Joyce Dinkins, wife of NYC’s first Black mayor, dead at 89
Joyce Dinkins, the dignified, quick-witted wife of New York City’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, died Sunday, according to her family.
She was 89.
Although it was her husband who grabbed headlines for making history as the Big Apple’s first — and only — African-American mayor, it was his acerbic spouse who quietly took credit for making it happen.
One of the former mayor’s favorite stories about his wife involved a rival suitor and the inevitable comparisons they both would make about the long-ago boyfriend.
“See, if you married him you would be the wife of a ditch digger,” the husband told the wife.
Joyce responded, apparently without missing a beat.
“No” she shot back. “If I married him, he would be mayor and you would be the ditch digger.”
Friends said Joyce Dinkins cherished her privacy, something she had to give up when she moved into Gracie Mansion.
Still, Dinkins, by then already a grandmother, vowed to open up her new home to the public.
“I’m going to encourage people to come visit Gracie Mansion,” she told an interviewer before moving in. “I want it to look like a place where a family lives.”
Her husband had been preceded by a bachelor, Ed Koch, in office, which made her the city’s first First Lady in more than a decade, a status that only increased the spotlight.
“You won’t find Jackie Kennedy,” longtime congressman and close family friend Charles Rangel said at the time. “But you’ll find a lady who knows how to keep a family together and how to welcome friends into her heart and home.”
Before her husband’s election in 1989 as the 106th mayor of New York City, Dinkins was the coordinator of Metropolitan Affairs in the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.
As First Lady of New York City, Dinkins promoted education, health care and the arts for children.
She served as honorary chair of the Mayor’s Task Force on Child Abuse, chairperson of “The First Day Back to School” a multi-media service campaign, and honorary chairperson of New York City’s Children’s Week.
But her primary concern was always increasing the literacy of New York’s children. As news of her death spread Monday, tributes poured in from across the five boroughs and beyond.
Mayor de Blasio, who worked for David Dinkins as a City Hall staffer, said the former mayor’s wife was “such a strong and good woman, so dignified in everything she did.”
“You know that she played a huge role in Mayor Dinkins — his whole path, his whole path to the mayoralty and the work he did as mayor,” de Blasio said.
It was Joyce Dinkins, in fact, who came into the relationship with the major political ties. Her father was a Harlem assemblyman, and the city’s future mayor -- a lawyer from New Jersey -- married into Harlem politics through her.
“Everyone knew she was a powerhouse and she contributed greatly to the mayor reaching the mayoralty,” de Blasio said. "And you just knew, she was one of the people who saw the world as it was. She very much wanted a better world. She was filled with compassion, but she was also a realist, and we’re going to miss her a lot. She did a lot for this city.”
Gov. Cuomo said the former first lady served with “grace and purpose.” He called her “a champion for literacy.”
“We lost a great woman,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a tweet. “She was a quiet but strong committed woman who made us sit up with pride. She will be missed and always remembered.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said Dinkins “saw the best in every one of us.”
Her family said a memorial service will be held after the coronavirus crisis passes.
