Chokwe Antar Lumumba (born March 29, 1983) is an American attorney, activist, and politician who served as the 53rd mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, from 2017 to 2025. He was elected in 2017 at age 34, becoming the youngest person elected mayor in the city's history. Lumumba is the son of former Jackson mayor and civil rights attorney Chokwe Lumumba, who served as mayor from 2013 until his death in 2014.
Lumumba was first elected mayor after defeating incumbent Tony Yarber and state senator John Horhn in the 2017 Democratic primary, then winning the general election in a landslide. During his mayoralty, Jackson faced major challenges involving its aging water system, a 2022 drinking-water emergency, conflicts with state officials over local control, and disputes with the city council over municipal contracts. Lumumba won reelection in 2021, becoming the first Jackson mayor in 20 years to win consecutive terms.
In 2024, Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, and Jackson City Council member Aaron Banks were indicted on federal bribery and related charges tied to a proposed downtown development project. Lumumba pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. He sought a third term in 2025 but was defeated by Horhn in the Democratic primary runoff. Lumumba pled guilty in July 2026.
Early life, education, and legal career
Lumumba is the son of Chokwe Lumumba and Nubia Lumumba, both of whom were involved in community organizing and civil rights work. His father, born Edwin Finley Taliaferro, was an attorney, Black nationalist activist, and member of the Republic of New Afrika before entering Jackson city politics.
Lumumba earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tuskegee University. He later earned a Juris Doctor from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, along with a certificate in sports and entertainment law. After law school, he returned to Jackson and worked as an attorney, including as a junior associate at Lumumba, Freelon, & Associates.
Lumumba has described himself as a progressive, a socialist, and a political revolutionary. His politics have often been discussed in connection with the organizing tradition associated with his father, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and local efforts in Jackson around participatory democracy and economic self-determination. During his 2017 campaign and early mayoralty, national coverage focused on his pledge to make Jackson "the most radical city on the planet."
Lumumba endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Sanders endorsed Lumumba for reelection as mayor in 2021.
After the death of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba in February 2014, Chokwe Antar Lumumba ran in the special election to succeed his father as mayor. He advanced to a runoff against city council president Tony Yarber. Yarber defeated Lumumba in the April 22, 2014 runoff, receiving about 54 percent of the vote to Lumumba's 46 percent.
Lumumba ran for mayor again in 2017. In the Democratic primary, he defeated incumbent mayor Tony Yarber, state senator John Horhn, and other candidates, winning the nomination without a runoff. He won the June 2017 general election with more than 90 percent of the vote and was sworn in on July 3, 2017.
At 34, Lumumba became the youngest person elected mayor of Jackson. He was also the seventh consecutive African-American mayor of the city.
During Lumumba's first term, his administration emphasized infrastructure, public safety oversight, digital access, and public education partnerships. In 2018, Lumumba attended the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a program for mayors and senior city officials. Later that year, Jackson received a $1 million Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge grant for a project focused on food insecurity.
In 2018, after the Jackson Zoo announced that it would consider moving from its longtime West Jackson location, Lumumba opposed the move and joined community groups calling for the zoo to remain in West Jackson. In 2019, the zoo temporarily closed for renovations and work related to federal licensing requirements. It reopened in August 2020 under city control.
Jackson's water and sewer systems were a central issue during Lumumba's mayoralty. The city's infrastructure problems predated his administration and included aging treatment plants, sewer overflows, billing problems, and repeated boil-water notices. In 2019 and 2020, large releases of sewage into the Pearl River drew renewed attention to the condition of the city's wastewater system.
In 2021, Lumumba asked Mississippi governor Tate Reeves for state assistance to address water infrastructure needs after winter storms disrupted service. The crisis deepened in August 2022, when flooding and operational failures at the O. B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant left many residents without reliable water service. The city declared a water system emergency, and state and federal agencies became involved in emergency response.
In November 2022, the United States Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, filed a complaint against the City of Jackson alleging failures to provide drinking water reliably compliant with the Safe Drinking Water Act. The city, the state health department, and the federal government agreed to a proposed stipulated order appointing an interim third-party manager to stabilize the drinking-water system. Ted Henifin was appointed interim third-party manager, giving him authority over operations, billing, and priority infrastructure projects for the city's drinking-water system.
In January 2023, Lumumba announced that Jackson had secured nearly $800 million in federal funding for water-system repairs and reconstruction.
Lumumba's administration was involved in a prolonged dispute with the Jackson City Council over a residential garbage-collection contract. In 2022, after the council rejected an emergency contract with Richard's Disposal, Lumumba attempted to veto the council's refusal to approve the contract. The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the mayor could not veto a negative action of the city council and upheld the trial court's judgment against him.