Stephen K. Benjamin, the first African American mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, was born Stephen Keith Benjamin on December 1, 1969, in Queens, New York. Both parents were from Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Benjamin grew up in New York City. He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of South Carolina in 1991, where he was elected its Student Body President. Three years later in 1994, he received a Juris Doctorate from its law school, where he served as Student Bar Association President.
In 1999, at 29, Benjamin was appointed to South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges’ cabinet as director of the Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services. Three years later in 2002, Benjamin ran unsuccessfully for South Carolina Attorney General, garnering 482,560 votes but was defeated by Republican Henry McMaster, 55% to 44.
Benjamin and DeAndrea Gist, Chief Administrative Judge for South Carolina’s Fifth Judicial Circuit, were married in 2002. They are the parents of two daughters, Bethany and Jordan Grace.
In 2009, Benjamin drew national attention by representing prominent radio host Tom Joyner and securing a pardon for Joyner’s great uncles wrongfully convicted and subsequently executed in 1913 for the death of a 73-year-old Confederate veteran.
Benjamin was elected Mayor of Columbia, South Carolina in April 2010, running a campaign which envisioned transforming South Carolina’s capital city into an entrepreneurial New South urban center similar to Charlotte and Atlanta. His campaign also focused on attention to Main Street’s economic development, job creation, and maintaining a just, diverse, and trusted law enforcement department. Benjamin defeated Kirkman Finlay III, winning 55% of the vote to become the first African American mayor in the city’s history. He was reelected in 2013 and ran unopposed in 2017.
During his first term, Benjamin helped cut unemployment in the city by half and secured billions of dollars in new regional capital investment during a national recession. In 2014 he introduced the “Justice for All” initiative, which implemented measures to strengthen the relationships between Columbia’s neighborhoods and the police officers who serve them.
Stephen Benjamin served as president of the African American Mayors Association from 2015 to 2016. He subsequently served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, President of the African American Mayors Association, and Vice-Chairman of the Global Parliament of Mayors, all between 2018 and 2019.
In 2017 Benjamin led the effort to enact City Ordinance 2017-109, which banned bump stocks and trigger cranks in the City of Columbia, thus making Columbia the first city in the nation to institute this gun control legislation.
Benjamin stepped down as mayor of Columbia in 2022 and joined The Charleston Group, a law firm that specialized in urban finance and affordable housing. From 2023 to 2025 Benjamin served as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement in the President Joe Biden administration, succeeding former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in that position.
A member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Benjamin is a recipient of numerous awards, including an Aspen Rodel Fellowship, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s Leading Globally Matters Locally Award, twice been named to The Washington Post‘s “The Root 100 List,” and an Honorary Doctor of Humanities from Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina.
