Unita Blackwell (1933-2019): from SNCC organizer to mayor

How did Unita Blackwell join the movement?

When SNCC organizers Charlie Cobb and Ivanhoe Donaldson were run out of neighboring Sharkey County, Unita Blackwell was the first Black person they met in Mayersville. She ran a small store there, let them use her phone and introduced them to Henry Sias, a local NAACP leader. Issaquena County, along the Mississippi River south of Greenville, had no registered Black voters. She soon became the leader of the movement there.

What did she do in 1964 and 1965?

In 1964 she became a full-time SNCC field secretary, was elected to the executive committee of the Freedom Democratic Party, and went to Atlantic City as part of the MFDP delegation. She took people to the courthouse to register. On April 1, 1965, she sued the Issaquena County Board of Education after some 300 Black students, her son among them, were suspended for wearing freedom pins to school. The SNCC Digital Gateway says the case, which also sought school desegregation, eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

How did she become mayor?

In 1976 she became its first Black and first woman mayor, and the first Black woman elected mayor in Mississippi. The Mississippi Encyclopedia says she and others arranged the town's incorporation that year so it could apply for government grants. She served until 1993 and won the office again in 1997, serving until 2001.

How is she remembered?

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave her one of its fellowships in 1992, and her memoir, Barefootin': Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom, appeared in 2006. She died on May 13, 2019. Her path from a Delta store counter to city hall shows one of the outcomes Fannie Lou Hamer fought for: Black Mississippians winning local office after the Voting Rights Act.