Friday, June 1, 2001

Amelda Arnold is the first female and first African-American mayor of Port Gibson, Miss. She won last year in a seven-way race, getting 293 votes. She grew up on the Alcorn State University campus in Lorman, where eight Central New York teens stayed this week. Arnold spoke with Post-Standard staff writer Teri Weaver.

I moved to Alcorn in 1961. I graduated there in 1977. My parents worked out there forever. Mom worked in the library.

Charles Evers led a great presentation down to Alcorn. The National Guard came in and did tear gas. My dad was a security officer at Alcorn. His first thing he did was to try to get us to Port Gibson to stay with our grandparents. But we couldn't get there.

So we put towels under our doors to stop the tear gas. And Charles Evers was talking with the students and with his group of his supporters. Tear gas was sprayed, trying to get the students to go home.

I took elementary education, and I never taught one day of school. I worked at a manufacturing company, and once owned my own manufacturing company. We made cable harnesses for Bell South.

I've never been in politics and never had the desire to get into politics. But I thought I had a chance to make a difference. We have a lot of things that we need. We want to have something for our young people to do. And of course everybody has money problems. We've lost a lot of jobs. And we haven't had any move in, either.

We also tried to develop a good tourism department here in Port Gibson. Port Gibson is one of the places where Grant and his troops camped out. It was a town too beautiful to burn.

When I used to ride the school bus, there was a whole lot of cotton. Now, a wood-floor manufacturing place, oil mill, three or four lumber-log companies, a company that makes plastic dishes, the nuclear power plant. There's some farming - corn, soybeans and very little cotton nowadays.