It is not even a year since Jaylen Smith was learning the power of the youth vote as a student government leader at his high school in Arkansas.
Now the pioneering teenager is about to put his knowledge into practice as the youngest elected Black mayor anywhere in the US.
On Tuesday, as the Georgia Senate runoff was capturing the attention of the nation, Smith, 18, was steadily amassing the votes he needed to become the next leader of the small city of Earle, population 1,785.
“You have to start somewhere, you really do,” Smith, who graduated from Earle high school last summer after three years as Student Government Association president, told the Washington Post.
“I didn’t want to be 30 or 40 and become a mayor when I could be one right now.”
He wants to expand the police force and get a grocery store for the town.
Everyone calls him, “Mr. Mayor.”
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