Unita Zelma Blackwell (March 18, 1933 – May 13, 2019) was an American civil rights activist who was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor in the U.S. state of Mississippi.

[1] Blackwell was a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi.

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

[7] In 1936, when she was three years old, 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.

During the summer months she would leave West Helena and live with her grandfather and grandmother in Lula, where she helped plant and harvest cotton.

[12] Blackwell spent a majority of her early years chopping cotton for $3 a day,[13] in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee as well as peeling tomatoes in Florida.

A few months later, the Blackwells moved into the shotgun house that his grandmother had left to him, in Mayersville, Mississippi, a town of nearly five hundred people.

[14][17] The Blackwell family eventually was able to build a larger brick home, but she wanted to keep the smaller house inherited from Jeremiah's grandmother.

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

[25] After losing her job, Blackwell recounts her family's means of survival: We had a garden; people would give us a pot of beans... SNCC was supposed to send us eleven dollars every two weeks.

And then she ran and got the book and [registered me].As a result of Blackwell's involvement with voter registration campaigns, she and other activists endured constant harassment.

[29] After meeting Fannie Lou Hamer in the summer of 1964 and hearing her experiences in the Civil Rights Movement, Blackwell decided to join the SNCC.

[33][34] They were eventually offered two at-large seats but refused that compromise; the event, particularly Hamer's nationally televised testimony before the credentialing committee, brought the party and the Mississippi civil rights movement into the public eye.

In the 1970s, through the National Council of Negro Women, she worked on a development program for low-income housing and encouraged people across the country "to build their own homes".

[46][49] Blackwell obtained federal grant money that provided Mayersville with police and fire protection, a public water system, paved streets, housing accommodations for the elderly and disabled, and other infrastructure.

[46] Although Blackwell did not attend high school, the National Rural Fellows Program helped her gain admittance to the University of Massachusetts by awarding her a scholarship and providing her credit based on her activism and life experience.

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

In January 2008, Blackwell disappeared from her hotel in Atlanta while attending commemoration ceremonies for Martin Luther King Jr. Later, she was found at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.