Unita Blackwell, a civil rights activist and the first black female mayor in Mississippi, died Monday in Biloxi. She was 86.
Born in 1933 to sharecroppers, Blackwell had to leave Mississippi as a child for Arkansas, as black kids in the Mississippi Delta at the time were not always allowed to attend school, Mississippi Today reports. She married and moved to Florida, but returned to Mississippi in 1962 and became active in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics. Blackwell served as the project director and field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and said she was jailed at least 70 times for trying to get black people registered to vote in Mississippi.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Honda and Nissan in merger talksSpeed Read The companies are currently Japan's second and third-biggest automakers, respectively
-
Taylor Swift wraps up record-shattering Eras tourSpeed Read The pop star finally ended her long-running tour in Vancouver, Canada
-
Drake claims illegal boosting, defamationSpeed Read The rapper accused Universal Music of boosting Kendrick Lamar's diss track and said UMG allowed him to be falsely accused of pedophilia
-
'Wicked' and 'Gladiator II' ignite holiday box officeSpeed Read The combination of the two movies revitalized a struggling box office
-
Jussie Smollet conviction overturned on appealSpeed Read The Illinois Supreme Court overturned the actor's conviction on charges of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself in 2019
-
Quincy Jones, music icon, is dead at 91Speed Read The legendary producer is perhaps best known as the architect behind Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'
-
Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter, is dead at 88Speed Read The musician wrote hit songs for Janis Joplin and Johnny Cash before starring in Hollywood movies
-
Shannen Doherty, star of '90210,' dies at 53Speed Read The 'Charmed' actress was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015
