Gilbert W. Lindsay

Gilbert William Lindsay
Los Angeles City Council
In office 1962–1990
Preceded by	Edward Roybal
Succeeded by	Rita Walters
Personal details
Born	November 29, 1900 Mississippi, USA
Died	December 28, 1990 Los Angeles
Height	150 px
Spouse(s)	Theresa Lindsay

Gilbert William Lindsay(1900–1990), also known as Gil Lindsay, was a Los Angeles, California, politician who worked his way up from City Hall janitor to become the city's first black City Council member and one of its most powerful elected officials. He helped fashion downtown Los Angeles into a major metropolitan center but was accused of turning his back on the people in his district who elected him to 27 years on the city's governing body (1963–1990).

Lindsay was born on November 29, 1900, in Mississippi, where he worked in the cotton fields as a youth. He left Mississippi as a teenager and enrolled in a school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He then moved to Arizona, where he joined the Army and served in the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry. As part of an Army program, he studied business administration at the University of Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles in 1923 or 1924 and became a City Hall janitor with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He took a civil service exam for a clerkship, and he was given a basement office because, he said, his superiors did not want him to sit with whites. He took classes in governmental administration and political science at the University of Southern California and in business administration at UCLA during the 25 years he worked for the department.

About his years as a janitor, the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying, "I used to scrub toilets for the city of Los Angeles with a mop—that was my job. . . I had the lowest job you can give a human being." but the Los Angeles Sentinel, a black-oriented newspaper, cited C.A. (Bob) Barker, a Los Angeles businessman, as saying, "He was a helluva janitor! That was an important job for Negroes at that time. He gave the janitor's job the same respect he gave the council position. Whatever Gil was doing was very important to him."

He was known as being a short man, standing five feet, three inches tall.

Lindsay's wife, Theresa, was from Greenville, Texas. It was said that Lindsay "began to decline mentally and physically" after Theresa died in 1984; they had been married 49 years. He had a son, Melvin; a daughter, Sylvia Thornton, a stepson, Herbert Howard, and an adopted daughter, Christina Willoughby.

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