Unita Blackwell (1933 - 2019)

Sat Mar 18, 1933

Image

Image: **

Unita Zelma Blackwell, born on this day in 1933, was an American civil rights activist who became the first black woman to be elected mayor in the state of Mississippi. Blackwell also served as a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi.

Blackwell was responsible for one of the first desegregation cases in Mississippi, filing a suit, Blackwell v. Issaquena County Board of Education, against the Issaquena County Board of Education after the principal suspended more than 300 black children - including her son - for wearing pins that depicted a black hand and a white hand clasped with the word “SNCC” below them.

Although the courts ruled that the students could not wear the pins, they also ruled that the school district in question must desegregate. Blackwell’s son and approximately 50 other children boycotted the school because of its decision to not let the children wear the SNCC freedom pins.

As a result, Blackwell and some other activists in the community formed “Freedom Schools” in Issaquena County to resolve the issue. The Freedom Schools were popular and remained open until the school system finally integrated in 1970.

“Movements are not radical. Movements are the American way. A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women’s voting. The Populist movement, the Progressive movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women’s movement - the examples go on and on of ‘little people’ getting together and telling the truth about their lives. They made our government act.”

- Unita Blackwell