Thirman L. Milner, whose election as Hartford’s mayor in 1981 made him the first popularly elected Black mayor of a New England city, an accomplishment tempered by a city charter that gave him scant power over three two-year terms, died Friday. He was 91. His death was announced by Virginia Monteiro, who was Milner’s stepdaughter and is the first vice president of the Connecticut NAACP and its Hartford branch. No other details were provided. Milner’s victory over George A. Athanson resonated in a city where the power structure was white and influenced during the 1960s and ’70s by corporate CEOs known as “The Bishops.” It also came with high drama: Milner sued to force a rerun of a Democratic primary lost to Athanson by 94 votes. Pointing to questionable votes cast by absentee ballots and the delayed opening of a polling place in a Black neighborhood, lawyers volunteering for Milner argued in Superior Court that his defeat was the product of dirty tricks and the election was sufficiently tainted to justify a new contest. The controversy made the office a greater prize, his campaign a cause. Milner, then a two-term state representative, easily won the do-over, boosted by an influx of volunteers and a more engaged, if not enraged, electorate. He was gracious in victory, promising to unify the city. ”We’re going to have a citywide love-in,” he said. The reality would be different. The charter vested power in a city council and its appointed city manager, leaving the mayor with a corner office, a modest salary, a limited veto and no authority to set policy or direct, hire or fire city employees. Frustrated by the limits, he did not seek a fourth term. But the impact of his victory transcended the limits of the office.  “Thirman Milner will forever have a place in American history as a civil rights icon,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “His upbringing here in Connecticut led him to a career in activism, marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the sixties and using his passion for social justice as inspiration that led him to a career in politics.” Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said, “His commitment to public service and civil rights transformed Hartford and paved the way for future leaders. Thirman embodied resilience and dedication, championing the needs of our community during challenging times.” Milner was born in Hartford on Oct. 29, 1933, the fifth of six children. Milner’s marriages to Mary Rogers and Brenda Monteiro ended in divorce. He had two children by his first marriage. Information on survivors was not immediately available. While Hartford had recently hired its first Black fire chief and city manager, Milner’s winning the mayoralty signified more in a city that was 35% Black. As Lew Brown, a Hartford native and former television reporter would recall, “Thirman Milner was our Black prince when it came to politics in Hartford.” By style and personality, Milner was a buttoned-down mayor, careful in rhetoric and precise in attire. He rarely was seen at city hall in anything other than a three-piece suit, crisply pressed shirt and tie. “I don’t make a lot of noise, and I don’t intend to,” Milner told UPI after his election. “That’s never been my style.” The 1981 election also was a turning point in Hartford for reasons other than Milner’s victory. It ended two contentious years at city hall dominated by Robert Ludgin, a conservative Democratic councilman who crafted a fusion city council majority with Republicans.  Ludgin held the title of deputy mayor, a misnomer that was one of the oddities in a city charter that not only diffused power but blurred roles. The deputy mayor actually was the council leader, with greater power than the mayor. A conventional Democratic slate won the council majority in 1981, and the new deputy mayor would be Rudolph P. Arnold, the first Black council member to hold the post — a first overshadowed by Milner’s election. Two of Milner’s successors under the council-manager charter, first his friend and ally Carrie Saxon Perry, and then Mike Peters, had more influence due to their abilities to forge relationships with the council and its city managers.  A charter revision in 2002 gave Hartford an office of mayor with sweeping powers, four-year terms and created clear lines of authority. The title of deputy mayor was shelved in favor of council president. He admitted having to be goaded to run for office, first to the General Assembly in 1976 and then for mayor, by Wilber G. Smith, his friend, civil rights activist and state senator. Smith was his alter ego, fiery and confrontational where Milner was reserved. Milner was hardly averse to activism. On the way to becoming an elected official, his path would intersect with a who’s who of the civil rights and Black power movements: Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young and Malcom X, among others. While raised in Hartford, he had spent time in the deep south while serving in the Air Force in the 1950s, witnessing first hand the indignities and intimidations imposed by Jim Crow laws. In a thin autobiography self-published in 2009, Milner described joining other civil rights volunteers on a bus ride from Hartford to Albany, Ga., in 1961 to join others demanding the release of King, who had been jailed. “We were not fearless,” Milner wrote. “Although I would not admit it then, I was scared but became inspired by the determination of the local residents of all ages, who were putting their lives and jobs on the line. These were the ones who had to live there after we were back in the safety of our homes ‘up north.’” He called his book “Up From Slavery,” the same title as the autobiography of Booker T. Washington. The cover of Thirman L. Milner’s memoir. Milner’s book offered two surprising nuggets: While living in New York City in the early 1960s, he attended Black Panther meetings without becoming a member, and he frequented the “Speaker’s Corner” speeches made by Elijah Mohammed and Malcolm X at Lenox Avenue and 135th Street in Harlem. “I became such a regular that when the Muslim brothers spotted me they would bring me closer to the front of the podium,” Milner wrote. “It was at that time Malcolm X first invited me to attend the Mosque on 116th Street, which I did on several occasions.” Returning to Hartford, Milner and the others found local targets, protesting the Hartford Housing Authority’s limits on how many Black tenants were allowed in public housing and the de facto bans at some insurance companies and department stores on hiring Blacks for anything other than service jobs. He narrowly failed in his first run for elective office: a challenge in a Democratic primary in 1978 to Rep. Clyde M. Billington Jr., who in 1970 had become the first Black man elected to the 7th House District.  Milner said the challenge was costly: the loss of his job at an anti-poverty agency, the Community Renewal Team. He succeeded in unseating Billington in 1978 and was reelected in 1980 before launching a run for mayor. He was a central figure in an unusual fight in February 1980, when the General Assembly struggled over how to respond to the use of a slur against Blacks by a white lawmaker, Rep. Russell Reynolds, D-West Haven. On a questionnaire from United Press International, Reynolds replied to a question about taxes by writing: “No! No! No! Income tax. No more taxes. Put the [N-word] back to work.” Milner, one of five Black members in the House, urged expulsion. Instead, the House voted 87-50 to censure Reynolds, who apologized on the House floor. Milner called the reprimand, while apparently unprecedented, “no more than a slap on the wrist.” Milner won a second term in the House later that year, then opened his mayoral campaign. His reelection to a second term as mayor in 1983 was uneventful, but he would describe his final run in 1985 as joyless. His opponent, Republican Eunice S. Groark, repeatedly suggested Milner was little more than a figurehead who had not capitalized on the goodwill and excitement generated by his groundbreaking win in 1981. Milner insisted he had generated support for job training at a time when downtown development boomed and was an advocate in city hall for Hartford’s poorest. But Groark’s gibes stung. Milner’s mother, Grace Milner Allen, died that October, keeping him from campaigning for a week. Then The Hartford Courant dropped a bombshell the weekend before Election Day: According to a sworn statement by two would-be developers, one of Milner’s campaign aides had solicited a $15,000 bribe, promising help with city contracts. The two men attested that they had met with the aide at the mayor’s office and at his home but that Milner was not present at either meeting. Milner denied any knowledge of the aide’s actions and successfully used the late-breaking nature of the story to his advantage. “It gave people a target — The Courant — and he used it masterfully,” said Perry, the ally who would succeed him as mayor two years later. Milner was honored in 1989 by the Hartford Board of Education renaming of the Vine Street School, which served a poor neighborhood in the North End, as the Thirman Milner Elementary School. Milner resumed his political career in 1992 with election to the state Senate. To win, Milner unseated Frank Barrows, the Democrat who had unseated Milner’s friend, Smith, in 1984. It would be a brief stay. He did not seek reelection in 1994 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, a disease that ran in his family. The prognosis was grim, and Milner recalled preparing for death. “It was shattering,” Milner told Fox 61 years later. “I sold everything. I gave everything away to my family. I told them to come into the house, take anything they want. And you know, I was ready to go.” There was the potential of a Last Hurrah in 2003, when he was about to turn 70. Alarmed by what he saw as the Black community’s loss of political standing, Milner petitioned for a place on the ballot to challenge Eddie A. Perez, the city’s first Latino mayor. Milner objected to Perez’s focus on promoting home ownership, an admittedly worthy goal in a city with one of the lowest rates of residents owning their homes. But Milner said the poorest of the poorest were getting short shrift. “Our biggest problem is poverty, and that is not being addressed. That’s why I first threw my name in the hat,” Milner said then. But his campaign never took flight. Friends warned against the toll on his health — his cancer was in check after 10 years, but not cured. Milner hoped for a young Black candidate to step forward. None came. “I look at my age, my health. I just decided right now it could be too much on my plate,” Milner said. “It would take 12 hours a day, a door-to-door campaign.” More dispiriting, he said, was the anemic turnout in some Black voting districts in the primary, won by Perez and his council slate. Milner withdrew.  Under a charter revision approved by voters the previous year, Perez took office as Hartford’s first strong mayor, enjoying the powers that eluded Milner two decades earlier.