The David Dinkins legacy has always been complex, ripe for revision and misunderstanding. New York City’s first and only black mayor, who died yesterday at the age of ninety-three, served for just a single term, from 1990 through 1993. It was a period of economic and racial tumult for the city, when just about anyone left of center was forced into a defensive crouch.

Dinkins, courtly and well-dressed, was easy for some to vilify. For conservatives, the Harlem Democrat was indecisive and squishy liberalism personified, unable to tame rising crime and serving as a forgettable bridge between two mayors who loomed far larger in the popular imagination, Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani.

For leftists in 2020, it’s not particularly difficult to dismiss Dinkins as another establishment, vaguely neoliberal Democrat who expanded the police force, tried to draw close to real estate and business elites, and failed to arrest the rising income inequality we grapple with to this day.