31 Facts About Unita Blackwell

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

Unita Blackwell's grandfather had been murdered by a white plantation boss.

In 1936, when she was three years old, Unita 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.

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

Unita 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.

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

Unita Blackwell had to quit school to earn for her family.

Unita Blackwell was 25 when she first met Jeremiah Blackwell, a cook for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

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

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

Unita 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.

Unita Blackwell's group stayed there all day, but only two of them were able to take the test.

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

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

Unita Blackwell attempted to pass the voter registration test three times over the next few months.

Unita Blackwell was involved in the introduction of Head Start for black children in 1965 in the Mississippi Delta, a project led by Child Development Group of Mississippi.

Unita Blackwell helped open Freedom Schools in Issaquena County to resolve the issue.

In 1979 Unita Blackwell was appointed to the US National Commission on the International Year of the Child.

Unita Blackwell was elected mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi, in 1976 and held this office until 2001, making her the first female African-American mayor in Mississippi.

Unita Blackwell gained national attention by traveling across the country to promote the construction of low-income housing.

Unita Blackwell served on the Democratic National Committee and as co-chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

In late 1982, Unita Blackwell went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and received a Master of Regional Planning.

From 1990 to 1992, Unita Blackwell was president of the National Conference of Black Mayors.

Unita Blackwell became a voice for rural housing and development and, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter invited her to an energy summit at Camp David.

Unita Blackwell was awarded a $350,000 MacArthur Fellowship genius grant in 1992, for her part in creating the Deer River housing development among other creative solutions to housing and infrastructure problems in her state.

Unita Blackwell ran for Congress in 1993, but she was defeated by Bennie Thompson in the primary.

In January 2008, Unita Blackwell disappeared from her hotel in Atlanta while attending commemoration ceremonies for Martin Luther King Jr.

Unita Blackwell was reported as having been in the early stages of dementia.

In 2014, it was reported that Unita Blackwell lived in a nursing home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Unita Blackwell died at a hospital in Ocean Springs, Mississippi on May 13,2019, from heart and lung ailments and complications of dementia, as reported by her son Jeremiah Unita Blackwell Jr.

Unita Blackwell married twice, first to Jeremiah Unita Blackwell, from whom she was later divorced.