Unita Blackwell

Unita Blackwell, born in a sharecropper's shack in Lula, Mississippi, on March 18, 1933, became a SNCC activist in 1964 and represented the MFDP at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She was instrumental in Head Start, MACE, and the National Council of Negro Women and served as the first female black mayor of Mayersville 1976-1993. In addition to many human rights awards, Blackwell was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1993., Unita Blackwell's birth name was U. Z. Brown, She moved with her mother from Lula to Memphis and then to West Helena, Arkansas. A teacher encouraged her to make speeches in the school assembly and told her she could accomplish something but told her that she needed a real name, that "U. Z." was no name for a person with such potential. Together they chose Unita Zelma. She married Jeremiah Blackwell of Mayersville, and they had one child, Jeremiah Blackwell, Jr., In 1964, when Blackwell tried to register to vote, she was turned away from the courthouse, threatened by armed white men in trucks, and fired from her job. Stokely Carmichael, in charge of SNCC in the Second Congressional District, asked her to be a SNCC field representative. She began organizing meetings in her county and surrounding ones and locating preachers who weren't afraid to allow meetings in their churches. She learned the techniques of civil disobedience-how to remain calm in the midst of verbal or physical abuse. The local Klan began to throw homemade bombs into her yard. Once she found her child holding one he had found; she eased it out of his hand and threw it far away. "Nighttime was the worst time. I never slept at night." , In early 1965 she testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission about her difficulties in registering to vote. In June of that year she was one of 482 arrested for taking part in a march to protest a special session of the Mississippi legislature bent on avoiding the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. The protesters were jailed in livestock barns at the state fairgrounds, where many were beaten and otherwise abused., She was instrumental in the creation of MACE-Mississippi Action for Community Education and the Head Start program. She traveled the state and the nation as a National Council of Negro Women community organizer 1967-1975. In 1976 she became the first black female mayor in Mississippi, serving as the mayor of Mayersville until 1993. In 1976 she was also appointed to President Jimmy Carter's Presidential Advisory Committee, and she worked to mobilize the Delta behind Governor William Winter's education bill. Blackwell ran for Congress in 1993 but lost to her friend Bennie Thompson. That year she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. She was presented four honorary doctorates and many other awards for her contributions to human rights.