Thomas Bradley (December 29, 1917 – September 29, 1998) was an American politician, athlete, police officer, and lawyer who served as the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993.

Bradley ran to be the first black Governor of any state since Reconstruction in 1982 and 1986 but was defeated both times by Republican candidate George Deukmejian.

Bradley was re-elected a final time as Los Angeles mayor in 1989, with a majority of the vote but diminished support.

The family moved to Arizona to pick cotton and then in 1924 to the Temple-Alvarado area of Los Angeles during the Great Migration, where Lee was a Santa Fe Railroad porter and Crenner was a maid.

He recalled "the downtown department store that refused him credit, although he was a police officer, and the restaurants that would not serve blacks.

He and his wife "needed a white intermediary to buy their first house in Leimert Park, then a virtually all-white section of the city's Crenshaw district.

It was predominantly white and had many Jewish members, thus marking the beginnings of the coalition, which along with Latinos, that would carry him to electoral victory so many times.

The early stage of Bradley's political career was marked by clashes with African American leaders like onetime California Lieutenant Governor and former U.S. Representative Mervyn Dymally, an Unruh ally.

[14] By then he had retired from the police force, and he was sworn in as a councilman at the age of 45 on April 15, 1963, the first African-American elected to City Council.

Councilman Tom Shepard's motion said the book was "saturated not only with phrases of sexual filth, but wordage defamatory of minority ethnic groups and definitions insulting religions and races.

Armed with key endorsements (including the Los Angeles Times), Bradley held a substantial lead over Yorty in the primary, but was a few percentage points shy of winning the race outright.

But with passage of the 1974 redevelopment plan and the inclusion of business leaders on influential committees, corporate chiefs moved in behind him.

A significant feature of this plan was the development and building of numerous skyscrapers in the Bunker Hill financial district.

[citation needed] Bradley served for 20 years as mayor of Los Angeles, surpassing Fletcher Bowron with the longest tenure in that office.

Bradley was a strong supporter of public transit throughout his political career, and he was a driving force behind the construction of Los Angeles' light rail network.

Bradley introduced President Carter at the May 5, 1979, dedication ceremony for the Los Angeles Placita de Dolores.

Although Bradley was a political liberal, he believed that business prosperity was good for the entire city and would generate jobs, an outlook like that of his successor, Richard Riordan.

But in his fourth term, with traffic congestion, air pollution and the condition of Santa Monica Bay worsening, and with residential neighborhoods threatened by commercial development, the tide began to turn.

In 1989, he was elected to a fifth term, but the ability of opponent Nate Holden to attract one-third of the vote,[23] despite being a neophyte to the Los Angeles City Council and a very late entrant to the mayoral race, signaled that Bradley's era was drawing to a close.

Other factors in the waning of his political strength were his decision to reverse himself and support a controversial oil drilling project near the Pacific Palisades and his reluctance to condemn Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim minister who made speeches in Los Angeles and elsewhere that many considered anti-Semitic.

Further, some key Bradley supporters lost their City Council reelection bids, among them veteran Westside Councilwoman Pat Russell.

Bradley was the first liberal mayor of Los Angeles, which previously was politically a conservative western town.

[9] A 1993 panel survey of 69 historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago saw Bradley ranked as third-best mayor in the United States since 1960.