The family “still own[s] the 80 acres and intend[s] to keep the 80 acres,” Dr. Peterson said. She is the majority owner of their land, and makes a point of leasing the land to Black farmers in the town. Now in her seventies, she has spoken to her nephews about passing the acres she inherited down to them. 

In speaking of the white farmers who now own and lease land in Mound Bayou, Dr. Peterson trailed off. The encroachment of others in the historically all-Black community, though perhaps controversial, is nothing new. In the most recent mayoral race, in fact, one white candidate won 38 votes. “I’m figuring that one out, but nevertheless, he did,” she said dryly.

The history of Mound Bayou is deeply personal to Dr. Peterson. The town has long served as a safe haven for Black people: one in which she grew up free to roam her hometown as she pleased, unlike her counterparts in other, more segregated areas of the Delta. Until the mid-fifties, in fact, Mound Bayou was home to the only high school for Black students in the Delta, from Vicksburg, MS up to Memphis, TN. 

“Because we were all Black, we did not have to be told, ‘you can’t go in this place,’” Dr. Peterson said. No water fountain or building was off-limits. The world, at least within the confines of her hometown, was her oyster. 

After graduating from John F. Kennedy High School in 1965, Dr. Peterson attended college in Arkansas and Mississippi, later spending over two decades teaching in Michigan. She enjoyed a long, well-respected career in education, with a particular focus on special needs students. But she never forgot Mound Bayou. 

After 23 years of living away from home, Dr. Peterson realized her lifelong dream of returning to the Delta. Milburn J. Crowe, then the president of the Mound Bayou Historical Society, encouraged her to run for a seat on the Board of Alderman. She did, and earned the role of Senior Alderman in 2005 while serving simultaneously as the vice mayor of Mound Bayou. 

Asked what drove her to enter politics, Dr. Peterson laughed. “That’s a very good way to put it,” she said. “I was driven.” 

In 2017, Dr. Peterson was elected as the mayor of Mound Bayou, the second woman to assume the position in the town’s history. The role came with no shortage of challenges, chief among them the $700,000 of debt accumulated by the two mayors who preceded her. 

Undeterred, Dr. Peterson spent her four years in office working to pay off the debt. She helped the town acquire tax refund loans, raised funds from friends, family, and community members, and––in an act of startling selflessness––voluntarily relinquished four-fifths of her annual $30,000 mayoral salary to the town. “I’m retired, and the city didn’t need to have that bill,” she explained. 

Obtaining funds at any level––be it county, state, or federal––was invariably an uphill battle. The biggest problem, Dr. Peterson said, was that the small town of Mound Bayou often struggled to fulfill the match funding requirements of many grants. Match funding involves an external organization “matching” a proportion of the money raised by the town itself. As an example, Dr. Peterson pointed towards a hypothetical $400,000 “80/20 grant” that Mound Bayou would never successfully acquire, given that they lacked the $80,000 necessary to receive matching funds. 

Too often, Dr. Peterson stated, the funds for Bolivar County (in which Mound Bayou is situated) were diverted instead to the larger town of Cleveland, which is home to over 10,000 Mississippians. While the population differential made this diversion of funds “natural,” she maintained that it was unreasonable for most, if not all, of the funds to be sent to Cleveland. 

In Dr. Peterson’s words, this was the “politics of the Big Dog versus Small Dog” manifest: “in the county, in the state, and federally, the small towns [always get] cut out.”

By the time Dr. Peterson left office, Mound Bayou was $300,000 in the black, and had a newly renovated air-conditioning system for the city hall, once again made possible by her savvy fundraising acumen. In short, she had raised over a million dollars in funds for Mound Bayou. Her efforts to repay the debt proved a resounding success. She was not re-elected. 

On the matter of her second, unsuccessful run for mayor, Dr. Peterson is sanguine. “In that I did not win, I…felt that it was better for me to stay out of the fray,” she said. “And then I felt that the person who was there had done a good job in his four years, and he deserves a right to continue.”

In fact, Dr. Peterson’s commitment to Mound Bayou’s democratic will is such that she helped her successor get reelected for a second term, in part because he was committed to––and succeeding in––keeping the town safely out of debt. 

On July 12, 2025, Mound Bayou celebrated Founder’s Day, marking 138 years of its existence.

“Mound Bayou has always had to fight for her existence,” Dr. Peterson asserted, hands clasped firmly in her lap, “because it was an experiment that was not supposed to succeed.” 

Dr. Peterson’s work, then, speaks to an unwavering commitment to the continuation of that success.