Rochester Mayor Lovey A. Warren was sworn in on New Year’s Day and pledged to bring economic equality to the city during her second term.
Warren was sworn in during a ceremony at Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music on Jan. 1, according to information from city officials.
In her inauguration speech, Mayor Warren quoted a phrase from one of Martin Luther King’s final addresses: “Let us be dissatisfied together.” She said that at the end of his life, King was beginning to take on the challenge of economic inequality. During that same era, Joseph Wilson, the founder of Xerox and the namesake of her high school, was taking a deep interest in the civil unrest that had prompted race riots in Rochester and other cities.
Wilson responded to the race riots by meeting with leaders of the city’s African-American community. Soon after, Xerox launched an aggressive effort to hire more minority workers and managers and became the first Fortune 500 Company to appoint a black woman as chief executive officer and president.
For her second term, the first order of business will be to confront the issue of wage disparities, Warren stated.
