We’re building a Unita Blackwell museum, y’all!

Join us in designing a space of learning, organizing and history-making for future generations of young Black women  

Restoring Unita Blackwell's home is about ensuring the space is prepared for what’s to come: integrating preservation, collections care, civic education and the arts.  image credit: Natalie A. Collier

There’s something sacred about standing on land where history bent. There’s something about driving up to the corner lot on Rosebud St. and Unita Blackwell Dr. in Mayersville, Miss. (and I’ve been too many to count at this point), that grounds me in reality and sacrifice while it, simultaneously, invites me to fly. As the structures on the property deteriorated over the years, what others might have seen as an eyesore, I saw as possibility.  

Restoring this complex isn’t about preservation for nostalgia’s sake. The work of restoration is the work of repair. And in this case, it’s narrative correction by centering a rural Southern Black woman. Her porch. Kitchen table. Friends. And an understanding that political power can begin at a kitchen table and expand beyond the boundaries of towns and states. 

The Blackwell complex at 139 Rosebud St. is compromised of the “Freedom House,” the “Mayoral Home” and one other property The Honorable Unita Blackwell acquired along the way. In many ways, time has stopped there and we, at The Lighthouse | Black Girl Projects, in consistent partnership with Jeremiah Blackwell Jr. (Blackwell’s only child), Southway Foundation, Belinda Stewart Architects and the residents of Mayersville we are working to restore the and build on the legacy of the first Black woman elected mayor in Mississippi.  

The Freedom House, in particular, matters because it wasn’t merely a residence. The shotgun house functioned as a place where people gathered, strategized and organized. Where Mama Fannie (Lou Hamer), as Jeremiah calls her, and his mother sat, bemoaning the ways of white folks and, occasionally, their husbands, though they were both well ahead of their time, supporting their wives’ callings.  

We’re building a Unita Blackwell museum, y’all! 

The Freedom House will be rehabilitated as a museum and interpretive space — a site where visitors can encounter the story of grassroots organizing in the Mississippi Delta, the role of Black women in democratic expansion, and the everyday courage that reshaped and continues to mold this nation. 

The Mayoral Home, a younger and equally significant property within the historic designation, will be restored as a community-centered gathering space — a meeting hall and civic commons. A place for organizing. For learnin

A group of young women sort Unita Blackwell's archives. image credit: Patricia Rangel 

g. For memory. 

Together these structures form a living campus of Black women’s political history. 

While there was 15 years of dreaming, the project officially began March 2022 when The Lighthouse got Blackwell’s properties added to the National Register of Historic Places. Since that milestone, a few others have followed, including securing grants from both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Service.  

Restoring this complex isn’t about preservation for nostalgia’s sake. The work of restoration is the work of repair. And in this case, it’s narrative correction by centering a rural Southern Black woman. Her porch. Kitchen table. Friends. And an understanding that political power can begin at a kitchen table and expand beyond the boundaries of towns and states. Sites like this are often overshadowed by larger, more formal landmarks. Smaller places like this one, though, were not only essential to day-to-day work of building and sustaining movements but, arguably, more important. Therefore,  

Happy Birthday, Ms. Blackwell!  

Nearly 20 years ago, when talking with a few young women about the Civil Rights Movement, one of them asked, “Where were the women?” I loved this question because it immediately reminded me of a question I asked a Mississippi History teacher in 10th “Where are all the Black people?” With that, if you’ve followed The Lighthouse for any small amount of time, you know we close our office every year in. honor of Unita Blackwell’s birthday. (We do so for Fannie Lou Hamer too.) When I started The Lighthouse 10 years ago, I knew was something we’d do.  

We remember Unita Blackwell, a woman who, akin to so many others whose name will never make it to national prominence, was born in the Mississippi Delta. She decided poor, Black, rural women deserved to do more than get by. We remember a sharecropper’s daughter who spoke, alongside Hamer at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. Her political advocacy turned electoral politics when she was elected mayor in 1976 where she served, not one but  six terms, until 2001. She spent subsequent years as an advisor to U.S. presidents and as president of the US-China Peoples Friendship Association, among other things. We remember a freedom fighter who believed land, home and political power weren’t abstractions but tangible realities and tools for dignity.   

We close our office not as a gesture of pause but as an act of alignment. An alignment with Unita Blackwell’s courage to fight, refusal to quit an insistence that she and her community deserved better.  

And we invite you to align with us. Preserving the Blackwell Complex isn’t just about honoring Unita Blackwell. It’s about ensuring when the next generation of Black girls asks, “Where were all the women?” there’s a space we can take them, open the door and say: Here. 

To learn more about how you can partner with our preservation efforts, from investing in the rehabilitation fund to contributing artifacts and oral histories, sponsoring a room or exhibit to offering in-kind professional services, email me at ncollier@loveblackgirls.org.