Johnny DuPree (born November 18, 1953) is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the first African-American mayor of Hattiesburg, Mississippi from 2001 to 2017.

[3] DuPree won the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State of Mississippi in the August 2019 primary,[4] but lost in the November 2019 general election.

[7] At the time, Robert Ingram, the executive director of economic development at the University of Southern Mississippi, predicted that DuPree would support locally owned small business while also being active in industrial recruitment.

[7] Despite damage to the city resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and a global recession in 2008, the health of Hattiesburg's small businesses remained steady during DuPree's tenure as mayor.

Although the federal response to the Katrina disaster resulted in many high-profile accusations of racism, DuPree was among those who emphasized the role of income disparity.

"[10] In the Democratic primary of the 2011 Mississippi gubernatorial election, DuPree faced businessman and future Clarksdale mayor Bill Luckett and two minor candidates.

[citation needed] In his 2013 mayoral re-election bid, DuPree faced fourth ward councilman Dave Ware, a Republican who ran as an independent, along with three minor candidates.

The jury initially found in favor of Ware in a 9–3 vote, the bare minimum for a verdict, however after Judge William Coleman polled the jurors, the count shifted to 8-4 and a mistrial was declared.

[15][16] In 2017, DuPree was defeated in a bid for a fifth consecutive term as mayor, losing to Toby Barker, a Republican member of the state House of Representatives, who ran as an independent.