‘It means everything’: Mullins elects first Black, female mayor in history
Mayor-elect Miko Picket is breaking barriers after the most recent election
By Logan Schiciano
Published: Nov. 8, 2024 at 7:31 PM EST
MULLINS, S.C. (WMBF) - Miko Pickett will make history on Tuesday when she’s sworn in as the first-ever Black, female mayor of Mullins.
“It means everything. My sweet mother-in-law raised her seven kids in Jim Crow America,” she said. “It is a lot, but it’s a challenge that I take on proudly and that I’m very excited for.”
South Carolina mayor tries to ice town Nativity scene, nabs Becket’s highest (dis)honor
WASHINGTON – The most outrageous offender of this year’s Christmas and Hanukkah season, and Becket’s 2025 Ebenezer Award winner, is Mayor Miko Pickett of Mullins, South Carolina, who ordered the removal of a Nativity scene from public property.
Combining constitutional confusion with holiday scroogery, the mayor cited America’s tradition of separation of church and state. But the Supreme Court has explained time and again that our law does not require local officials to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
America’s law and best traditions protect the right of citizens to celebrate their religious heritage without a government-ordered grinch turning out the lights.
Mayor Pickett’s order targeted a three-by-four-foot Nativity scene placed near Mullins’ marketplace as part of the city’s Christmas decorations, which also included a snowman, wreaths, lights, and Santa Claus.
The display was organized and paid for out of pocket by the Mullins Beautification Committee, which had been preparing the area for the marketplace’s first Christmas season. According to city employees, the mayor said the Nativity scene made the city appear “not neutral” toward religion.
When that threatened to turn a festive celebration into a public controversy just weeks before Christmas, Committee chair Kimberly Byrd defied the mayor and kept the Nativity scene, earning this year’s Tiny Tim Toast for her courage.
“It takes a special kind of scroogery to rob the townspeople of Christmas joy by coming after a Nativity scene,” said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket. “During this season of hope and charity, we should be protecting our neighbors’ right to express their faith freely, not banishing them for it. May this Ebenezer Award helpgovernmental hearts everywhere grow three sizes next year.”
Each year, the Christmas and Hanukkah season inspires outrageous offenses against the free exercise of religion.
Let the embezzlement begin !
Cha-ching said Jim Crow !