death_date children birth_date term_end alma_mater death_place imagesize term_start spouse image name caption predecessor birth_place party office successor religion article_title birth_name
14 november 2014 katherine byrne 24 may 1933 april 29 , 1983 barat college chicago , illinois , u.s. 200px april 16 , 1979 william byrne 1956 1959 jay mcmullen 1978 1992 jane bryne.jpg jane byrne byrne chicago gay pride parade , 1985 . -lrb- left -rrb- with her daughter attending the michael bilandic chicago , illinois , u.s. democratic 50th mayor of chicago harold washington roman catholicism jane byrne
 jane margaret burke
jane byrne

jane margaret byrne -lrb- née burke ; may 24 , 1933 -- november 14 , 2014 -rrb- was an american politician who was the 50th mayor of chicago from april 16 , 1979 to april 29 , 1983 .
she was the first and only female mayor of chicago , the second largest city in the united states at the time , and the largest u.s. city to have had a female mayor as of 2014 .
byrne first entered politics to volunteer in john f. kennedy 's campaign for president in 1960 .
during that campaign she first met mayor richard j. daley .
in 1968 , daley appointed her head of chicago 's consumer affairs department .
byrne held that post until she was fired by mayor michael bilandic in 1977 .
she challenged bilandic in the 1979 democratic mayoral primary , the real contest in this heavily democratic city .
at first , political observers believed her to have little chance of winning .
a memorandum inside the bilandic campaign said it should portray her as , `` a shrill , charging , vindictive person -- and nothing makes a woman look worse . ''
however , a series of major snowstorms in january paralyzed the city and caused bilandic to be seen as an ineffective leader .
jesse jackson endorsed byrne .
many republican voters voted in the democratic primary to beat bilandic and the `` machine '' .
infuriated voters in the north side and northwest side retaliated against bilandic for the democratic party 's slating of only south side candidates for the mayor , clerk , and treasurer -lrb- the outgoing city clerk , john c. marcin , was from the northwest side -rrb- .
these four factors combined to give byrne a razor-thin 51 % to 49 % victory over bilandic in the primary .
she then won the general election with 82 % of the vote , still the largest margin in a chicago mayoral election .
