Ella Jones, 65, was elected mayor of on June 2—and in doing so, she made history. Not only is she the first African-American to hold the office, she is also the first woman.
Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, made national headlines in August 2014 when protests and riots broke out following the fatal shooting of a Black teenager named Michael Brown by a white police officer.
Though existed before Ferguson, the demonstrations there raised the national profile of the movement and its activists.Jones, a member of the Ferguson City Council, defeated fellow Councilwoman Heather Robinett with 56% of the vote, according to the . “It’s just our time,” she told the paper.