Go read the whole story here (the background is fascinating). Every once in a while a story like this comes along to prove that it ain't all bad out there.
YORK, Pa.—A little girl who trembled in her house as a National Guard tank rumbled past during York's chaotic 1969 race riots has grown up to become the first black mayor of the central Pennsylvania city.
Kim Bracey, 45, an energetic veteran of the struggling manufacturing city's improvement efforts will take office in January, to the delight of many African-Americans who thought they would never see a black mayor.
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Rather, Bracey will inherit a city of 40,000 that is barely able to pay its bills as it loses the manufacturing jobs that helped build it up. Poverty is becoming as entrenched as the racial animosity that led to York's deadly riots 40 years ago.
U.S. census statistics show a city in which average family income is half of Pennsylvania's, while the poverty rate for children is three times as high, at 48 percent.
One unemployed city resident, Butch Maxfield, said race is less important to Yorkers than poverty, crime and how to help the city's aimless young people.
"Everybody's poor. There's no jobs," said the 58-year-old Maxfield, who is black. "Now it's about 'what can you do for me?'"
Still, Maxfield and many others view Bracey's election as an achievement in a city that has a legacy of racial strife.
The 1960s saw a buildup of black resentment against a city administration that they said systematically ignored their community's needs and a police force that used dogs and other tough tactics to antagonize blacks.
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