Kimberly Butler, a trailblazing African American advocate for disability rights, has been crowned Ms. Wheelchair Mississippi 2025.
She’s wasting no time turning her title into a force for change. This August, Butler will represent the Magnolia State at the Ms. Wheelchair America competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a powerful mission: championing “Universal Design for All” to ensure accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities.
For Butler, this journey is deeply personal. She has spent 30 years navigating life in a wheelchair, and she knows firsthand the physical and systemic barriers that many overlook. Winning the state crown earlier this year wasn’t just about recognition; it was about amplifying a message she’s been championing for decades: accessibility should be built into programs, services, and public spaces from the very start.
“Sometimes we’re not included in those conversations,” Butler said in an interview, “but it’s very important that we are, because after all, it’s our quality of life that’s at stake.”
Butler recently took local reporters to the Downtown Hattiesburg Post Office to show exactly what she means. The main entrance has stairs, forcing her to take a long, winding detour to a back ramp, a route that included battling uneven cobblestones before still needing assistance to get inside.
“These are things we can think about improving so that we can all have inclusive access to buildings we use on a daily basis,” she explained.
The national competition, running Aug. 18 to 24, will also feature a People’s Choice Award, with voting open until Aug. 22. Butler is encouraging supporters to vote. Still, she says her bigger mission is to use the spotlight to spark nationwide conversations about accessibility.
“If I can win Miss Wheelchair America, I would love to go around the nation, meet new people, and bring that knowledge home to Mississippi so we can foster an equitable and happy quality of life for individuals like myself,” she says.
Back home, Butler is already making strides toward that goal. She has teamed up with Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker and the Forrest County Board of Supervisors to launch an ADA Advisory Board. The board’s first major initiative will be an ADA simulation in downtown Hattiesburg next month, designed to give able-bodied community leaders a firsthand experience of accessibility challenges and generate real-world solutions.
Whether she comes home with the national crown or not, Kimberly Butler’s advocacy is already reshaping how Mississippi thinks about accessibility.
