Unita Blackwell

Unita Blackwell is a fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In the 1960s she served as a project director for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was a member of the Freedom Democratic Party that crashed the 1964 Democratic convention. In 1976, she was elected mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi, becoming the first black woman mayor in the state; she served for twenty years and still resides there. At the age of fifty, she received a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts. In 1992, the MacArthur Foundation named her a fellow and recipient of its "genius" grant. Unita holds four honorary doctorates and has received numerous awards for her contributions to human rights.