What Makes a Mayor Great?

"Aye! The city

is all of that and more: it is the Voice of Democracy!”

Monroe’s mayoral election in November, delayed a year by state legislation that transferred the

vote to even-numbered years and made it partisan, pits Mayor Pro Tem Surluta Anthony against

former Mayor Pro Tem David Dotson. Anthony would become the majority-minority city’s first

elected Black mayor, although former council member P.E. Bazemore was once appointed

briefly to the role. She would be the second woman mayor, after Judy Long Davis, who served

three terms before 2005. Mayor Robert Burns did not seek re-election and has announced a race

for governor in 2028. Incomplete records show Monroe has had at least 48 mayors since it was

created in 1844.

The most consequential Monroe leader who served as mayor was J. Ray Shute (1904-1988), who

was elected to two two-year terms starting in 1947. Voters in Monroe’s Precinct 2 will cast their

ballots in a center named for him. His political career followed an unusual trajectory. After one

term in the state senate (1935, helped create the statewide library system), one term as chairman

of the school board (established Western Union High School for Black students), and three terms

as chairman of the board of county commissioners (brought Camp Sutton to Monroe). As mayor,

he led the city’s acquisition of the Camp Sutton land that helped achieve his vision of balanced

industrial and agricultural economy in Union County.

“The city is crowded streets and quiet park lanes; the hurry of people going to and from work;

His civic involvement included heading the Chamber of Commerce, the Monroe Board of Trade,

the Monroe Board of Realtors, the Monroe Lion’s Club, the Union County Chapter of the

American Red Cross, the Board of Trustees of Union Memorial Hospital, the Monroe Executive

Club, and the Duke Alumni Association.

In business, he founded WMAP Radio in 1946 and exercised leadership he J.R. Shute Company,

Shute Motors, Inc., United Airways of North Carolina, Monroe Investment, Inc., Union Aircraft

Corp., Union Broadcasting Station, Union Laundry Service, Shute-Wilson Gin Company, Ellen

Fitzgerald Hospital, Finance Corporation of America, Background Sound Systems, Inc., the

Southern Regional Council, the Monroe Full Fashion Hosiery Mill, and the Union County

Industrial Development Commission.

He was an amateur anthropologist and traveled with his wife Sarah to some 125 countries, living

with indigenous people in Outer Mongolia, the Amazon jungle, and elsewhere. He was a

delegate to the International Humanist Association in Amsterdam in 1952 and to the International

Association for Religious Freedom at Oxford University in England. He was also a leader in

local, state, national, and international organizations.

In religion, after years as a top-level leader of Central Methodist Church, he became a Unitarian

in 1948, started a chapel in his home compound on Windsor Street near Five Points, and rose to

national prominence in the denomination, where he was friends with poet Carl Sandburg. The

change came while he was mayor, and he won re-election. Then he wrote a book, His Honor the

Heretic. He also favored beer and wine sales in a 1949 Monroe referendum, after the county had

outlawed the beverages 4,197-812. Monroe voted down beer 1,088-733 and wine 1,15-700, but

Shute later won re-election.

He was a passionate advocate for civil rights, cofounding the Union County Council on Human

Relations in 1956 with NAACP President Robert Williams. He spoke and published widely in

support of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision that overturned “separate but equal”

public education. In 1957, he posted a $7,500 bond for Dr. A.E. Perry, who was falsely accused

of performing an abortion.

Shute set a high standard for mayors: a comprehensive economic vision; a commitment to human

equality, racial justice, and religious freedom; a lifetime of civic service locally, statewide,

nationally, and internationally.

In 1951, he published The Happy Mayor, a collection of talks he had given. Its last chapter

explains why he valued the role so highly:

“The city is crowded streets and quiet park lanes; the hurry of people going to and from work;

the clean hospital beds and jammed baseball parks; the factory whistle and the peaceful ringing

of church bells; the throb of commerce and of children going to schools; rain-drenched rooftops

and sunny playgrounds; squalid slums and pleasant cottages; the blare of sirens and the quiet of

libraries; the village drunk and the welfare worker; the winding alleys and the broad greens; the

harlot in the hovel and the gold star mothers silently offering a community prayer. Aye! The city

is all of that and more: it is the Voice of Democracy!”