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ST. LOUIS — Former Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, after a big reelection loss last month, is calling out city voters for turning their backs on Black women in power.

In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio published Thursday, she said white South Side voters abandoned her for Mayor Cara Spencer, a white woman, because of race. She said Black North Side voters had unrealistic expectations of her. And she said the city is due for a reckoning after ousting a slew of Black female politicians in recent months.

“My dad always told me — and it’s an old phrase — that ‘Black women have to work twice as hard to get half as much.’� Jones said. “Well, I feel like we work five times as hard to get nothing in return.�

´³´Ç²Ô±ð²õ’ 28-point-loss last month was one of the worst performances by an incumbent St. Louis mayor in the past 50 years. Turnout in the north, which came out for her four years ago, crumbled. White progressive neighborhoods around Tower Grove Park, which she swept last time, went hard for Spencer.

Explanations varied: She disappointed her activist base. Missteps with a grant program riled the North Side.

But in interview after interview, voters north and south said they were fed up with her stewardship of city services, from trash pickup to pothole filling to the disastrous handling of the big January snowstorm. Spencer, who lost to Jones in 2021, promised to get the city “back to basics.�

On NPR, Jones insisted there was more to it, as she did in the final days of the campaign.

She said the electorate ignored a remarkable drop in crime during her tenure, when the homicide rate fell 40% from a record high in 2020 to a 10-year-low in 2024.

“That’s what the people wanted back in 2021,� she said, “And then they moved the goalposts to potholes and trash and snow removal.�

And she said a big part of that was race. She said when she campaigned in south city, no one could give her a good reason why they were going for Spencer this time.

“And if you can’t give me a reason or something that I have particularly done, then the only default is race,� she said.

Jones also said she worked hard to begin rebuilding north St. Louis after decades of decline.

“But there’s no patience there,� she said. “The expectations there are so high to deliver and deliver immediately to address the decades of neglect in four years, and that is impossible.�

Jones said the city needs to think hard about those forces in the wake of her loss and the recent ouster of three other Black female leaders — former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, who lost reelection in 2024 former Comptroller Darlene Green, who lost reelection last month; and former Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who resigned amid controversy in 2023.

“I think St. Louis needs to have a conversation with itself about why it no longer trusts Black women to lead,� she said.

She said the Democratic Party and progressive Democrats in particular need to have the same conversation.

And she said she wasn’t sure of the future of the progressive movement she once led. She said she didn’t know of anyone who could take up the mantle from her and Bush. Everyone else lacks consistency and loyalty, she said.

Despite her commentary, Jones said that she has largely tuned out local politics since her loss. She’s talked generally about a “comeback� in her social media posts but made no mention of a political one in the interview.

She said she is almost finished with a children’s book she was writing while in office and is looking at going into consulting, writing a book, or starting a podcast.