News you might have missed: Ferguson elects its first black mayor

This week, the cast of “Sesame Street” will join CNN for a town hall on racism, New Mexico could send a historic congressional delegation to Washington next year, and protesters in D.C. join together in song.

Read on to see what else you might have missed this week in the news.

Ella Jones ‘gives people hope’ as Ferguson’s first black mayor

On Tuesday, Ella Jones was elected mayor of Ferguson, Missouri, becoming both the first woman and the first black person to lead the city.

Jones, who in 2015 was the first black woman elected to the Ferguson City Council, was elected mayor of the city that became the epicenter of protests against racist police brutality after the Aug. 9, 2014, shooting of Michael Brown, a black man, by a white police officer.

“My election gives people hope,” Jones told the New York Times on Wednesday.

Jones won with 54% of the vote, defeating white Ferguson City Council member Heather Robinett.

Both Jones and Robinett expressed support for the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minnesota who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.

Virginia to remove prominent Confederate statue

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced on Thursday that a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond will be removed in the coming weeks.

Four other statues honoring the Confederacy will also be removed from Richmond’s Monument Avenue.

The 12-ton statue of Lee will be placed in storage, and Northam vowed to work with the community to decide what to do with it.

“When a young child looks up and sees something that big and prominent, she knows it must be important. When it’s the biggest thing around, it sends a clear message: This is what we value the most,” Northam said on Thursday.

“Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy,” said the city’s mayor, Democrat Levar Stoney.

Portland schools to invest more in counselors, less in armed guards

Portland schools will spend less money on armed guards and more money on direct support for students, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero announced on Thursday.

Oregon’s largest school district is “discontinuing the regular presence of School Resource Officers” associated with the Portland police department, Guerrero tweeted on Thursday, proposing to use the money currently spent on them to increase investments in “social workers, counselors, culturally-specific partnerships & more.”

Guerrero’s decision came as protesters across the country demonstrate against racist police brutality following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Statue of racist, homophobic mayor comes down in Philadelphia

A statue honoring racist and homophobic former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo was removed from a prominent location across from City Hall on Wednesday.

Rizzo, who was mayor of Philadelphia between 1972 and 1980 and had previously served as police commissioner, once urged residents to “vote white,” and was known to use homophobic slurs.

Rizzo died in 1991.

“The Frank Rizzo statue represented bigotry, hatred, and oppression for too many people, for too long. It is finally gone,” current Mayor Jim Kenney said on Wednesday.

Businesses support protests despite damage

Business owners in Minnesota, New York, and around the country continued to support the nationwide protests against police violence, even after their property had been damaged.

“Let my building burn, Justice needs to be served,” Ruhel Islam, owner of the Gandhi Mahal restaurant in Minneapolis, said on May 29 via Facebook.

Missy O’Reilly, a karaoke bar owner in New York, said on Monday that broken glass is “an easy fix compared to what people of color are dealing with in this country.”

“Our broken windows are nothing compared to 400 years of broken lives,” Hadley Douglas, owner of the Urban Grape, a liquor store in the South End of Boston, told Boston.com on Monday. “Please don’t let what happened after the protest drown out the more important story — our country wants and needs change. Our time is now.”

New Mexico could send a historic delegation to the US House

If each Democratic U.S. House candidate in the state wins in November, New Mexico would have the largest-ever congressional delegation consisting entirely of women of color, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Teresa Leger Fernandez, who is Latina, won the Democratic primary for a seat in the northern part of the state vacated by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat who is running for Senate.

Rep. Deb Haaland, one of the nation’s first Native American congresswomen, and  Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a descendent of Mexican immigrants, already represent the two other seats and will run for reelection.

Other states have sent smaller delegations entirely made up of women of color: The largest has been Hawaii’s two-person delegation, and Delaware’s only representative is currently Lisa Blunt Rochester, a black woman.

CNN and ‘Sesame Street’ will host town hall on racism

On Saturday morning, popular characters from the children’s television show “Sesame Street” will join CNN anchors for “Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism,” a town hall geared toward children and families, CNN announced on Tuesday.

Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Rosita, and other residents of Sesame Street will field questions submitted by families.

The hour-long special will “talk to kids about racism, the recent nationwide protests, embracing diversity, and being more empathetic and understanding,” CNN said.

Watch: Protesters sing ‘Lean on Me’ outside White House

As the sun began to set Wednesday evening, protesters outside the White House joined together to sing “Lean on Me,” the song written and made famous by the late Bill Withers.

The crowd was gathered to protest racist police brutality, one of many such protests sparked by the death of George Floyd.

“Surreal, beautiful, peaceful scene outside the White House as a man sings ‘Lean On Me’ and thousands and thousands of protesters raise lighted cellphones and join their voices with his,” Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter, tweeted.