The Lighter Side of Africa in Our Midst

They do keep us smiling.

This video is available on Rumble, BitChute, and Odysee.

Note: The video has so many embedded clips that it will be more rewarding to watch it than to read this script.

The other day, I got a complaint about my videos: I spend too much time on the darker side of Africa in our midst. This video is a look on the lighter side, introducing Tiffany A. Henyard, mayor of Dolton, Illinois.

Dalton, spelled “dolt”-ON but pronounced Dawlton, is a village of 20,000 a half-hour outside of Chicago.

In 1997, it got its first black mayor and has never looked back.

It is now 94 percent black.

Miss Henyard was elected and sworn in in the summer of 2021.

In her inaugural speech, she said God is “the head” of her life.

Miss Henyard, who charmingly dots the I in her name with a tiny heart, claims to be beloved of God.

She is a single mother and likes to cut a flashy figure. Her Instagram is full of on-the-job clips.

Miss Henyard was the first woman to be elected mayor of Dolton and, at age 38, the youngest. This is the spread Essence magazine gave her.

Her social media are packed with promotional photos and videos.

In her new year’s greeting, she styles herself “SuperMayor Tiffany A. Henyard and her motto is “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

She makes videos of her work. Here she is bragging about getting guns off the street.

Sometimes she just praises God. Here she is with an ax, posing as a firefighter.

Miss Henyard is clearly a frisky lass, and enjoys her job. But not all is well with the SuperMayor beloved of God. There is some question about who pays for the make-up and hairstyling teams and the spiffy clothes.

She is always professionally coiffed and made up for public appearances and photo shoots.

This is her stylist, who features her prominently on his Instagram.

Citizens probably pay for his work – just as they pay an astonishing $300 thousand dollars a year for her security detail of favorite police officers. They drive her to work, take her to lunch and shopping, drive her home, and make her feel important.

The mayor loves spending city money. She used a city credit card to buy a $3,741 round-trip plane ticket to Las Vegas just for her, and $8,400 on hotel rooms for herself and a few pals.

She hides expenses from city trustees, and when asked about them, smiles and says, “No comment.”

And then, there is this: “Lavelle Redmond: Illinois village hires sex offender who raped 2 girls, sparks fury.”

When Lavelle was 15, he and three other spirited youngsters kidnapped two girls, ages 13 and 14, and gang-raped them.

He spent 24 years in the pokey and is a registered child sex offender.

Miss Henyard hired him to make sure houses in Dolton are up to code. That means going inside and looking. You will recall that Dolton is black, and “32.2% of homes have a female householder with no husband present.”

The ladies of Dolton didn’t like the idea of a convicted rapist coming around on village business and persuaded the trustees to try to recall the mayor.

They bungled. Dolton had never had a recall ordinance, and it put the new ordinance and the recall itself on the same ballot. Both measures passed, but it’s not legal to do both at once, and a judge threw out the vote. Here was Miss Henyard’s message: “Recall null and void. I am and forever will be Dolton’s mayor.”

At the next trustee meeting, she brought in a DJ and did a little victory dance.

She is back spending city money on what are supposed to be notices of city services, but look an awful lot like giant campaign ads. Here’s another one, right in town; “Keeping my promises. Fighting for my residents.”

Paid for by the city.

The mayor chosen by God is storing up treasure on earth, but doesn’t like to talk about it. She holds two government jobs and pulls down more than $287,000 a year. That is more than the salary of every governor in the United States and  of the US vice president.

She is determined to keep that job and salary. Last year she rammed through the trustees what even Black Enterprise calls a “controversial salary tactic.” She keeps her fat pay packet, but when she runs for reelection next year, “if she loses her campaign, the . . . salary drops to just $25,000.”

That’s a clever way to discourage anyone from challenging her. Beat her, and you make only $25,000.

As experts try to figure out if that’s legal, just last week, “Trustees Sue Mayor Tiffany Henyard Over Alleged Forgery & Withholding Financial Records.”

She has driven the city into a $7 million deficit, and the trustees are trying to avoid bankruptcy, but Tiffany continues to perform her duties as SuperMayor with aplomb. At the first trustee meeting of the new year, dolled up as ever, she gently upbraided the citizens for doubting her “love” for them.

She’s been in tight spots before and slipped right out of them. It will be exciting to see what happens.

Will she be mayor for life, in the grand African tradition?

Or will her past catch up with her? Will she have to take a dive in the end, like the president of Harvard, who has put on such an entertaining show lately?

Either way, it’s all part of the lighter side of Africa in our midst. They do keep us smiling, don’t they?