William Stanford Hart Sr. (November 19, 1925 – September 23, 1999) was an American Democratic Party politician serving as Mayor of East Orange, New Jersey, in 1970 and 1978.
He who became the first African American to win election as mayor of a major New Jersey city when he won in 1969.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was a teacher in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
He was elected to the East Orange City Council in 1959, the first African American to hold that office, and was re-elected in 1963 and 1967.
[3] He was indicted in 1975 on charges that he paid a $1,000 bribe to Essex County Freeholder Thomas H. Cooke Jr., the East Orange Democratic Chairman, to get a municipal judgeship for a local lawyer.