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Unita Zelma Blackwell was born March 18, 1933 on a plantation in Lula, Mississippi, where her parents picked cotton. The same life awaited her; there were few other options for a Black child in the Delta. At fourteen, she quit school at the end of eighth grade to work in the fields.
“Life was just a matter of surviving.” Yet something made her think there was more: A conviction that “something is wrong with this world we live in.” In 1957, following the birth of her son, she fell into a coma. As she hovered on the side of death, she felt God speak to her: “You shall not die. You has work to do.” She recovered and set out on “a process of looking” for her deeper purpose.
The turning point came in 1964 when organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came to her town and talked about registering to vote. She responded to the call, crossing a line of armed white men at the courthouse. She lost her job, but she crossed to the other side: “Overnight, I went from field hand to full-time freedom fighter.” Blackwell became an organizer for SNCC, participating in countless marches and demonstrations. She was arrested over seventy times and was one time held for eleven days with 1,100 demonstrators in a livestock pen, sleeping on the concrete floor, subjected to abusive strip searches. “I don’t think most people today … have any idea of the price that ordinary Black Mississippians have paid, she said.
She was selected a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) delegate and traveled with other delegates to the Democratic National Convention in New Jersey to plead its case to be seated to represent Mississippi. Although the Convention failed to accommodate the MFDP, Blackwell continued her civil rights work. By 1967, she was a Community Development Specialist in Mississippi for the National Council of Negro Women.
In 1976 she was elected mayor of her town, Mayersville, becoming the first African American woman mayor in Mississippi. As mayor, Blackwell led the effort to pave streets and install street lights and sewers in the black section of Mayersville. She also spoke out on poor housing conditions which disproportionally affected her constituents. Blackwell was elected Chair of the National Conference of Black Mayors in 1989. She died on May 13, 2019.
QUOTE: “I was fearful; I was scared, but … I kept going anyway. . . . I say, well Lord, if I die, I am going to die trying; I’m going to die fighting for freedom.’” (Sources: Give Us This Day, May 2023, Liturgical Press and BlackPast.org) View a video here.