WATERLOO, Ia. — Quentin Hart stood on the Fourth Street Bridge and gazed down at the Cedar River that swirled beneath him and flowed south on its way to the Delta.
This is where he lingered the night of Dec. 1 when he got the phone call from his campaign manager telling him that he had won the run-off election to become his hometown’s first African-American mayor.
He wanted to be in the middle of the bridge — a deeply symbolic spot in this city, as if suspended between two worlds — when he first heard the election results. He had kept this same vigil on at least three previous election nights.
Fifty years after the Voting Rights Act and seven years after President Barack Obama won the White House, it may strike some as overblown to note how a Midwestern city of fewer than 70,000 residents, like many others before it, finally reflects modern demographics in its top job and has shed old prejudice at the ballot box.
But election of its first black mayor bears special meaning in a city that arguably more than any other in Iowa, has been bitterly divided by race.
Hart, 44, aims to transcend Waterloo’s historical boundaries and unify his city, which in recent years also has seen a growing number of Latino, Burmese and Bosnian residents.
Retiring Waterloo Mayor Buck Clark, a white businessman and former police officer who tapped Hart as his mayor pro tem, called his successor’s election “a time that was coming.”
Waterloo rallies to combat violence, racial divides
“It was going to happen,” Clark said earlier this month just before he presided over his final council meeting.
Hart takes over the mayor’s office at a time when our national debate on race has gotten hotter. The last two years of headlines about black Americans killed by police and other racially charged flash points — from the Ferguson, Mo., riots to the University of Missouri student protests — has intensified these issues for all public officials. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, so far has weathered calls for his resignation based on his initial response to the police shooting of a 17-year-old, knife-wielding suspect that was caught on video.
Waterloo is our state’s most concentrated black community: 15.6 percent of the city is black, compared with 3.3 percent of Iowa and 13.2 percent of the nation.
The Cedar River has sliced Waterloo into west and east, white and black, haves and have-nots, ever since the first waves of African-Americans were lured here from the South in the early 20th century. They came as strike-breaking railroad workers and clustered on the northeast side.
The city’s rich diversity today “is something to brag about,” Hart said. “That is something to build on. That is something that offers our young people … a different experience than they can possibly get anywhere else. So that’s something that we need to embrace.”
This mayor-elect’s own nuclear family embodies Waterloo’s century of racial tension and the struggle for civil rights.
Waterloo rallies to combat violence, racial divides
Family fled Mississippi
The Cedar runs 338 miles before it spills into the Mississippi River and rolls on to the Gulf Coast.
Hart’s parents, Grocee and Lillie, followed the river north, separately, from their native Mississippi, to forge new lives in Waterloo.
Decades before Hart’s run for mayor, his maternal grandmother ran away from Goodman, Miss., to save herself and her four daughters.
“I used to, as a little girl, watch the white men beat the men that was working for them,” said Lillie, who as a girl picked cotton from sunrise to sundown for 50 cents per 100 pounds. “And that’s why my mother had to leave Mississippi. She was working for this one guy, and he hit her aside the head with a pistol because he told her, ‘You’re putting too much (meat) on the sandwiches.’”
Lillie’s mother, Della Williams, fled her abusive boss and his restaurant where she was the cook. Williams sought refuge with a cousin in Waterloo. Lillie followed her mom and sisters in 1957.
Grocee, meanwhile, was born and raised in Starkville, Miss.; He moved to St. Louis and then served in the Army before he joined his older brother in Waterloo in 1963. It was a city where blacks at least could enjoy some economic opportunities. He got a job on the tractor assembly line at John Deere, the company where he would work for more than 33 years.
“The east side was just a little country town,” Grocee said.
Hart’s parents were part of a second migration wave in which the city’s African-American population nearly doubled from 1960 to 2000.
Lillie worked at a nursing home for seven years and then spent 34 years at Allen Hospital.
Yet in everyday life, Waterloo in the early 1960s also “was just about like it was in the South,” Grocee said. Blacks were banned from some restaurants, bars and apartment buildings.
Hart says that he has felt the sting of racism in his own life. Around age 10, he was confronted by a “group of white kids waiting outside” the downtown library on the western riverbank, who “basically asked me what I was doing here.” They hurled the N-word and other racial epithets.
Hart has been instilled with a “great amount of fight” from such incidents, he said.
Meanwhile, he learned determination and work ethic from his parents. The voice of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rang in his head from an early age as his father played tapes of the slain civil rights leader’s sermons during long car trips.
Black-white disparities persist in Iowa
‘The bridge also represents transition’
When it comes to local politics, Hart knows what he’s getting into. For the last seven years, he has served as a fourth-ward city councilman, representing his east-side stomping grounds.
His first foray into politics was a 2002 bid for a local Iowa House seat that he lost to Rep. Deb Berry, now a close friend and ally.
The following year he lost his initial council race in the fourth ward by just 58 votes.
Hart announced his mayoral candidacy in July along the river, but he doesn’t want to belabor the notion of a dividing line.
“I didn’t really campaign to be the first black mayor,” he said. “I campaigned to be one of the best mayors, a progressive mayor, a person that will work to try to bridge this entire community, erase any of those lines.”
He ran on five main issues: “safer streets” (as Waterloo wrangled with a spike in gun violence), hiring a full-time economic developer, more active roles for neighborhood associations, a positive marketing push and a new strategic plan for the next decade.
In the November election, he initially received just under 34 percent of the vote and topped the field in a five-way race. He won the Dec. 1 run-off election against former mayor Tim Hurley, with nearly 59 percent of the vote.
To Hart, the Fourth Street Bridge where he stood that December night “also represents transition.”
Not that he expects his transition from part-time councilman to full-time mayor to be easy.
Terry Stevens, an education consultant and longtime community activist, stood up earlier this month at the city’s last council meeting of the year to decry what she sees as the “continuous destruction” of the east side with home demolitions and the dwindling of black-owned business.
“The east side of Waterloo is treated as a stepchild,” she said.
Stevens said later that she’s trying to “save what’s left of our community so we have a heritage that we can hand down to our children and grandchildren.”
“If everybody puts stock in a black mayor or black president,” she said, “they can’t do anything by themselves.”
“I’m hoping we don’t have stalemates and a continual division of the east side west side.”
For his part, Hart points to what he sees as his sustained effort as councilman to “try to raise the standard of living” for his ward. He’s proud of his fight to spur cleanup of the contaminated former Chamberlain Manufacturing site on the northeast side, plus his own “From the Heart” program that he said has helped to rehab about 300 homes.
A quiet, laid-back mayor
Hart’s mom was shocked when her son, the baby in the family with three much older siblings, told her that he intended to run for mayor.
He’s “very quiet and sort of laid back,” Lillie said. His older brother, now a salesman in Milwaukee, was the talkative boy who thought he might get into politics.
As a teenager, Hart didn’t imagine running for office. He dreamed of becoming an airplane pilot. Later he pinned his hopes on basketball.
“Politics was never on my radar,” he said. “Serving my community was on my radar.”
His childhood on the east side of Waterloo, as witness to the socioeconomic struggles of his neighbors, made him want to “be at the table where resources are divided.” It was that motivation that gradually steered him into politics, to a seat at the council table.
Waterloo rallies to combat violence, racial divides
Earlier this month Hart sat in his campaign office downtown and read a letter from local 16-year-old DeQutavius “Taz” Hobbes.
“I hope you have fun and do good,” the student wrote in pencil. “Plus congratulations on becoming mayor! If you need any help, hit my line.”
I reached out to Taz to ask what had inspired him to congratulate his new mayor.
“I don’t really see any African-Americans as leaders of anything,” he said.
Hart first carved out a career in education, as longtime associate director of multicultural affairs at Hawkeye Community College. He earned a graduate degree in post-secondary education from the University of Northern Iowa and has a doctoral dissertation to finish for Iowa State.
His wife, Cassandra, is a lead teacher at Lowell Elementary. The couple is raising two sons, ages 10 and 8, and a 3-year-old daughter.
The family attends Antioch Baptist Church, but in every corner of his life, Hart seems to brand himself as a bridge-builder. One of his best friends is a prominent leader in the local black Muslim community.
Although he’s a staunch Democrat, Hart said that he appreciates the nonpartisan framework of the City Council.
Hart will be sworn in at 5:30 p.m. Monday to begin a fuller test of his bridge-building skills.
This month he cleaned out his office at the college. He pulled a plaque off the wall that bore a quote from MLK: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenges and controversy.”
Hart’s face tends to maintain a placid expression; he would make a great poker player. But as he paused to consider the MLK quote, he cracked a wry grin.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll get to figure out how that feels,” he said as he tossed the plaque into a box.
‘Just a normal person that can dream big’
Hart isn’t Iowa’s first black mayor. LaMetta Wynn, elected in 1995 in Clinton, preceded him. Preston Daniels in 1997 was elected as the first black mayor of Des Moines and served until 2004.
By the time Hart leaves office, he wants to be remembered as a fair mayor who led his city in a positive direction. He wants to be considered “just a normal person that can dream big and help create opportunity for people. … That I was able to bridge this entire community so that everyone knows regardless of where you live at, regardless of who you are, you are important to the city of Waterloo.”
Hart’s mom in her lifetime has gone from not being able to share drinking fountains with whites to watching her son share key decisions in city government. She wants her boy to “love everybody.”
“Don’t just (focus on) black and white,” Lillie said. “Love every nationality.”
While spending time with Hart at his downtown campaign office, Brian Boesen and Ryan Doland, a pair of city animal control officers clad in bright yellow vests, burst through the door to shake the mayor-elect’s hand and congratulate him on the win.
“We made history, didn’t we?” Boesen said with a smile.
The families of Waterloo such as Hart’s, who followed the Cedar River north in search of basic freedom and better lives, know the full weight and significance of that history.
Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook (/KyleMunson) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).
Quentin Hart
Age: 44.
Lives: Waterloo.
Education: East High School, Minnesota State University, University of Northern Iowa, Iowa State University.
Career: Hart resigned in December from his longtime job as associate director of multicultural affairs at Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo to become full-time mayor.
Family: Wife, Cassandra, and three kids.
Twitter handle: @QuentinHart
Waterloo rallies to combat violence, racial divides
15 PEOPLE TO WATCH IN 2016: ABOUT THE SERIES
These are Iowans in business, arts, nonprofits, civic activism and nonelected government positions who are expected to make a difference in their fields of endeavor in 2016. Readers were invited to submit nominations. Selections were made by Des Moines Register editors and reporters.
EARLIER PROFILES: At DesMoinesRegister.com/PeopletoWatch, see profiles of:
- Jodie Warth, chief executive officer of the Boys & Girls Club of Central Iowa
- Rob Sand, a prosecutor in the area prosecutions division of the Iowa attorney general’s office
- David Rezek, who directs and arranges music for the Des Moines Big Band
- Joshua Barr, new director of civil and human rights for the city of Des Moines
- Jennie Baranczyk, coach of the Drake Bulldogs
- Nancy Mwirotsi, whose nonprofit teaches refugee children to code
- Sue Hoss, who’s changing the lives of disabled people through cooking
- Hubbell Reality Co.’s Kris Saddoris, who’s helping drive downtown Des Moines development
- Skateboard enthusiast Kevin Jones
- Dining stalwart Tony Lemmo
- Mike Whalen, president and CEO of the hospitality and real estate development company Heart of America Group
- Southeast Iowa farmer Steve Berger
- Betty Andrews, NAACP leader
- Brian Ferentz, Iowa offensive line coach
