On May 29, 1973, Thomas Bradley, a black man, was elected mayor of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is the third largest city in the United States with a population of about three million. About 16% of the city’s population is black. News of this election appeared on the front pages of newspapers everywhere in the United States. Bradley called his victory over Yorty “ the fulfillment ( 实现 ) of a dream ” . During his childhood and youth, people had kept telling him, “ You can ’ t do this, o r you can’t go there, because you are black.” Nevertheless, he had won a decisive victory over a man who had been the city’s mayor for three terms. Bradley had won 56.3% of the votes while Yorty had won 43.7%. Los Angeles voters have had many opportunities to judge Thomas Bradley and to form an opinion of him. As the son of a poor farmer from Texas, he joined the Los Angeles police force in 1940. During his twenty-one years with the police he earned a law degree by attending school at night. At the time of the Los Angeles election, three other American cities already had black mayors, but none of those cities had as large a population as Los Angeles. Besides, the percentage of blacks in those other cities was much larger. Cleveland, Ohio, was 35% black. In New York and New Jersey, 60% of the population was black when Kenneth Gibson was elected mayor of Newark in 1970. Thus the election of a black mayor in those cities was not very surprising. In Los Angeles, thousands of white citizens voted for Thomas Bradley. They believed that he would be a better mayor than the white candidate ( 候选人 ). Bradley had spent forty-eight of his fifty-five years in Los Angeles. Last time Bradley lost the mayoral election to Yorty. This time Bradley won.