spencer, an alderwoman from the city's south side, ran as a data-minded reformer. Jones ran on racial equity and a different approach to public safety. Turnout was just over 29% of registered voters, low by national standards but typical for a spring municipal election.
What Jones promised
Public safety dominated the campaign. St. Louis recorded 262 homicides in 2020, NBC News reported, only five fewer than the city's 1993 record of 267. Because the population had shrunk so much since the 1990s, the rate per resident was far higher, and it placed St. Louis among the most violent large cities in the country.
Jones argued that the old answer of arresting and jailing more people had failed. She pledged to hire social workers, mental-health counsellors and substance-abuse counsellors rather than simply adding uniformed officers, and she called violence, especially killings, the city's most urgent problem. She had also been a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
On election night she framed her win as a turning point. In her victory speech she said, "We are done ignoring the racism that has held our city and our region back." She went on to list forms of prejudice, from homophobia and transphobia to religious intolerance, that she would not stay silent about.
Spencer conceded gracefully. Speaking of the result, she said, "Our city broke a glass ceiling tonight, a ceiling that shouldn't have been there."
The campaign also had sharp moments. During a debate, Jones questioned whether white candidates had the lived experience to lead a majority-minority city, a remark critics said dismissed white residents. Supporters read it as a blunt description of who carries the burden of gun violence in St. Louis neighbourhoods.
The city she inherited
St. Louis has been shrinking for seven decades. Its population peaked at 856,796 in the 1950 census and stood at 301,578 in 2020, a loss of almost two-thirds. Historians point to several causes: post-war suburban growth and highway commuting, "white flight", dissatisfaction with city services and urban renewal projects such as the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. St. Louis also became an independent city separate from St. Louis County in 1877, which left it unable to annex growing suburbs and steadily narrowed its tax base.
When Jones took office, the city was split roughly evenly, about 48% white and 45% Black. Downtown restaurants and shops were still recovering from Covid-19 shutdowns, and the killings of 2020 had not slowed: by election day in 2021 the city had already counted 46 homicides, about ten more than at the same point a year earlier.
What she did in office
Campaign promises and a mayor's actual record are different things, and Jones's term is worth judging on what happened. Her first budget proposal included closing the Medium Security Institution, the jail known locally as the Workhouse, which activists had long criticised for its conditions. It closed on June 17, 2021, and demolition began in March 2025.
Within days of taking office she formed an advisory panel to decide how to spend the city's share of federal American Rescue Plan Act money. Her administration also began work on a consolidated 911 dispatch centre intended to cut call waiting times. By early 2025, police recorded the fewest homicides for the first three months of a year in two decades, according to St. Louis Public Radio, though crime trends were falling in many US cities at the same time.
Not everything went well. Residents complained about routine services, especially trash collection, and the city's response to a January 2025 winter storm drew wide criticism; Jones later acknowledged it had been inadequate. Questions over grants to north side businesses also became a campaign issue.
The 2025 rematch
In the March 2025 primary, Spencer won more than twice as many votes as Jones. In the April 8 general election, Spencer won about 64% to Jones's 36% in unofficial results, with turnout around 26%. Spencer campaigned on basic services, transparency and safer streets, and was backed by more than $1 million in her own fundraising plus substantial political action committee spending. Jones argued her opponent offered few specifics and pointed to development projects she had started.
Jones noted that no Black mayor of St. Louis had yet served more than one term. Her single term still changed the city's history: she proved that a Black woman could win the city's top office, and her win was the first under a new voting system the city's residents had chosen for themselves.
Key facts at a glance
- Elected: April 6, 2021; sworn in April 20, 2021.
- Result: 30,166 votes (51.70%) to Cara Spencer's 27,865 (47.75%).
- Milestone: first Black woman mayor of St. Louis; Freeman Bosley Jr. was the first Black mayor (1993–1997).
- Previous roles: Missouri state representative; St. Louis treasurer, 2013–2021.
- Notable action: closure of the Workhouse jail in June 2021.
- Term ended: April 2025, after losing to Spencer.
Sources: NBC News, April 2021: St. Louis elects first Black female mayor; Wikipedia: 2021 St. Louis mayoral election; Wikipedia: Tishaura Jones; Wikipedia: Freeman Bosley Jr.; Wikipedia: St. Louis; St. Louis Public Radio, 8 April 2025: Cara Spencer defeats Mayor Tishaura Jones; City of St. Louis: archived Mayor Tishaura O. Jones homepage.
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