JACKSON, Miss.— Mississippi Sen. Kamesha Mumford’s first memory of Flonzie Brown-Wright was hearing the civil rights activist’s name in her fourth-grade classroom at Holy Child Jesus School in Canton, Mississippi, she recalled during a press conference on Aug. 28.
Her teacher, Mrs. Starling, told the students that Martin Luther King, Jr. had called Brown-Wright—the NAACP branch manager in Canton at the time—to help organize food and lodging in Canton for 3,000 civil rights protestors after the 1966 March Against Fear in which James Meredith was shot.
“I knew she had to be afraid. I mean, this was 1966—we were at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a time when there was too much violence and way too much fear,” Mumford said during the press conference. “But there she is, saying yes. And as Mrs. Starling told us that story, I imagined that she had to be afraid for her life and afraid for her family. But then I realized courage does not mean you’re never afraid. Courage means that you decide that something is important enough to speak up for.”
Now, Mississippi is honoring the civil rights leader by dedicating Sept. 15, 2026, as Flonzie Brown-Wright Statewide Voter Registration Day, lawmakers announced during a press conference. Each year, the state recognizes a voter registration day to encourage Mississippians in all 82 counties to get their names put on the voting rolls, educate themselves about the candidates and show up to vote in November.
“I’m almost speechless,” Brown-Wright said to reporters on Aug. 28 when reacting to the voter registration day named in her honor. “You do the work, and to have people come together to honor your name says to me that the work I have done for many years has not gone unnoticed. I wasn’t doing it for the publicity, neither fame. I was doing it because I had a commitment to doing it, I had an opportunity and I had a responsibility to do it.”
‘You Didn’t Pass’
Flonzie Brown-Wright grew up in Canton attending public schools and graduated from Tougaloo College in Jackson. She married, moved to California and had three children. Divorced by 1962, Brown-Wright moved back to Mississippi after watching the 1961 Freedom Rides on television.
In Biloxi, she was working as a waitress when she met civil rights leaders and attorneys Carsie Hall, Jack H. Young and Jess Brown. After Medgar Evers’ 1963 assassination, Brown-Wright joined the Civil Rights Movement to focus on voting rights, becoming Canton’s NAACP’s branch manager that same year.
She attempted to register to vote, but her application was rejected because she did not know the definition of “habeas corpus.” That did not deter her—she studied the U.S. Constitution for a month and passed the voter registration test on her second try.
“I pulled out the question, ‘define Habeas Corpus,’” Brown-Wright said about the test in a 2021 interview with NBC News. “I had absolutely no idea what it meant. But I wrote something because I was hoping that if he was having a good day, that he would allow me to pass. And so when I finished the questionnaire—and I even dressed up that day—he looked at me, and he looked at my questionnaire, and I finally said, ‘Well, how did I do?’ Well very angrily, he said, ‘Well, you didn’t pass.’”
Under Jim Crow, states like Mississippi had election commissioners conduct literacy tests on people attempting to register to vote as a way to prevent Black people from registering and voting. The 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed these practices.
That moment was when Brown-Wright decided to run for office, she told NBC News.
Brown-Wright helped thousands of Mississippians register to vote during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Then, in 1968, Canton voters elected Brown-Wright to serve as election commissioner, and she became the first Black woman elected to a public office in Mississippi since Reconstruction. In her role, she monitored elections, trained poll workers, supervised registrars, held educational workshops for voters and sued the Elections Board for discriminating against Black political candidates and poll workers.
The civil rights pioneer served as the vice president of Millsaps College’s Institute of Politics from 1969 to 1973, before working for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1974 to 1989. She published her memoir, “Looking Back to Move Ahead (An Experience of History and Hope)” in 1994.
In 2016, Canton named the Flonzie Brown Goodloe Courtroom in Canton City Hall in her honor. The same year, the FBI honored her with the Director’s Community Leadership Award. Brown-Wright was a board member of the Mississippi Humanities Council and a founding member of Women of Progress. She also helped with the creation of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum that opened in 2017.
“I tell people all the time, ‘You’re not where you are because somebody thought it was a nice idea. You’re where you are because our ancestors, my generation, fought for them to be there.’ So, we owe them. We owe them. And this is how we pay them by coming together in this generation,” Brown-Wright told reporters at the Aug. 28 press conference.
The New Generation’s Responsibility
Pauline Rogers, cofounder of the RECH Foundation that supports formerly incarcerated people in Mississippi, said it was important to give Brown-Wright her flowers while she was still alive to see it.
“Biblically, honor is about labor, sacrifice to serve and carrying the weight,” she said at the press conference. “Jesus carried the weight of glory; she carried the weight of voting and what it meant in this state. And that’s what this day is about: To remember that, to honor that, to remember that, to acknowledge that it is a gift worthy of her legacy.”
Mississippians today can honor civil rights activists like Brown-Wright by registering to vote, educating their community and running for office, Rogers said.
Vanessa Edmond called her relative, Brown-Wright, a “Mississippi civil rights pioneer who dedicated her life to fighting for the right of every person to have a voice and vote.” Edmond said at the press conference it is now “our responsibility” to get Mississippians engaged with the voting process since Brown-Wright, 84, has formed a path for the next generation.
Brown-Wright hugged New Hope Baptist Church Pastor Jerry Young as she smiled while watching family members, lawmakers and supporters speak about her career as a civil rights activist. She said despite what President Donald Trump does to and in the White House, she is “not going back” to a time when Black people had to fight to be able to vote.
“Don’t vote for yourself: Vote for your aunties and your uncles and your grandparents who couldn’t vote, who couldn’t read, who couldn’t write because they would not allow in this state them to attend school,” Brown-Wright said during the press conference.
Waikinya Clanton, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, gave a reminder that despite Brown-Wright’s efforts, Mississippi still has barriers to voting like a 30-day voter registration deadline, no early voting, limited mail-in voting options and new voter identification requirements.
“If Fannie Lou Hamer could demand her voice be heard, we can vote,” Clanton said at the press conference. “If Medgar Evers could organize in a time where this was a dark day for Mississippi, we can vote. If Dr. King could dream, then we could vote. And if Dr. Flonzie Brown-Wright could register thousands of voters right here in Mississippi, then I think we should be able to do the same.”
Flonzie Brown-Wright Statewide Voter Registration Day is part of the groundwork to ensure Mississippians are prepared to vote, she added.
“It’s also our opportunity to go into every county, every church, every college campus, every neighborhood, every barber shop, every beauty salon in every community and ask these simple questions,” she said at the press conference. “Have you checked your voter registration? Is your neighbor registered to vote? Does your family know what’s on the ballot? And most importantly, are you prepared to vote? Because democracy cannot be a spectator sport and freedom cannot survive on somebody else’s participation.”
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