Political Career and Late Life
Blackwell has been on 16 diplomatic missions to China since 1973. As part of her commitment to better relations between the United States and China, she was an officer in the US China Peoples Friendship Association, an association dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between the United States and China. Blackwell was elected Mayor of Mayersville in 1976 and held this office until 2001, making her the first female African-American mayor in Mississippi. As mayor, she oversaw the construction of several sets of public housing, the first time that federal housing had been built in Issaquena County. Blackwell has also served on the Democratic National Committee and as co-chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party. In late 1982 Blackwell went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and received a Master's Degree in Regional Planning.
As part of her community development efforts, she helped found Mississippi Action for Community Education, a community-development organization in Greenville, Mississippi. From 1990 to 1992, Blackwell was president of the National Conference of Black Mayors. Blackwell became a voice for rural housing and development, and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter invited her to an Energy Summit at Camp David. Blackwell was also awarded US$350,000, from a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. In January 2008 she disappeared from her hotel in Atlanta, and was found later at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. She was reported as having been in the early stages of dementia.
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