Abe Edward Pierce III was the first African American elected mayor of Monroe and served from 1996 to 2000. He was also the first African American to serve on the Police Jury and the first named president of the Police Jury. Active in the civil rights movement, he was president of the Youth Council of the Monroe branch of the National Association for the Advance of Colored People. Before desegregation, he graduated from the former Monroe Colored High School and later attended Southern University in Baton Rouge. He had an extensive background in education, teaching biology, chemistry, and physics for ten years at Richwood High School, briefly serving as principal, and then serving as Supervisor of Secondary Education and Assistant Superintendent of the Ouachita Parish School Board.