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W. W. HerrentonDr. Willie W. Herrenton is the mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. Herrenton is in his fourth four-year term, to which he was re-elected in 2003. He is the first African American to serve as mayor of Memphis, which has been a black-majority city for several years. He won his first term by defeating incumbent mayor Dick Hackett. Prior to serving as mayor, Herrenton was the director of Memphis City Schools for twelve years; his doctrate is an earned one in the field of education. Herrenton has in recent years been more accepted by Memphis' white minority, partly due to his outreach to many in that community. He has worked to assuage fears that his mayorality would somehow mean that whites were no longer welcome in Memphis, which was a notion spread by some of his detractors. He received a substantial minority of white support in his most recent mayoral race against a field of predominantly white opponents. Many feel that much of Herrenton's appeal to whites is a result of his perceived (some would say very real) enmity with the powerful Ford political family. Many white Memphians feel that they can list which black political leaders are in the Ford camp and which are in Herrenton's. Herrenton was perceived by many as having hurt himself severely with his remarks made at an event honoring his inauguration to a fourth term in which he seemingly stated that no one present was worthy to fill his shoes and that God had made him mayor of Memphis; The Commercial Appeal responded with a cartoon of the mayor as Moses, bringing his commandments down from atop the Pyramid. Herrenton's most recent controversy involves his replacement of the chief of police in August, 2004. Herrenton
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