Kenneth Reeves

American politician

Kenneth E. Reeves (born 1951) is an American politician who served as the mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, from 1992 to 1995 and again from 2006 to 2007. Reeves is the first openly gay African American man to have served as mayor of any city in the United States.

Reeves was born to Jamaican parents in Detroit, Michigan. Reeves attended Detroit's public schools, graduating from Cass Technical High School in 1968. After one year at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Reeves transferred to Harvard University. At Harvard, Reeves would meet his longtime partner, Gregory Johnson. In 1994, when rent control in Massachusetts was repealed, Reeves was still living in the same rent controlled apartment he first rented in the 1970s as a student at Harvard.

Reeves was elected Mayor of Cambridge in January 1994. Cambridge's elections are non partisan, but he identifies himself with the Democratic Party. While mayor, he was a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, an organization formed in 2006 and co chaired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino. Reeves stopped paying the annual fee to the Massachusetts Bar in 1998 and therefore is suspended from practicing law. He stated that he does not see the logic in paying the Bar while he is not actively practicing law. Reeves was succeeded as mayor in 2008 by E. Denise Simmons, who became the first openly lesbian African American mayor in the United States.

In the 2006 Massachusetts election, Reeves endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Deval Patrick, a "longtime friend" of Reeves. In 2014, Reeves endorsed fellow Cambridge resident Leland Cheung's campaign for Lieutenant Governor.