Detroit — Moments before Mary Sheffield officially declared she wanted to be Detroit’s next mayor, she quoted Benjamin Mays, the influential Black educator who was Martin Luther King Jr.’s spiritual mentor.

“Every man and woman, every boy and girl, was born into this world to do something unique and distinctive,” Sheffield told a crowd of supporters in December who gathered at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 58 in Corktown. “And if he or she does not do it, then it will never be done.”