Jackson Free Press

"I have no permanent friends (or) enemies, but only permanent interests," Stephanie Parker-Weaver told the Jackson Free Press last summer. Or, more to the point, Parker-Weaver seemed to have only permanent passions.

Since 2008, one of Parker-Weaver's main passions has been the nonprofit she founded, called Rebirth Alliance, which aims to educate the public about breast cancer—specifically, a rare and aggressive type of cancer that the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene complicates.

Parker-Weaver, who died last weekend at age 52, shared parts of her story with the Jackson Free Press in 2012. After she began to feel ill in 2007, she went to a doctor, who diagnosed her with cancer. Eventually, Parker-Weaver began chemotherapy and, in February 2008, had a hair-cutting party because she didn't want to go through slowly losing her long, curly locks to the drugs. When her husband, Cordell Weaver, put a lock of her treasured tresses in her hand, the full brunt of what was happening hit her, she said.

Still, she fought with a spirit her late parents—mother Carolyn Parker, a community and labor activist, and father Frank R. Parker, a renowned civil-rights attorney who worked on voting-rights cases across Mississippi—undoubtedly instilled in her.

A Jackson native and one-time executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Parker-Weaver became active in local political organizing in the early 1990s. Later, she assisted the campaign of controversial late Mayor Frank Melton and became a Melton aide at city hall.

Her time with the Melton administration was a perfect example of friends and enemies working together, she later recalled.

Last summer, in an interview with the JFP about the dark side of politicking in Jackson, she noted that Melton's team of supporters consisted of "radical" progressives like herself working alongside conservatives, such as developer Leland R. Speed, whose father served as mayor of Jackson in the 1940s, and Wirt Yerger Jr., the Mississippi Republican Party's founding chairman.

"He had all that money," she said of Yerger, "and we had the Lord, the law and unity on our side."

As she battled illness, Parker-Weaver never wavered in her activism, which included promoting events for Rebirth Alliance and participating in cancer walks.

A memorial for Stephanie Parker-Weaver will take place this Saturday, March 28, at 10 a.m. at Word and Worship Church at 6286 Hanging Moss Road in Jackson.