Clarence Lightner

Who was Clarence Lightner?

Clarence Everett Lightner was the first popularly elected Mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina and the first African American elected mayor of a metropolitan Southern city. Lightner, a Democrat, was also the first and to date only black mayor of Raleigh, serving in office from 1973 to 1975.

His mayoral election gained national attention since only 16% of registered voters in Raleigh were black, and it was unique for a white-majority city to elect a black candidate for mayor. Even more surprising to some was the fact his race was rarely mentioned in the campaign. Lightner came of age in an era when most blacks in the South were still disfranchised, was elected to the City Council two years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, and was elected mayor six years later. Lightner was a man of "dignity and perseverance", who brought people together when he entered public political life, as he had for years in his community work.

In a 1976 book on Southern politics, authors Jack Bass and Walter DeVries wrote "Perhaps no political campaign better reflected changing attitudes on race than the 1973 mayor's race in Raleigh, in which black City Councilman Clarence Lightner won support from a coalition of white suburbanites concerned about urban and suburban sprawl."