History made out of a wastebasket in Waterloo

Mary Berdell blazed a trail for women, minorities, disabled in Waterloo

Mar 10, 2023

"The responsibility of government to the governed cannot be defined in action for one segment of the community and in promises for another segment. Neither can government decide for the governed when the latter shall be satisfied with what it gets."

--Mary Berdell, 1973

By Pat Kinney
Fifty years ago this year, a blind woman became the first Black person to serve on the Waterloo City Council -- by the absolute narrowest of margins.
In fact, you might say she won a three-round bout to get there.
Mary Berdell, a counselor at Waterloo East High School, running as an independent against two white male opponents on the tickets of established, well-known mayoral candidates, survived a municipal election, an unprecedented runoff vote and then had her name drawn by lot -- from a wastebasket -- by the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors to win her seat.

This Page 1 photo of the Nov. 26, 1973 Waterloo Couerier says it all as Mary Berdell became the first Black person to serve on the Waterloo City Council

Berdell was a council candidate for the predominantly Black Fourth Ward. She was running against two formidable opponents.
One was four-term incumbent Council Member Robert Kavanaugh, running on the ticket of banker Richard T. Jenkins, dubbed "Mr. Waterloo" for his community involvement on many projects and seen by many as the successor to outgoing four-term Mayor Lloyd Turner.
Her other opponent was James Van Nice, a candidate on the ticket of second-term Black Hawk County Supervisor Leo Rooff, a popular local construction contractor running an anti-establishment campaign against what he called the city "power structure." Rooff would go on to become one of the most popular and longest serving mayors in the city’s history.
Mary Berdell was, ostensibly, facing long odds — but not with a large number of citizens in her ward who felt Black elected representation in City Hall was overdue.

While Rooff and four of his council candidates decisively defeated Jenkins and most of his ticket, none of the three Fourth Ward candidates received a simple majority of 50 percent plus one vote in the regular city election. Van Nice and Berdell were the top vote-getters in the November municipal election. Van Nice received the most votes- 400 more than Berdell.
Normally, up to that time, a plurality would ensure election. However, the Iowa attorney general mandated a runoff between the two top vote getters in municipal elections that year. Waterloo officials disagreed with the attorney general’s opinion, but opted not to challenge it.

In the runoff, Van Nice and Berdell each received 819 votes. By law, the winner was to be determined by lot drawn by the Board of Supervisors, as the body which canvassed the votes. A simple plastic wastebasket in the board room was used as the receptacle from which Berdell's name was drawn as the winner by supervisors board chairman William Beck. The wastebasket was used after Jimmie Porter, Black community enabler with Urban Ministries, objected that the pieces of paper on which each candidates' names were written hadn't been mixed up enough when first placed in a small box.
Van Nice opted not to seek a recount of the already canvassed runoff votes; in fact, newly installed Mayor Rooff escorted Berdell to her council seat at swearing-in and organizational council meeting in January 1974.

Newly sworn in Waterloo Mayor Leo Rooff escorts new Waterloo City Council member Mary Berdell to her seat at the council’s organizational meetig on January, 3, 1974 (Waterloo Courier photo)

It also was the first time two women served on the City Council at the same time. Berdell joined newly elected Rooff ticket council member Mary Lichty, from the fifth ward, who also won a runoff.

Berdell served only one two-year term on the council but had considerable impact in the community beyond public office. She served as executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center; adjunct professor at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls; director of the Bee Hive Youth Center; vice chairman of the Waterloo Human Rights Commission and social worker at East High School and McKinstry Junior High School. She was named to both the governor's Crime Commission and Youth Opportunity Program.

Mary Berdell speaking at Waterloo’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Dinner in 1998 (Waterloo Courier photo)

Berdell attended the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton, received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and earned two master's degrees, including one in social work from UCLA, in Los Angeles. She returned to Los Angeles as a part-time teacher in 1983.
She passed away there in 2008 at age 79.
Berdell blazed a trail for others to follow in local elected office, including Willie Mae Wright, who served 10 years on the City Council, representing the Fourth Ward in the 1980s and early '90s; Ruth B. Anderson, who became the first Black and just the fourth woman elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1988; Sammie Dell, who became the first Black elected to a citywide post in Waterloo municipal government when he won an at-large council seat in 1987; and Quentin Hart, who was elected Waterloo's first Black mayor in 2015.

In 2021, voters re-elected Hart and put a Black majority on the City Council for the first time ever, holding four of the seven council seats, including Nia Wilder, the city's first openly LGBTQ council member.
Mary Berdell returned to town as the featured speaker at the annual Martin Luthern King Jr. banquet in Waterloo in January 1998.
She said, in part, "One of Martin Luther King's greatest concerns was that the investment in technology would be more than the investment in human rights. Sometimes I think it is."
She called for individuals to volunteer and invest time in uplifting young people.
"The competition for their bodies, minds and souls is fierce, and they need somebody who's been there and can show them the way,” following Dr. King’s example, Berdell said.
"Remember this man who tried to be a drum major for peace, a drum major for justice, a drum major for righteousness," she said. "Remember him as a man who refused to lose faith in the ultimate redemption of mankind."

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