Chokwe Antar Lumumba

Chokwe Lumumba
53rd Mayor of Jackson
Incumbent
Assumed office July 3, 2017
Preceded by	Tony Yarber
Personal details
Born	(1983-03-29) March 29, 1983 (age 41)
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Ebony Lumumba
Children	2
Relatives	Chokwe Lumumba (father)
Education	Tuskegee University (BA) Texas Southern University (JD)

He was first elected in 2017. In the primary, Lumumba soundly won the Democratic nomination, defeating both incumbent mayor Tony Yarber and State Senator John Horhn. Lumumba went on to win the general election in a landslide. He is a self-described progressive and socialist. Lumumba has also referred to himself as a political revolutionary.

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.

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.'”

In summer 2018, Lumumba attended Michael Bloomberg's "Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative." 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. 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. A city investigation discovered that the Jackson Zoological Society had mismanaged funds and failed to pay $6 million in water bills.

Lumumba took direct control of the zoo and approved $200,000 to renovate it. The zoo reopened in August 2020 under city control.

Jackson Water Crisis

In 2019 over 3 billion gallons of raw sewage was released into the Pearl River, leading to the local government telling residents to avoid swimming or fishing in the water.

In 2020, due to massive amounts of record rainfall during the early months of the year, the cities sewage system once again overflowed and led to a half-billion gallons raw sewage, as well as 5.7 billion gallons of sewage that had been treated, being dumped into the Pearl River.

In March 2021, Lumumba wrote to Mississippi state governor Tate Reeves requesting $47M in aid 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 gallons 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, the 153,000 residents of Jackson were left without clean drinking water and water pressure.

On January 6, 2023, Lumumba announced that they had secured the funding needed to begin repairing and reconstructing the water systems in Jackson. Nearly $800 million in funding was pulled from the $1.7 trillion federal omnibus bill that was passed back in late 2022. The EPA will work closely with the Mayor and officials of Jackson to handle the funding and project.

National Politics

In February 2020, Lumumba endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Bernie Sanders likewise endorsed Lumumba for reelection in 2021. July 29, 2021, it was announced via Nina Turner's social media that Mayor Lumumba had endorsed her in Ohio's 11th Congressional District 2021 Special Election, the seat which was left empty when representative Marcia Fudge was selected by President Joe Biden for HUD Secretary. The race garnered nationwide attention as it split the Democratic Party between its progressive and moderate wings.

Lumumba has two children with his wife, Ebony. His wife is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Speech Communication at Jackson State University.

• List of mayors of Jackson, Mississippi