It speaks to the depth of Albany’s history that the city has had 76 mayors, even though one famously kept the job for 42 years. Yet few have much in common with Dorcey Applyrs, the city’s first Black mayor, at least when judging by their backgrounds and what she likes to call her “lived experience.”
Until Kathy Sheehan, all of Albany’s mayors were white men, of course, and many could rightly be called aristocrats, with names still familiar.
There have been five mayors bearing the surname Schuyler, for example, a family known to have had enslaved people working its land. There have been two Mayor Cornings, three Mayor Thachers, three Mayor Ten Broecks and four Mayor Bleeckers, not counting Anthony Bleecker Banks…