Tishaura Jones was Mayor of St. Louis from 2021 to 2025. During her tenure, violent crime declined to its lowest point in decades, and the city made significant investments in underserved communities. Before her term as mayor, Jones served as Treasurer of St. Louis and as a state representative. She has since founded Oneda Consulting, LLC and serves as a Distinguished Leader in Residence at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity at Washington University in St. Louis. Jones sat down with the HPR to discuss the path to public service, challenges facing St. Louis, and lessons in local government leadership.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: I wanted to start by asking about your experience growing up in St. Louis.
Tishaura Jones: I feel like I had a great childhood. We were poor, but we didn’t know it. My family was large. My mother had a bunch of sisters and brothers. She was the baby of thirteen, which means I had tons of cousins to play with all the time. And I just remember growing up and always feeling an atmosphere of love and support. We did all of the things that now seem far away. You know, drank out of the water hose, stayed gone all day until the street lights came on. I have very pleasant memories growing up as a kid in St. Louis.
HPR: You’ve been in a few different career paths before getting into politics. What spurred you originally to run for office?
TJ: I grew up in it. My dad was in politics. He was the former comptroller of the city of St. Louis, and that was actually the highest office he had. But growing up, he was an alderman, assessor, and committeeman. So I saw his career rise in politics, and I actually didn’t want to do it. I thought that that life wasn’t for me, but my mother, God rest her soul, always used to tell me that the quickest way to make God laugh is to tell him what you would never do. And I got bit by the bug in my late twenties, became a committeewoman, then became a state rep., then treasurer, then mayor.
HPR: While in office, you were placed under scrutiny, especially by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and responded to it in the St. Louis American, which received national attention. How did it feel to both have that feeling of scrutiny that other candidates weren’t subject to, and then have such a reaction to your response?
TS: To be honest, it sucks, because I got into politics for the same reason a lot of people get into it: in order to make a change for the people that they represent. I often felt like I had a cloud over me because my father was in office before me, and when he left office, it wasn’t in the greatest way, because he ended up having to go to jail for income tax evasion, which we now know was just a trumped up charge just to get him out of office for the things that he was trying to do. He entered that office with altruistic intentions to help Black businesses and to open doors that had been closed before.
So, watching that as a teenager and then being able to ascend in politics myself, I had the same intentions. How do we even the playing field? How do we open doors of opportunity that have been closed previously? St. Louis has, unfortunately, a very storied and racist history that has even been written about by professors here at Harvard.
To be scrutinized and discriminated against is hurtful, but it made me more determined to keep going, because if they’re talking about me so badly, then I must be doing the right thing.
HPR: A month after you left office, St. Louis witnessed an extremely damaging tornado. The response has been criticized as reflecting the segregation and inequality of the city. What was it like seeing that after you’d been through a similar experience with a snowstorm, and what did you think about the response to it?
TJ: It was heartbreaking because my neighborhood took a direct hit. My dad and I live across the street from each other, and both of our houses took a little bit of damage, not nearly as much damage as some of my friends and others in other parts of North St. Louis. I could have just said, “Oh, well, that’s not my problem.” But instead, I volunteered my time with mutual aid organizations to use whatever little bit of power I had left to try to get more resources and call attention to what was happening in St. Louis. But, just like I predicted, my successor was not ready. She was not ready for prime time. I said that on the campaign trail; this is not the time for amateur hour. This is not the time to press the reset button, because this moment calls for someone who has the experience and relationships and knows how to get things done.
Here we are coming up on the anniversary in three months, and there are parts of North St. Louis that still look the same as they did after the tornado when it hit on May 16, places in my neighborhood and places in other parts of North St. Louis, and it’s not for a lack of funds. It’s just that they don’t know what they’re doing in order to get the aid and get the things that people need from them. We were able to save a lot of people’s lives and put tarps on homes, but that’s temporary. This unfortunately revealed a lot of the things that were already going on with neglected neighborhoods in St Louis, and unfortunately, the government has still yet to respond equitably to help people get back in their homes and do the needed repairs.
HPR: What do you think gets at the heart of the government’s neglect of North City for so many decades? And what do you think it really takes for a city government to interact well with that community?
TJ: So, just as the decisions were intentional not to invest, we had to be intentional about our decisions to invest. There are historical landmarks that you can point back to where previous administrations made intentional decisions to tear down entire neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal. Mayor Tucker, for example, tore down Mill Creek Valley, which is now just west of Union Station.
So there are intentional decisions that were made. It’s going to take the courage of our future leaders to make those intentional decisions, to say that “I see you and we want to invest in you, and we’re going to right these wrongs,” because reparations aren’t just about slavery. Reparations are also about repairing past decisions that have harmed groups of people — and it’s not just about cash payments. It’s about making those policy decisions and investment decisions to repair those past wrongs.
HPR: What do you think voters are thinking when they are looking at a mayoral candidate? Do you think people are able to see the depth of campaigns and what mayors can accomplish?
TJ: No, they don’t, because a lot of times, I think people think the “m” in mayor stands for miracle worker or messiah, and it does not. And then that goes back to expectations, right? I often feel that mayors who are Black or another minority or even women have higher expectations than their male counterparts. Black women mayors, or minority mayors, are expected to do things perfectly. And if it’s less than perfect? Then it’s trash, and then they are no good, and that one time that the Black mayor messed up, they’re judged against that one thing versus the multitude of good things that they did when they were in office.
HPR: You’ve mentioned some other Black mayors that you’ve received advice from. Did you find a helpful support network in dealing with some of the issues that you were facing?
TJ: I would say yes, and they experienced it themselves, and so unfortunately, there isn’t a handbook on how to deal with that, because every city is different. But the through line there is that, unfortunately, Black mayors are judged much more harshly, not only by their White counterparts, but even by their people. And again, that one mistake totally negates all of the good that they’ve ever done while in office.
HPR: What do you think about this phase of your career now that you’ve left the mayoral office and are here at Harvard? What are you hoping to accomplish in your new roles?
TJ: I am hoping to have some really honest conversations about the state of Black leadership in this country, given the current backdrop that we’re in and the backlash that we’re facing from the federal government. And what does that leadership look like now, and what will that leadership look like in the future?
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