Editorial: The Lightfoot legacy comes tinged with a sense of what might have been

Lori Lightfoot, an attorney and former prosecutor with a strong interest in police reform and other civic issues, took office as the 56th mayor of Chicago on May 20, 2019. Her election broke many notable barriers. Lightfoot became the first Black woman to run the city and only the second female mayor in Chicago’s history and only the third Black mayor. She also became the first openly lesbian Black woman to run a major city in the United States.

Lightfoot was afforded just 10 months of normalcy. Then came COVID-19 and the city was plunged