By Ryan Grieser and Lylee Gibbs
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
What he found in this small, rural town was even greater than he expected: He discovered his voice and ignited a passion to make a difference in service to his community.
Just over a year after making Cairo his new home, Dickerson ran for and won a seat on the Cairo City Council, taking nearly 63% of the vote in the April 2023 election. When he was sworn into office the following month, the then 20-year-old became one of the youngest council persons ever elected in the town’s 200-year history.
“I didn’t come down here to be a politician,” Dickerson said. “I didn’t come down here to be an elected official or be in government of any sorts, I was just trying to escape what I was in and find something better for my life.”
In the process, he’s also working to make things better for Cairo.
While breaking into politics in a bigger city can be challenging at his age, Cairo embraced his youth.
Cairo is the government seat of Alexander County, the fastest shrinking county in America. Its population of 1,600 is not only dwindling, but also aging, as what few young people remain leave for opportunities elsewhere.
Dickerson wants to reverse those trends, and his youth may be an asset in getting it done.
“I want to tackle entertainment,” he said, naming one of his top goals for the three remaining years of his four-year term. “We don’t have anything to really do in Cairo. That’s a lot of our problem right now, a lot of reasons why the kids don’t want to stay here. If there’s nothing for them to stay and want to hold on to, then they’re not going to stay, they’re going to leave. And if everybody starts leaving, then the city eventually dies.”As a teen in St. Louis, Gabriel Dickerson said his life had veered off course. He was trapped in a cycle of bad choices and was in trouble. In December of 2021, at the suggestion of an associate, Dickerson attended a Saturday service in Cairo, a small town at the very bottom of Illinois at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, 158 miles from his hometown. After the service, Dickerson knew he wanted more from his life – and that he needed a fresh start to make it happen. Soon after, he packed up and moved to Cairo.
Dickerson is also aware of Cairo’s long and troubled racial history, marked by civil rights battles that raged into the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, long after much of the country had conceded rights to Black people in government and workplaces. The town experienced shootings and riots that brought Army National Guard tanks to its streets and drew headlines across the nation. In 1980, white people, elected at-large, still entirely ruled the town, prompting a lawsuit by Black leaders who wanted a seat at the council table. That year, they were victorious in a federal consent decree that mandated Cairo move to a ward-based system, finally allowing a pathway for Black citizens to elect their own representatives.
When he won his Ward II seat last year and was later named Fire Commissioner, Dickerson said he reflected on the significance of his own role on a council now entirely governed by Black citizens. While Cairo’s Black citizens have made gains in the years since, Dickerson said that many of the town’s problems today are rooted in racism.
“We’re able to finally fight back again,” he said, “but it makes it hard to undo everything that’s already been done.”
Maintaining a vibrant elected class is important for rural communities, and creating a space for young people at the table is essential to this effort, said Corey Wiggins, the federal co-chair of the Delta Regional Authority. The DRA is a federal-state program created in 2000 to support economic development and community rejuvenation in the Alabama Black Belt and lower Mississippi River regions.
It encompasses eight states and 252 counties including Alexander County in southern Illinois. “I think ultimately at the end of the day, whether you’re young or old, you want to have a good, strong, vibrant community,” Wiggins said. “And I think as a young person who’s serving on city council, elected government, serving on boards or just being active in our community, that voice is powerful, that voice has value.”
Driven by service, faith
Dickerson’s path to political office has been shaped by his faith at nearly every step. It’s what originally brought him to Cairo and is one of the reasons why he ran for city council in the first place.
“At the time that I came down here… I was going through a lot of stuff back at home or my hometown that I was putting myself through, and it was a point in time that I didn’t know what to believe in,” Dickerson said. “I didn’t know if there was a God or not.”
These uncertain thoughts were answered when, according to Dickerson, “the Most High showed himself to me.” This led to Dickerson making the permanent move to Cairo and to one of the most important moments of his life: when he joined the local congregation of the Seventh Day Assembly.
“I came down on the Sabbath, so it was a Saturday morning when I came down here. That’s when I met my mentor, and then we went to service together,” Dickerson said. “I sat in the first pew, and I remember them playing the music, and I just broke down. I’m crying, tears all down my face, everything.” He knew he wouldn’t be the same after that day.
“That was the first time in my life that I really felt something, and it’s indescribable. It’s just divine, you know?” Dickerson said. This divine connection led Dickerson to begin digging deeper into his faith, prompting him to read the entire Bible and a number of commentaries. Now, he’s a teacher himself.
“I teach on TikTok Live with my friend. He teaches the word, I teach the word, and it’s just a beautiful thing,” Dickerson said. “I came from a place of not knowing what to believe in, and now that I found it, it’s not even a belief for me anymore… I know that Yah is real.” That initial Sabbath was important for more reasons than affirming Dickerson’s faith. It also marked the day he met his mentor, Phillip Matthews.
Matthews, who serves as the shepherd of the congregation at the Seventh Day Assembly, is also the Alexander County Democratic Party Chair. Dickerson said Matthews helped him see his potential.
“I never really had somebody with spiritual insight like that really talk to me about what I got going on, and I think we made a connection,” Dickerson said, adding that Matthews “really wanted to push me to do better with my life.”
Matthews, who has been the assembly’s pastor for 29 years, said he has met a lot of people but not all of them have the special attributes that make Dickerson a standout. Many people, Matthews said, want to make something more of their life, but not everyone has the drive to do it like Dickerson.
For instance, he said, Dickerson wanted Matthews to teach him to play the piano, despite that he had no musical background. And though he quickly picks up new skills, Matthews said that Dickerson became a competent pianist in a relatively short amount of time through dedicated practice.
“He is unique. He has great abilities,” he said, though noted that his sharp mind is only part of the equation. “It’s not enough to have a desire to play. You have to have a commitment to play. So he’s committed in whatever it is that he does and that’s a strong trait that a lot of people lack.”
Dickerson said it was Matthews who encouraged him to get involved in politics. But when Matthews suggested it to him, “I told him at first that I didn’t want anything to do with it,” he recalled. But then Dickerson agreed to give it a try, first by serving in a largely background role as a precinct committeeman. But then he got angry.
In 2022 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to tear down the Connell Smith public housing apartment complex in Cairo. The decision displaced 53 families and shuttered some of the last affordable housing in the city.
Dickerson said that how HUD announced the decision was “really wrong,” and that flipped a switch for him.
“I couldn’t just sit back and not do anything, because I felt like if I did, if I’m seeing the problem and not being a part of the solution, and I’m part of the problem… somebody has to get out there and fight for those people that don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Dickerson said.
Setting a good example
As a newly minted councilman who is also relatively new to town, Dickerson acknowledges he faces a steep learning curve.
“This is my first term, so I’m not going to sit here and lie to you guys and say that I have everything figured out, that I know exactly what I’m doing, because I don’t,” Dickerson said.
But only one year into his term, he’s already leaving his mark. Dickerson said one of the best parts of his leadership role is helping set a good example for other youth. He encourages them to embrace their own potential and get involved, too.
One youth in particular drew Dickerson’s focus.
“A young kid, he’s two blocks down from me… he’s in middle school, but he comes to the city council meetings. I caught him in the hallway of City Hall one day… he was looking at the pictures of all the old council members and mayors,” Dickerson said.
“I’m like, ‘Is this what you want to do? You’re interested in this stuff?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah. That’s what I want to do,’” Dickerson said. In today’s world of hyper-partisan politics, Dickerson is a bit of a throwback.
“I’m not Democrat only or Republican, I vote for people and character,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who or what you represent, but as long as you have the right motives, I will vote for you, because that’s what I believe in.”
Working with the Democratic Party, Dickerson has met and talked with many politicians, including several high-ranking state officials. His motivation for running for office didn’t stem from awe of them though.
“It wasn’t really the fact that they were so high up that got me to that point where I was like, ‘I want to do this to help people.’
It was more the fact that I saw that they have influence to help people,” Dickerson said. The job doesn’t always come easy. Dickerson feels as though his leadership style is both fair and stern. Though, being both new to politics and so young, he said he does sometimes experience times of uncertainty and awkwardness.
“What I will say is that I’m doing everything I can to the best of my ability to really make a difference. I don’t want to just sit in the seat and not do anything… I at least want to, if I decide to run again, give people a reason to vote for me again,” Dickerson said.
If Dickerson does decide to run for reelection, it seems as though he’ll have a clear path to victory. Though Dickerson sees them as jokes, some people in town have started calling him the next mayor.
One resident has an even higher office in mind for him. “I have an older lady that lives a few blocks down and calls me Mr. President,” Dickerson said with a laugh.
Dickerson isn’t ready to say whether he’d run for a higher office, such as mayor, a state representative or even Congress.
“I plan to stay here for the next three years to finish off this term, and if the Most High allows me to stay again and run again, and allows me to hold the position, absolutely I will.
If it’s a higher office… I’m with it. If that’s where he sends me, I’m not going to fight against any of it, whether I want to do it or not,” Dickerson said. And he hopes his perseverance sets a good example for other young people in town.
“Our young people have to get out of this mindset that there’s nothing we can do. There is something we can do, and all that is just getting involved,” Dickerson said. “The more you’re involved, the more people you come in contact with, the more connections you make, the more legs you have to stand on.”
This story was produced for the Saluki Local Reporting Lab.
The Saluki Local Reporting Lab is an initiative of the SIU School of Journalism and Advertising designed to provide students with hands-on reporting experience while addressing news deserts in rural southern Illinois. Led by journalism professors Julia Rendleman and Molly Parker, the lab is supported by funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Illinois Press Foundation, and the SIU Foundation.
