San Antonio makes history as it names black woman mayor

By Jim Forsyth SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - San Antonio's city council elected Ivy Taylor the new mayor of the seventh most populous U.S. city, making the Yale graduate the first African American to hold the post. Taylor, 44, a housing executive in San Antonio before being elected to City Council in 2009, succeeds Julian Castro, who resigned on Tuesday to take a cabinet post in the Obama administration heading the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "I'm certainly excited to represent the ladies," she said. "I hope to inspire other young ladies to think about all of the things that they can do." The city charter calls for a mayor to be appointed from among the 10 sitting city council members when the elected mayor resigns. Taylor will serve as mayor until the next municipal elections in May 2015. Unlike other major Texas cities, San Antonio does not have a large population of African Americans, who make up 6.9 percent of the city of about 1.4 million, according to the 2010 Census. (Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Eric Walsh)