The Junction City School District hosted its third annual Black History Month program on Sunday evening with the theme “The First”. The program featured El Dorado Mayor Veronica Smith-Creer as the guest speaker along with Mayor Mildred Ferguson of Bernice, Louisiana.
Both women are the first African American and female mayor of their respective towns. The ceremony also recognized the first African American students, graduates, teachers and athletes of the Junction City School District.
After being welcomed, Ferguson spoke on how Black History Month is an educational experience for students with the chance to take pride in the collective historic accomplishments of African Americans.
“This is a time to honor our past, to appreciate our present and to look toward fulfilling our future,” Ferguson said. “Most of all Black History Month is a time of learning, reflection. A time to look at one another instead of looking up or down at one another.”
Smith-Creer spoke both to the adults and the students in the audience, telling them that it isn’t easy to be the first of anything. She used the metaphor of blazing a trail through the woods as a way to explain that there will be hardships.
“How many of you have taken a path before? Maybe a path in the woods and you realized that one time there was nothing there,” Smith-Creer said. “Maybe a path in the woods made you realize that one time it was covered by trees and someone had to come through there and blaze that path where you could easily walk it. Someone had to blaze a trail. Someone had to cut down some trees. Someone had to break down some barriers. In order to be first, you have to do that. You have to be willing to do that.”
Smith-Creer said in order for her to become mayor, a lot of things needed to happen first. She said she believes that everybody has a path that God has set them on, but that people need to be willing to walk the path that has been set for them.
“When we think about tomorrow’s leaders, we’re not just talking about the babies,” she said. “I’m 49 years old, so I was yesterday’s tomorrow’s leader. So it’s not just for the babies that we’re blazing trails. Sometimes it’s for people our age or older that we’re blazing that trail for.”
Smith-Creer said when she stepped up to run for mayor, nobody else looked like her. She was the first African American woman to run for the position. She said some people thought she was crazy for trying, or that she was just really confident. Smith-Creer said she’s both.
“I had people say I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning,” Smith-Creer said. “I like that one, that was a good one because, you know what, at the end of the day, this is what a snowball that’s been through hell looks like.”
When she ran for mayor, Smith-Creer said she wasn’t going to run a campaign, she was going to launch a movement. She said a campaign was about one thing, the position, but a movement was about the positioning of the whole city of El Dorado.
“Being the first of anything requires a movement,” she said. “To blaze a trail of any kind, it takes people working together, but it takes somebody deciding a trail needs to be here. Something needs to connect us here. Something needs to be here to get us from here to there. Somebody needs to decide that and once it’s been decided it needs to happen.”
Smith-Creer said another important part of blazing a trail is timing. She thought about running for mayor eight years ago, but said the timing, this time, was right for her.
“A lot of people were concerned about me running for mayor,” she said. “I had people say ‘you’re a woman, you’re the only woman in the race, they’re going to be so mean to you. They’re going to chew you up and spit you out.’ I thought it was really nice of them to be concerned, but my response to them was ‘I’m not thinned skinned. I can take come criticism.’”
Overall, Smith-Creer’s message about becoming a the first at anything is to not let other people make the decisions and to be OK with being different.
“You cannot let people make you over because if you let people start changing you, you are no longer authentic,” she said. “You are no longer who you were destined to set out to be. Don’t let people make you over. Don’t let people change who you are and what you stand for.”
Smith-Creer said people have told her to straighten her hair or not call her campaign a movement.
“That’s one thing about trailblazing, you do whatever is good for you,” Smith-Creer said. “You do what’s good for you because at the end of the day, when people were trying to tell me what I could say and how I could look and where I could go and what I could do, I couldn’t let people start changing me because if I did who would I be at the end of the day? If there’s anything you’re supposed to do … if you let people start changing you and you’re not who you set out to be then people own you. They keep changing you because that’s what you allowed them to do.”
“I stopped it in the beginning. A lot people didn’t like it, but this was my thing and this should be your thing. Win, lose or draw I’m going to do it being me. So if I win, I win as Veronica Smith-Creer. If I lose, I lose as Veronica Smith-Creer. But I will not win or lose as an imitation.”
Michael Shine may be reached at 870-862-6611 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook @MichaelAZShine for updates on Union County school news.