Unita Blackwell
Activist and the first black female mayor in Mississippi
UNITA BLACKWELL, who has died aged 86, was a sharecroppers’ daughter who played an active role in the civil rights movement and became reportedly the first black woman to be elected as a mayor in Mississippi.
She was born UZ Brown at Lula, Mississippi, on March 18 1933. Both her parents, Willie and Virda Mae, were sharecroppers and when she was three, Willie fled the plantation after confronting the owner about rudeness to Virda Mae.
The family were forced to move around to find work. UZ kept her unusual name, which had been given to her by an uncle, until the sixth grade, when a teacher told her she needed a proper name: they decided together on Unita Zelda.
After her parents separated because of religious differences, Unita and her mother went to live with relatives in Arkansas in search of a better education: Mississippi schools for black children at the time concentrated on farming skills. By 14 she had left school to earn money for her family.
She married Jeremiah Blackwell, a US Army cook, and settled in Mayersville, Mississippi. In 1964 she became active in the civil rights movement when two activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) held meetings in her church urging African-americans to register to vote.
While Unita Blackwell and others were waiting outside the courthouse to register, they were racially abused by a group of local farmers and had to leave. It was, recalled Unita, the “turning point” in her life. The following day the Blackwells were both sacked when their boss heard they had tried to register.
Those permitted to take the registration test, including Unita Blackwell, failed – the test was rigged – but she eventually passed after three attempts. She joined the SNCC as a project director, overseeing voter-registration campaigns. The following year she and others sued the local school board when 300 pupils, including her son, were suspended for wearing badges supporting civil rights.
Unita Blackwell also worked as a community development specialist with the National Council of Negro Women, and in 1967,
a group of senators including Robert Kennedy of New York visited Mississippi to investigate poverty. “The whole county is poor,” she told them. “We don’t have a factory – nothing but plantations. We have children who have never had a glass of milk.”
In 1976 she was elected mayor of Mayersville. During her five-year term she improved housing and services, and became a voice for rural development. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter invited her to an energy summit at Camp David.
After stepping down as mayor, with financial support from a rural fellowship she completed a Master’s in regional planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
From 1973, following an invitation from Shirley Maclaine, Unita Blackwell went on 16 diplomatic trips to China, and was president of the Us-china Peoples Friendship Association for six years.
She was president of the National Conference of Black Mayors from 1990 to 1992, at which time she was also a fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
In 1992 she received a $350,000 Macarthur Foundation grant for her work on housing and water services. The following year she unsuccessfully ran for Congress.
Unita Blackwell remained true to her rural roots. “People in urban areas seem to think … we’re backward,” she said. “We don’t have all the push-buttons, but anyone who lives with the land and is moved by the vibrations of the air has a real feeling for life.”
After her first marriage ended in divorce, Unita Blackwell married Willie Wright; that marriage was also dissolved. She is survived by her son.
Unita Blackwell, born March 18 1933, died May 13 2019