At first, John Street mostly used his law degree to keep his militant brother out of jail. It was not long, though, before he was joining Milton in raucous demonstrations at Philadelphia City Council meetings in support of low-income housing. "Every other week, John and his brother were busting in and hand-cuffing themselves to the railing," says ex-councilman Francis Rafferty, who once got into fisticuffs with Street. "It didn't make for a pleasant council meeting."

Since then, Street, 56, has undergone a head-snapping transformation—from the outside agitator of the 1970s to today's ultimate political insider. A seven-year council president, Street, the son of a tenant farmer, will be sworn in this month as the city's second black mayor. He's not proud of the fact that he once came to blows on the council floor, but neither does he regret his sometimes unleashed passion for the city and its people. "Today I would do everything to avoid confrontation," he says. "I wasn't ready to be mayor then. I needed to mature."

He also needed votes, and they were much tougher to come by than one would have thought for a Democrat who helped save the hugely Democratic city from bankruptcy, turning a $250 million deficit into the largest surplus in Philadelphia history in 1998. "We raised the bar on getting things done in this city," says Street of himself and former mayor Ed Rendell. Still, he defeated a relative amateur in November by less than 10,000 votes; many attributed the low margin to Street's past as a rash activist. "Some people tend to not understand that the man at 56 is a different person," says Naomi Street, 45, his wife of 12 years. "He doesn't have different values, just different approaches."

Little has ever come easy for Street. He grew up in the sticks outside Philadelphia, where his parents rented a 100-acre farm without electricity or running water. To this day, Street, the youngest of three brothers, gets up at 4 a.m. "There were cows to milk seven days a week," he says.

Raised Seventh Day Adventist, he grew up financially poor, but rich in spirit and self-confidence. So he only became more determined when a high school guidance counselor told him he wasn't college material. In 1960 he entered Oakwood College, a Seventh Day Adventist school in Huntsville, Ala., where he became class president. Despite that, when he applied to Temple University Law School, a dean told him he was not law school material. "I was livid," says Street. "Who was he to pass that judgment on me?"

Undaunted, Street applied to Temple again and again. One day, while manning his brother Milton's campus hot dog stand, he sold a cup of coffee to Carl F. Singley, a black assistant professor, who secured Street the interviews he needed to get into the school. "John is tenacious, driven and aggressive," says Singley.

After years of defending his brother in court and going toe-to-toe with local government, Street ran for city council in 1980 and won. He was becoming a fixture in local politics when he met his wife five years later. Naomi was waiting for a bus, and a friend stopped to offer a ride. Also in the car was an oddly quiet Street. "He was shy," says Naomi, a lawyer who would become Street's third wife and bear their son Akeem, 12. "I didn't know he was romantically interested for some time."

Known to recess council meetings to race home to put Akeem to bed, Street hopes to be a role model for his son and all the city's children of color. "They are always being told what they can't do," he says. "My election will send them a message."

William Plummer
Bob Calandra in Philadelphia