Crayton cites passion, experience
Almeta Crayton hosts an annual Thanksgiving dinner for families.
April 4, 2008
Incumbent First Ward City Councilwoman Almeta Crayton speaks to a crowd gathered at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church on Monday. Crayton, who has held the First Ward seat in the City Council since 1999, faces competition from three other candidates in the race.
Incumbent First Ward City Councilwoman Almeta Crayton details her platform at the First Ward City Council Forum on Monday at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church. Crayton’s election in 1999 marked the second time a black person was elected to the City Council.
(Click graphic to enlarge)
When Almeta Crayton, 48, talks of the homeless and the poverty-stricken residents of Columbia, she calls them the “invisible people” because she said city officials don’t notice them. When Crayton first moved to Columbia with her son, Tyrone, she was one of the invisibles.
Now, far from unnoticed by the community, she’s running for a fourth term as the Columbia City Council First Ward representative, but for the first time since her election in 1999, she has competition for the position.
Still living in public housing, Crayton does the most for her ward on city streets rather than in the council chambers, she said at Monday’s First Ward election forum, sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Coalition.
“The city has absolutely no compassion for no people or anything,” she said. “You might not think I’m doing anything when it comes to voting on silly policies, but I’m doing things for my people every day. I’m the one getting the phone calls late at night, I’m the one out on the streets trying to help people, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She’s known for her annual Thanksgiving dinner, which she started in 1999, during which she hands out boxes of donated foods to families.
Crayton grew up in St. Louis and moved to Columbia permanently in 1992. She now works as a cafeteria monitor at Gentry Middle School.
She’s won several awards: the Columbia Diversity Enhancement Award in 2000 — just a year after being elected — and the Columbia Values Diversity Award in 2003.
And its diversity is one reason she said she loves the First Ward.
“This is a very unique ward,” she said at the Feb. 2 candidate forum. “It goes from being very poor to very rich.”
Her passion for her ward is rarely questioned, but her skill set was questioned at the March 31 candidate forum sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Coalition.
Candidate John Clark said Crayton has not made any noteworthy changes to Columbia, but audience’s members at the forum disagreed, focusing their attention on Clark’s faults.
“I’m so sick of hearing you say ‘I, I, I,’” Columbia resident Wynna Faye Elbert said. “When is it going to be ‘We?’ Almeta’s been a ‘we’ because she’s trying to pull everyone together.”
Crayton has made unity a common theme in most of her statements made during candidate forums.
“It’s been a good experience to be on council,” Crayton said at the March 6 forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters in Columbia/Boone County. “I see a difference, but we’re not there yet. There is such a divide here, but we ignore it. We need to come together in our community and solve these problems. As long as you are divided, you’ll never get anything done.”
Approaching her fourth term, Crayton said she wanted to focus on affordable housing, including more affordable housing for students. She also has mentioned the creation a citywide curfew for minors and trying to lower the unemployment and teen pregnancy rates in the First Ward through more effective programs.
At a 2006 march organized by Four Front and the Zeta Phi Beta sorority, Crayton talked about what it means to overcome differences.
“I want you to know overcoming is not getting a degree,” Crayton said. “It’s when you bring back what you learned to the community that you overcome.”
She followed through on that idea in 2007, when Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., selected Crayton to attend the African-American Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., Crayton took it upon herself to find donors and sponsors to cover the travel expenses for the trip, taking what she learned from the trip back to Columbia.
Crayton said it’s sometimes hard to get by as a city councilwoman on her limited income.
“Every time I have to go to a meeting or to a conference, I have to take off a day of pay,” Crayton said at the March 31 forum. “But it’s something I’m happy to do because I care about this ward.”
Crayton could not be reached for comment.
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