(born 1947), U.S. public official. Henry Cisneros was born on June 11, 1947, in San Antonio, Tex. He graduated from Texas A & M University in 1970 and was selected for the White House fellows program in 1971. He then received a master's degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1973. Cisneros was elected to the San Antonio city council in 1975 as the youngest city councilman in the city's history. In 1981 he became the first Mexican American to be elected mayor of San Antonio since 1842. Noted for his success at calming tensions between Anglos and Hispanics in the city, he was reelected three times, but declined to run for office in 1989. He dropped out of politics temporarily to found an asset management group, but he served in President Bill Clinton's cabinet as secretary of housing and urban development from 1993 to 1997.