Unita Blackwell

Unita Zelma Blackwell (March 18, 1933 – May 13, 2019) was an American civil rights activist who was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor in the U.S. state of Mississippi.

Blackwell was a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi.

She was also a founder of the US–China Peoples Friendship Association, a group dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between the United States and China.

She also served as an advisor to six US presidents: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

Blackwell was born U. Z. Brown on March 18, 1933, in Lula, Mississippi, to sharecroppers Virda Mae and Willie Brown.

Blackwell's uncle gave her the name "U. Z.", which she kept until she was in the sixth grade, when her teacher told her that she needed "a real name, not just initials".

Blackwell and her teacher decided on Unita Zelma.

Blackwell and her parents lived in Lula.

Her grandfather had been murdered by a white plantation boss.

In 1936, when she was three years old, Blackwell's father left the plantation on which he worked and fled to Memphis, Tennessee, fearing for his life after he confronted his boss about speaking to his wife.

Blackwell and her mother left the plantation to live with him soon afterward.

Blackwell's family traveled frequently in search of work.

On June 20, 1938, Blackwell's parents separated due to religious differences.

Blackwell and her mother went to West Helena, Arkansas, to live with Blackwell's great aunt so that she could have access to a better education.

A quality education in Mississippi was not an option for Blackwell because the schools there were centered on the cultivation of crops and the plantation system.

Black children were allowed to attend school for only two months at a time, before they were expected to go back to the cotton fields.

While living in West Helena, Blackwell often visited her father in Memphis.

During the summer months she would leave West Helena and live with her grandfather and grandmother in Lula, where she helped plant and harvest cotton.

Blackwell spent a majority of her early years chopping cotton for $3 a day, in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee as well as peeling tomatoes in Florida.

She was 14 when she finished the eighth grade, the final year of school at Westside, a school in West Helena for black children.

Blackwell had to quit school to earn for her family.

She was 25 when she first met Jeremiah Blackwell, a cook for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A few years later, they traveled to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and were married by a justice of the peace.

In January 1957, Blackwell became extremely ill and was taken to the hospital in West Helena where she was pronounced dead.

She was later found to be alive in her hospital room, and claims to have had a near-death experience.

On July 2, 1957, the couple's only son, Jeremiah Blackwell Jr. (Jerry), was born.

In 1960, Jeremiah's grandmother, "Miss Vashti", died.

A few months later, the Blackwells moved into the shotgun house that his grandmother had left to him, in Mayersville, Mississippi, a town of nearly five hundred people.

The Blackwell family eventually was able to build a larger brick home, but she wanted to keep the smaller house inherited from Jeremiah's grandmother.

"I am grateful for this house ... I kept it because it reminded me of where I came from."

After settling in Mayersville, Blackwell began to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Blackwell first got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in June 1964, when two activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came to Mayersville and, in the church she belonged to, held meetings concerning the rights of African Americans to vote.

The following week she and seven others went to the courthouse to take a voter registration test so that they could vote.

While they were outside the courthouse waiting to take the test, a group of white farmers from the area heard what was happening and tried to scare them off.

Her group stayed there all day, but only two of them were able to take the test.

The racism that they experienced, Blackwell says, made that day "the turning point" of her life.

Jeremiah and Unita lost their jobs the next day after their employer found out that they had been part of the group seeking to register to vote.

After losing her job, Blackwell recounts her family's means of survival:

"We had a garden; people would give us a pot of beans... SNCC was supposed to send us eleven dollars every two weeks. My husband worked three months of the year for the Army Corps of Engineers, then we'd buy lots of canned goods"

Barefootin', Blackwell's autobiography, published in 2006, charts her activism.