E.
DENISE SIMMONS
America's
First Black Openly Lesbian Mayor
by Alison Lapp
If you’ve ever experienced life
out-side the mainstream, Cambridge, Massachusetts Mayor
E. Denise Simmons can relate. If you’re a standard-issue
straight, white male, she probably gets you, too.
On January 14, 2008 Simmons was elected
the nation’s first black, openly lesbian mayor.
She says being “in” with a higher-than-average
number of social groups helped her get started in politics,
and it continues to aid her in a public office where
connecting with widely varied constituents is key.
“By being a member of a diverse
number of communities, I am them and they are me,”
Simmons says. “I am serving as a woman, as a lesbian,
as a parent, as a business woman. I remember being a
young mother applying for housing, and watching the
owner walk by me when he realized who I was. I’ve
been through all that, and I know what it was like.”
A political pioneer in a town that has
had only three female mayors before her, Simmons was
subjected to an onslaught of media attention when elected
to Cambridge’s top post. She had accumulated more
than a quarter-century of personal and public experience
before that, however, and boasts that she brought it
all with her.
In fact, one of her first acts after
the election was to testify before the Massachusetts
state legislature in favor of a bill strengthening the
rights of stalking victims. Her argument: Her own terror
after being harassed years ago showed her that strong
legal protection was necessary.
“I think everybody draws on their
personal life in any kind of work,” she says, adding
that her situation just happens to offer her many levels
of access. As a mother of four who is also raising three
granddaughters, she attends the same soccer and basketball
games as her constituents do and talks casually to the
parents there. A black Catholic, she frequents church
services of several denominations and absorbs community
sentiment along with the worship.
“I’m there not because I’m
a visitor, but because I’m a member of the community,”
she says. “Someone else would only come on a special
visit, where they’d only hear certain things.”
Simmons, who earned her bachelor’s
degree from the University of Massachusetts in Boston
and went on to complete a master’s in psychotherapy
from Antioch College, never had a counseling practice
but says the training “absolutely comes in handy”
in public office. She accepted her first municipal job
with the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee (a citizens’
rights organization) in 1980, and took over as executive
director two years later. Amid fears that her 20-hour-a-week
position with the committee would be scaled back to
ten, Simmons founded the Cambridgeport Insurance Agency
with a friend in 1982, and the business is still thriving
under her daughter’s leadership.
Working with different ethnic and religious
groups during her time with the Civic Unity Committee
made her realize that underrepresented individuals need
advocates in elected office, she says.
It was her responsibility to organize
parents in Cambridge public schools, where the minority
population outnumbers whites, and to work with the School
Committee (Cambridge’s equivalent of a school board)
to improve the performance of black students and stimulate
affirmative action hiring. That sometimes Herculean
task inspired her to seek a spot on the School Committee.
“When we left the room, the cause
left the room with us,” she explains. “I realized
that if you don’t have someone on the other side
championing your cause, it can be left on the table.”
Simmons served a decade on the School
Committee, keeping the position until winning a Cambridge
City Council seat in 2002. There, she worked to involve
average citizens in their local government, holding
a series of focused town meetings. The city’s GLBT
Committee was formed after a gay and lesbian town meeting
she sponsored.
Becoming a gay public figure was relatively
painless in a hometown affectionately dubbed the “People’s
Republic of Cambridge,” she says. Her predecessor
in the town of about 101,000, according to the 2000
census, which hosts the academic giants of Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was Ken
Reeves, who is also gay and black (though not a woman
or a parent, as Simmons points out).
“Cambridge is incredibly affirming,”
she says. “I just have to be careful to remember
the whole world isn’t like Cambridge.”
Plus, now that she’s mayor, people
are more interested in what she does than who she is.
“People coming into my office come
for housing or some other issue,” she says. “They
don’t care if I have polka dots and a pointed head,
they care about services.”
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