GLENDORA — The Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC) here has added a new 14-member board of directors, experts with local and national connections, after recently hiring Dr. Sharon Hill as executive director.
Glendora Mayor Johnny B. Thomas, who founded the ETHIC in 2005 and has since led several successful grant efforts to grow and maintain the site, has been named honorary board member.
The ETHIC is a collection of historic buildings and land nestled along the Tallahatchie River in Glendora that includes a museum, a multi-purpose community center and additional spaces slated to be developed into hiking trails and gardens.
The ETHIC Museum in Tallahatchie County is featured on the national Civil Rights Tour. It is housed in a former cotton gin believed to play a significant role in the events surrounding Emmett Till’s 1955 murder, formative to the Civil Rights Movement.
“I’m passing the baton after 20 years to a new, well-trained generation of visionaries ready to lead ETHIC into the future,” Thomas said. “I feel that our executive director and board are not just inheriting a museum, they are its next architect, joining us in a vision that is bold, clear and driven by hearts forever rooted in the soil of Glendora.”
Board Chair Everett B. Penn, director of the Texas Juvenile Crime Prevention Center at Prairie View A&M University and a resident of Houston, helped put together the exhibits for ETHIC after bringing his students to Glendora for a service-learning project.
He is joined on the board by:
• Vice chair Debbie Johnson of Glendora, a supervisor with Partners in Development
• Secretary Jennifer French of Atlanta, a retired public relations professional
• Treasurer Bernard Muhammad of Chicago, an entrepreneur with more than 35 years in accounting and finance whose mother was a Glendora native
Additional board members include Glenda McMillan Baker of Jackson, who has years of experience in child welfare and is vice president of a large consulting firm; Michelle Barclay, J.D., of Atlanta, recently retired from the Supreme Court of Georgia; Glendora native Johnathan Hill, a former West Tallahatchie School District math instructor with a Ph.D. from Michigan State University who helps guide the ETHIC Museum’s daily operations; Jerome Oluwole Maultsby of Atlanta, co-founder, dean and facilitator for the Transcendent Life Coaching Institute and The Theological Institute of Transpersonal Psychology; Clarksdale native Doris Miller, a visionary leader and dedicated public servant in the areas of community development, youth engagement, political advocacy and agricultural innovation; Paul Ortiz of Syracuse, New York, a professor of labor history at Cornell University and an affiliate faculty member of Cornell’s Latino Studies Program; fourth-generation Winona landowner Vickie Roberts-Ratliff, an expert on heirs’ property laws and the first female president of the Montgomery County Forestry Association; Mark Swiggum, an educator and school administrator in Minnesota who also leads civil rights educational tours throughout the U.S.; and Glendora native Debi Wheeler-Thomas, a physical therapist and licensed real estate agent.
“We have assembled a board filled with talents and treasures to move the history of Glendora, Mississippi, to be a must-read chapter of the American story for today and tomorrow,” Penn said.
For more information about the ETHIC and its new board members, go to https://glendorams.com.
