Moments before she became the first Black mayor of Hagerstown, Tekesha Martinez took a deep breath to steady her emotions.

Her grandmother had cleaned the house of a former mayor. Martinez never thought she’d become one herself.

But in February 2023, when her hometown needed a leader, Martinez stepped up and secured a place in its history. With four generations of her family in attendance, she took the oath of office and wiped away tears.

Hagerstown has had mayors for almost a century but never one like Martinez, a Black woman, poet and conflict mediator who grew up in foster care. Her appointment as mayor occurred as the majority-white Western Maryland city was undergoing a demographic shift and trying to lurch beyond its history of racism.

Yet being in the spotlight came with significant downside for Martinez. Ahead of the 2024 election, national politics infiltrated her city. She experienced threats and attacks. At times, she feared for her safety.

By the time she left the job last month, Martinez, 46, was clear: She’d never seek office in her hometown again.

“It’s a hard no,” she said.

An unlikely politician

Growing up, Martinez gave little thought to politics. Her mother cycled in and out of jail. Her father was absent from her life. In foster care, she was raised by family friends in a strict but nurturing household filled with books and music.

At 17, Martinez became a mother. By 25, she had five children. She worked as a hotel receptionist, telemarketer and forklift driver, but transportation difficulties and childcare responsibilities made it hard to hold down a job. At times, she and her children were homeless.

While living briefly in Baltimore, Martinez discovered open-mic poetry nights at a local club. She considers herself an introvert, but poetry helped her find her voice and share her story:

“I’ve been shaken, beaten, broken and persecuted with word curses, gossip and lies, but fruit draws flies,” she wrote in one poem. “I’m constantly being pressed and refined like fine wine, established in ‘78, which is why I show up, especially in pain, and exclaim, ‘Love wins again.’ ”

After a difficult upbringing, Martinez said, she found healing by serving her community. She ran an after-school program for teens and worked at a local community center. As a community mediator, she assisted prisoners with reentry, trained police in deescalation and resolved disputes between residents.

Friends and even complete strangers took notice of Martinez’s passion for service and her ability to build community connections. Ahead of the 2020 election, they encouraged her to run for City Council.

Martinez knew little about zoning, sewers or the details of municipal government. She couldn’t see herself as a politician. To that point, Hagerstown had only ever elected one Black City Council member.

But Martinez said she found it hard to resist her supporters’ urging and what she described as a “divine” pull into politics. She entered the race amid the pandemic and the racial reckoning that followed George Floyd’s murder, campaigning as someone able to bring people together.

The crowded field included incumbent council members, business owners and the sitting mayor. Out of 10 candidates, Martinez earned the third-most votes, enough to win one of five council seats.

An evolving city

Martinez arrived on the political scene as Black people were gaining influence in Hagerstown.

Early in its history, Washington County’s location just below the Mason-Dixon Line made it a hub of the slave trade, a place where slave catchers hunted for runaways fleeing the South and sold them at farms, taverns and courthouses. Hagerstown, the county seat, built a jail where it detained and auctioned slaves.

For decades after the Civil War, Black residents of Hagerstown were excluded from most public spaces and denied many of the factory and railroad jobs that fueled the city’s economy. It wasn’t until desegregation spurred change in schools, housing and business that Black life expanded across the city.

In 1961, Republican Leonard Curlin became the first Black candidate to secure a party’s nomination for City Council, though he lost in the general election. It would be another 44 years before Hagerstown elected its first Black council member, Alesia Parson-McBean.

Around the time Martinez was born in 1978, Hagertown’s population was 93% white and 6% Black. By the time she was a newly elected City Council member, 42 years later, the city was 62% white and 20% Black.

Hagerstown’s government was beginning to reflect its rapidly changing demographics. Martinez was one of two Black City Council members to take office in 2020, alongside the city’s first female mayor, Emily Keller.

The local newspaper hailed the administration as the most diverse in Hagerstown’s history.

In early 2023, Keller resigned for a position in Gov. Wes Moore’s administration leading Maryland’s response to the opioid crisis. It was up to the City Council to replace her.

Martinez was still new to politics, but some members felt her life experiences, community ties and personal grit would make her a successful mayor.

Martinez made her case in a series of closed-door sessions, which turned contentious as two veteran council members competed against her for the role. In the end, she prevailed with unanimous support.

“That was the most difficult thing for me because I had fought for an entire city. But I’d never, ever advocated for myself,” Martinez said.

Tiara Burnett, the council’s other Black member, entered the motion to appoint Martinez mayor. Burnett was one of the only Black kids in her class and heard slurs and derogatory comments while growing up in Hagerstown.

As she watched Martinez take the oath, she thought, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

A pressure-filled ‘temp job’

Looking back, Martinez says the moment didn’t feel like a celebration. Soon after her swearing-in, she felt the pressure set in. “Wow,” she thought, “this is a lot.”

Martinez considered being mayor “a temp job” and pledged only to serve the remainder of Keller’s term. She ended speculation about her future in municipal government when she launched a long shot bid for Congress but didn’t win the primary this spring.

While her name wasn’t on the ballot this fall, Martinez was a fixture in the campaign for mayor and City Council.

In July, after a fatal shooting downtown, Republican state Sen. Paul Corderman, who represents much of Washington County, released an open letter describing the city as “in crisis and under siege.” He accused Martinez and the council of “remaining silent” on public safety issues.

City officials pushed back, arguing that the problems required support and direction from the county, not blame.

But other county leaders echoed Corderman. In social media posts, Republican Washington County Commissioner Derek Harvey said Hagertown’s police department was “underfunded and undermanned.”

In a September interview, sixth-year Police Chief Paul “Joey” Kifer rebutted those claims. “The budget has never gone down in the years that I’ve been the chief here,” he said. “It’s gone up.”

Municipal races in Hagerstown are nonpartisan. But Martinez felt the county GOP “took national talking points, and they attempted to drive a divide” in the city election. One resident blamed the city for the rising cost of eggs, Burnett said.

As the campaign edged toward Election Day, Martinez said, she tried to ignore her emails and the comments on her social media feeds. But friends who saw them feared for her safety.

Burnett, who was seeking re-election to the City Council, said her Facebook page was filled with racist memes and GIFs, some showing Black people in chains. People left comments calling her a “DEI” politician.

“These are people I grew up with, some of [them] talking as if we don’t know each other,” Burnett said.

With two months remaining in her term, Martinez said she considered resigning. She posted countdowns of her remaining days in office on Facebook.

“Some days, I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be the face of this city,’ ” she said.

Parson-McBean, the city’s first Black council member, said she understood the pressure Martinez faced as mayor. “I praise her for having the gumption to even do it because it’s not easy,” she said. “And it’s not easy when you’re wrapped in Black skin.”

‘I can run, too’

After votes were tallied in early November, Republican-backed candidates won an uncontested mayor’s race and one of five council seats.

In another first for Hagerstown, three Black women, all endorsed by Democrats, were elected to the council. Burnett was the leading vote-getter. Newcomers Caroline Anderson and Erika Bell also won.

Bell, the owner of a downtown juice bar, said that seeing Black women like Martinez and Burnett in office inspired her to pay closer attention to local politics. “I can run, too,” she realized.

Martinez’s final City Council meeting in late November turned into a celebration. Residents, friends and colleagues praised her leadership and service. Her mother, Delores, expressed hope Martinez would continue in politics. Her younger sister, Nina, cried and told Martinez she was proud of her.

“Knowing where we came from and watching her do great things is amazing,” Nina Martinez said later.

In some of her final remarks, Tekesha Martinez called it an honor to have served as the mayor of her hometown. She offered advice to the incoming administration.

“My prayer is that you don’t take the things that happen personal, even though it will feel very personal,” she said. “Do your best to represent the city and all of the constituents of Hagerstown.”

Martinez said she would stay involved in local politics by mentoring Black candidates and teaching them how to navigate the system as an outsider. And she hasn’t ruled out another run for office, perhaps campaigning for the state legislature or trying again for Congress.

For now, though, she wants to retreat from the public eye. She planned to rededicate herself to poetry and conflict mediation. She moved into a red-brick house on a quiet, residential road just outside the city limits.

Sitting among boxes at her new home on a recent morning, Martinez said, “This is going to be my peace.”