Cambridge City Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves

Kenneth E. Reeves was born and brought up in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the legendary Cass Technical High School, and graduated a year after Detroit’s turbulent 1967 riots. He attended Harvard College and graduated cum laude at 1972. He was awarded the Michael Clark Rockefeller Fellowship for Travel, and he studied in Benign, West Africa. He later attended the University of Michigan Law School. As part of his law school course work her studied social welfare policy at Arbetsformedlingen in Stockholm, Sweden. He also received a fellowship to study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Urban Studies and Planning. After Law School, he worked for the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, doing utility, banking, and insurance industry rate regulation. He later served as the managing attorney of the General Motors/United Auto Workers Legal Plan in Massachusetts. He also served as a principal in the Cambridge based law firm of Singleton, Reeves, Bowzer, and Huggins.

Since 1990, Reeves has been elected as a Cambridge City Councillor. He has also served three terms as the Mayor of Cambridge (1992-1993, 1994-1995, 2006-2007) – the first African American Mayor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the first openly black gay mayor in the United States. While mayor, he also served as the chairperson of the Cambridge School Committee. Reeves has for many years been a champion for working families, civil rights issues, human rights issues, and equality to the citizens of Massachusetts. Reeves is an elected official who has an enviable record of getting significant projects done. During his tenure on the Cambridge City Council the city of Cambridge has maintained a AAA bond rating and become a world-renowned center of bioscience research. Some of the projects reeves has seen to fruition include a magnificent new main library, a citywide senior center, new police communications station, five youth and community centers, restoration of the War Memorial pool and field house, and a 50 acre park on the site of the former city dump.

Ken Reeves has also been an innovator in crafting social programs that support citizens to achieve a better quality of life. Some of the programs he has initiated are the  “Cambridge Works" jobs assistance program, The Cambridge Kids Council, and the Men’s Health Task Force. He is currently working to implement a  “Baby College” for parents of infants to three years olds, and an “Office of College Success” to ensure Cambridge students graduate from college. These two programs are adopted from the work of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The numerous awards and recognition Reeves has received are the following: the NAACP Drum Major for Justice Award, Boy Scouts of America Award, African Methodist Episcopal Church Lifetime Achievement Award, Absalom Jones Award, Click Magazine award, and Massachusetts Black Attorney Award. Langston Hughes, Alain Locke N.Y governor, James Baldwin, Rev. Dennis Willey, Rev. Fred Lucas Founder of the Kumba Singers, Aids in the BEN Community.