Lizette Parker (August 31, 1971 – April 24, 2016) was an American politician and social worker. She served as the Mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, from 2014 until her death in April 2016. Parker was the first black woman to serve as Mayor of Teaneck, as well as the first black woman to serve as the mayor of any municipality in Bergen County, the state's most populous county.[1][2][3][4][5] Coincidentally, she succeeded former Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin, who became the first Muslim to become the Mayor of a Bergen County community in 2010.[6]
Parker was re-elected to the council in the Teaneck municipal election on May 13, 2014, receiving the most votes of any member of the council.[9] The choice of mayor in Teaneck is made among council members, and Parker, who served as deputy mayor from 2006 to 2010, the 2010 election was contentious. Traditionally, the council chose the member with the highest vote total in the election to serve as mayor. Estina Baker, president of the Bergen County chapter of the NAACP, said the sentiment against choosing Parker was a matter of "race and gender," and Parker made the same allegation in an "unusually impassioned" speech.[10][11][6] After the election, parker and Hameeduddin, who was chosen mayor despite having garnered fewer votes, worked together in a[12] coalition that dominated the City Council.
In 2007, as deputy mayor, Parker performed the ceremony for the first same-sex civil union in New Jersey.[13][14]
On July 1, 2014, the council unanimously elected Parker as the Mayor of Teaneck.[9] She was sworn into the office at the same meeting. Parker became not only the first African-American female mayor of Teaneck,[15] but also the first black woman to serve as Mayor of any municipality in Bergen County, New Jersey.[3] Her predecessor, Mohammed Hameeduddin, remained in the government as a councilman.[9] As mayor, she was a member of the New Jersey Black Mayors Alliance for Social Justice which spoke out against then Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump's call to ban all Muslim immigration in the United States.[16]
^Malaspina, Ann (2007), The Ethnic and Group Identity Movements: Earning Recognition Reform Movements in American History Series, Infobase Publishing, ISBN9781438106335, Early on February 19, 2007, gay and lesbian couples gathered at city halls throughout New Jersey to apply for civil unions ... Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross of Teaneck were the first couple given the state's legal right of a civil union. Teaneck deputy mayor Lizette Parker asked, "Do you, Steven, agree to be legally joined with Daniel under the Civil Union Law of the state of New Jersey?"
^"Community Mourns The Loss Of A New Jersey Mayor". Magic Baltimore. April 23, 2018. Retrieved 10 May 2018. A mere two years after making history by becoming the first African American mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, Lizette Parker has passed away.
