This one is at her church. A new minister at Mt. Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg pleaded no contest four years ago to a charge of attempted lewd and lascivious conduct toward a child. He served his sentence. He completed his probation. He has since committed no crime.
None of that matters to Wright. When the church's pastor - also Murphy's brother - put him up in the pulpit and introduced him as a minister some months back, she saw red. A man like Keith Murphy, whom she considers a potential threat to children, doesn't belong in a pulpit as far as Wright is concerned. Forget the ideas of Christian forgiveness that the pastor, Louis Murphy, says should take precedence.
So 64-year-old Wright is registering her opposition the best way she can.
She is boycotting Mt. Zion. On Sundays she stays home and watches church on TV.
It's been this way across the years.
Mattie Wright in City Hall. Mattie Wright badgering the police for help. Mattie Wright counseling children who can't sit still in school.
There she was, marching to her own drum.
Who supported Curt Curtsinger, that supposed emblem of racism when he was police chief? Mattie Wright, this black woman who grew up on St. Petersburg's segregated streets.
One battle has lasted longer than the others. For 19 years, Wright has been a Crime Watch coordinator in her neighborhood. The fight is up close, personal and not entirely altruistic. Wright is a local landlord. She and her husband own 17 houses in the neighborhood, and the drug dealers are always around.
"It got so bad one night I dressed up like I was going to church. I got my Bible. I went to the corner, and I asked them, "You all working this corner tonight?"' They didn't answer. "I said, "Good, because I'm gonna pray."'
The dealers moved on.
It was one victory. But the losses are what she remembers.
In 1996, her husband was shot early one morning when he went out to get the paper. There were worries that whoever did the shooting was really gunning for her to stop her anticrime campaign. The shooter was never caught.
Last spring, neighbors wanted her to sign a request for a city permit to hold a block party. She refused. Drug dealers would be among the party participants, she told her neighbors. "You would support criminals before you would support me."
The block party was held anyway.
Those are the forces that press in on Mattie Wright.
She says it's hard to get her black neighbors to support Crime Watch, because too many are harboring dealers in their homes.
She says it's hard to get white members of her neighborhood association interested in the problems of her part of town, south of Central Avenue, as they are about their part of town, north of Central.
Such moments have discouraged Wright, made her want to quit, even move. But she has lived in the same house 25 years. And moving is such work.
There's that fatigue again.
Maybe 64 is time to slow down. Wright has diabetes and needs knee surgery.
But there is one last project. In the schools. She often has counseled disruptive kids.
She's not sure she wants to go back, even though she is being asked to return. She remembers a moment when she saw a big kid at Gibbs threaten a reading teacher. The teenager bragged that he had straight A's. Wright snapped back, "You can't even write A's."
She is not necessarily ready for another round.
Somehow you can understand. It may not be time yet to count out Mattie Wright, but it is time for somebody else to get ready to step up to the plate.
