James Young is the first African American mayor of the small town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, a considerable achievement considering Philadelphia’s history during the Civil Rights movement of the 1970s. Philadelphia’s population of 7,000 is now 51% African-American and 46% white.
Young was one of eight children in his family. He was born in Stallo, an unincorporated area, a few miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi where his parents were cotton farmers. Young James was the first African American student to desegregate his elementary school. He later attended high school in Philadelphia and, after graduation, became a paramedic in 1997.
Philadelphia is infamous for the murder of three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, in the summer of 1964. The three men were abducted by members of the local Ku Klux Klan, tortured, and murdered. When local and state authorities did nothing to bring the murderers to justice, the federal government stepped in and six local white men were eventually convicted on civil rights violations and served short jail terms.
By the 2000s many things had changed in Philadelphia. The schools and police force were desegregated. However, political power remained mostly in white hands. James Young eventually became director of his emergency medical training unit. Always active in his church he also became an ordained Pentecostal minister in 1991. As the director of his EMT unit, Young attended a county supervisor’s meeting and requested additional funds to purchase needed equipment for the local paramedics. His request was ignored. This incident led to James’s political activism. He ran for a seat on the Neshoba County Board of Supervisors, was elected and served as a county supervisor from 1992 to 2007.
In 2004 he became one of the original members of the Philadelphia Coalition, a multi-racial group of local citizens who were determined to honor the memory of the victims of the 1964 killings. The Philadelphia Coalition. The Coalition also successfully lobbied for the pass of a bill which mandated implementation of a civil rights curriculum in every K-12 School in Mississippi.
In 2009 James Young decided to run for mayor. Young’s opponent for the Democratic nomination was three-term incumbent Mayor Rayburn Waddell. Young defeated Waddell, ran unopposed in the general election because there was no Republican candidate, and was inaugurated the first African American mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi on July 3, 2009. He has been mayor since 2009. In 2021 Young won his 4th term in office garnering 62% of the vote.
Young’s goals as mayor have been to reduce crime, improve the city’s infrastructure, and increase police presence in the area. He believes Philadelphia should honor its past while trying to overcome it.
James Young is married to Sheryl J. Davis Young. They have a daughter, Shanda Young-Ginetedam.
