Skip to main content
На сайті проводяться технічні роботи. Вибачте за незручності.

The first female mayor of Detroit was Ukrainian

01 April, 00:00

She could have been nominated for the title of a “great Ukrainian woman.” Unfortunately, her life’s work for the benefit of society is better known in the US than in Ukraine.

On Feb. 29 Mary Virginia Beck would have been 100 years old. Born into a family of Ukrainian immigrants from the Lemko region, one of nine children, she graduated from the Law School of the University of Pittsburgh in 1932. Later she completed her doctorate at the same university. From 1935 Marusia worked in Detroit’s volunteer social service as a lawyer and in 1950 became the first woman in the city’s 250-year-long history to be elected to the city council.

In 1959, at the age of 51, Mary Beck became the mayor of this American city with a population of two million, a post that she held for 11 years. She resigned in 1970 and began working in the executive body of the Ukrainian National Republic in Exile. In 1983 she headed a committee to honor the victims of the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine. In 2003 the World Congress of Ukrainians, held in Kyiv, awarded the 95-year-old Marusia Beck the Order of St. Volodymyr the Great.

This great Ukrainian lady died in 2005. Her name is engraved on a plaque at Detroit City Hall and inscribed in the city’s history as the first female mayor.

Delimiter 468x90 ad place

Subscribe to the latest news:

Газета "День"
read