By Ayesha K. Mustafaa,
Special to The Mississippi Link,
While Women’s History Month 2025 is wrapping up, its pages continue to expand with profiles of extraordinaire women who impact in positive ways the lives of the most vulnerable. We are forever grateful to Mississippi women like Ida B. Wells and Fannie Lou Hamer, as it is their spirits that motivate us to continue lifting up Mississippi women.
So to put an exclamation mark on the year 2025 month’s closing, we present a “Profile in Faith, Courage, Hard Work and High Thinking,” the works of Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald. She is a soldier of “The Cause,” an advocate for the oppressed and a beacon of hope to new generations of leaders, encouraging them by example, to continue making strides and impacting lives for a better Mississippi life.
Try to get Fitzgerald to talk about herself and she quickly deflects to her mother and father – Zenova and W. E. (William Eugene) Garrett. She resonates her parents’ strong points – educate the people and protect the people’s right to represent themselves.
Zenova was a teacher in the Madison County School system for forty years and was elected justice of the peace in Madison County, serving 8 years. W. E. owned and operated a saw mill plant, providing employment for the Farmhaven, MS community. He was the first Black man to be elected election commissioner in Madison County, MS. He and was the conscience of defense for the downtrodden – whoever they were, any hour of the day or night, no matter the apparent dangers of standing up against intense racism.
Fitzgerald was born in rural Madison County on her family farm, which she describes as a “village” of extended family members.
Her academic successes reflect Fitzgerald’s brilliance. She explains her love for learning as her efforts to escape the harshness of farm life. Interestingly, this was a time when 70% of Madison County’s land was owned by African Americans.
Fitzgerald explains her upbringing: “My mother, an elementary teacher, was a task master at school and at home. I learned early the only thing that allowed me to be excused from farm work was reading. So, I read a lot. I read the Old Farmer’s Almanac when I was 8 or 9 years old, which introduced me to the influences of nature and astronomy.”
She explains how she paid attention to growing seasons and the weather, things the small farms relied on, and listening to “grown up conversations” about growing conditions. These became traits you see tracking through her careers.
With so much natural talent, certainly Fitzgerald could have “escaped” to better pastures but she refuses to give up on her home and her people.
In her profile as a member of the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic and Social Justice (SRBWI), she was asked, “What encourages you in your work?” Her response: “My greatest encouragement comes from watching people, especially young people of all races and genders, stepping up to become change agents. To see the seeds of our work flourish and feel that the next generation got this.”
Then she is asked: “Tell us about a moment when you felt discouraged and how you overcame it.” She responds: “I suppose if I were to look back over time to respond to a moment when I have been most discouraged, I would have to say that in today’s environment, it is not any one moment – but the realization that gains made over decades were rolling backward at warped speed.
“These things could have been overwhelming but for my deep faith in a higher power and my determination to fight against and forge through any weapon formed against what is right and fair.”
With her deep faith in a Higher Power, she also gains fortitude in her mentors; and asked what she was reading, her response: “I am reflecting on the autobiography and rural development treatise titled ‘Barefootin,’ tracing the life of the Honorable Unita Blackwell, the first Black woman mayor in Mississippi, and namesake for SRBWI’s Unita Blackwell Young Women’s Leadership Institute.
Fitzgerald has devoted her life to the pursuit of justice and equality. As director of the Children’s Defense Fund’s (CDF) Southern Regional Office, since 1995, she has placed special emphasis on education, including early childhood education, children’s healthcare access, and breaking the insidious cradle to prison pipeline pattern, which is all too prevalent in communities of color.
Her CDF scope encompasses the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana. Under her direction, the Children’s Defense Fund released nine policy changes that could help lift 5.5 million children across the country out of poverty. Before CDF, she worked for The American Friends Service Committee – a Quaker organization.
She is the regional administrator for the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative for Economic & Social Justice (SRBWI), which operates in 77 counties across the Black Belts of Alabama, Southwest Georgia and the Mississippi Delta with a network of over 2,500 Black women and young women.
Fitzgerald received a Bachelor of Science degree from Tougaloo College, a Master of Arts in Rural Development from Antioch University (Midwest) with additional studies at the University of California at Davis; and honorary membership to Pi Alpha Alpha, the National Honor Society for Public Affairs & Administration from Mississippi State University.
Over the years she received many awards. In 2024 Fitzgerald received the Randle L. Pollard Leadership and Unity Award from the General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Mississippi and the Dr. Dorothy Irene Height Award from Metro Jackson section National Council of Negro Women, Inc.
She is the proud mother of four children: Rashida, Yusef, Layla and Joi, a daunting grandma and great grandma.
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