Rolando Herts
Dr. Herts is the director of The Delta Center and executive director of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, a Congressionally designated partnership with the National Park Service. As a 2016 Executive Academy Fellow with the Delta Regional Authority’s Delta Leadership Institute, he was awarded an executive education certificate from the Authentic Leadership for the 21st Century Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Herts is a university-community engagement scholar who is committed to stimulating diverse, equitable, and inclusive cultural heritage development activity in the Mississippi Delta and throughout the United States. His community engagement and partnership development expertise has strengthened university collaborations with the National Park Service, the Alliance of National Heritage Areas, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Alliance, Mississippi Delta Blues Festival Brazil, and various regional and community-based organizations. He serves on the Delta Regional Authority’s Delta Leadership Network Regional Advisory Council, the Alliance of National Heritage Areas governing board, and the Advisory Committee for the Center for the Center of Southern Culture at University of Mississippi. He also has served on the Mississippi Historical Society Board of Directors, the Mississippi Blues Commission (statutory member), and the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Services (gubernatorial appointment).
Previously, Dr. Herts served as Associate Director with the Office of University-Community Partnerships at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. As a Leadership Newark Fellow, he received the Berkowitz Distinguished Service Award for his commitment to the Greater Newark community. He also is an alumnus of the Teach For America Mississippi Delta corps and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium's Emerging Engagement Scholar Program.
Dr. Herts holds a Ph.D. in planning and public policy from Rutgers Graduate School-New Brunswick. He also holds a M.A. in Social Science from The University of Chicago and a B.A. in English from Morehouse College. A product of the Great Migration, he grew up in the Chicagoland area and in the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta region. His interest areas include university-community engagement and partnership development, community-based tourism planning, place branding/marketing, and regional development.
Edgar E. Smith
Edgar E. Smith, Ph.D., was born in Hollandale, Mississippi. At age twelve, his family moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was graduated from Bowman High School in 1951. His post secondary education includes a B.S. degree (1955) from Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi; and M.S. (1957) and Ph.D. degrees in Biochemistry (1959) from Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana.
Dr. Smith has held the following professional positions during the development of his career: Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant, Department of Biochemistry, Purdue University; Research Fellow in Surgery (Biochemistry), Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; Research Associate in Surgery (Biochemistry), Harvard Medical School; Associate Professor of Surgery (Biochemistry), Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts; Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Boston University School of Medicine; Associate Dean of Minority Student Affairs, Boston University School of Medicine; Associate Professor of Biochemistry , University ofMassachusetts School of Medicine, Worcester, Massachusetts; Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University ofMassachusetts School of Medicine; Provost, University of Massachusetts School of Medicine; Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Massachusetts School of Medicine; Vice President for Academic Affairs. University of Massachusetts System (3 Campuses); Interim President, Tougaloo College (January 1, 1995 - August 31, 1995); Program Director, Statewide Area Health Education Centers Program, and Professor of Family Medicine, University of Mississippi Medical Center. Currently, he is retired and serves as Senior Advisor to Tougaloo College President Beverly W. Hogan.
Dr. Smith was a Purdue University National Foundation Fellow in 1958, and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, Washington D.C., 1977-78. He has served as a consultant to a number of national organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the National Science Foundation, the American Association of Colleges, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
He is the recipient of a number of awards, includinghonorary degrees from the Morehouse School of Medicine, which he helped found, the University of Massachusetts, Tougaloo College, and Morehouse College. Dr. Smith’s research was in the areas of cancer biochemistry and sickle cell anemia, the results of which have been published in several professional journals. He enjoys playing tennis and listening to the blues. He is a member of the Mississippi Blues Commission and theBoard of Directors of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. Currently, he serves as a co-instructor of a course on the blues at Tougaloo College. He has been married to the former Inez Oree' Wiley for the past 55 years and they are the proud parents of four sons.
John Byron Strait
Dr. John B. Strait is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas who specializes in urban and social-cultural geography. His main research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of racial and ethnic identity, labor market dynamics and the spatial realization of socioeconomic disadvantage. He also has strong interests and teaching expertise in the geographies of music and religion and has broad interests in two geographic regions; the U.S. South and Latin America and the Caribbean. He is presently researching the spatial dynamics of hip hop culture and rap music. He is also currently engaged in an investigation of neighborhood-level factors that influence disparities in infant mortality among racial and ethnic groups. Dr. Strait has directed or been involved with a number of teaching workshops or institutes that focus on developing educational curricula that incorporate the aforementioned topics and interests.
Lee Aylward
Lee Aylward is a transplant from the hills of Mississippi to the Delta. Education and learning were instilled in her early, and she tried almost all of the universities in Mississippi and the University of Alabama in order to further that education. Reading has always been paramount to her. It is this love of reading that prompted her to get both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Library Science, and she went on to get certification in Reading. Since graduating from college, she has been a mother, administrator of a U.S. Army education center, a public librarian, a school librarian, reading teacher, real estate agent, and finally an associate in the Delta Center for Culture and Learning where she coordinated community outreach and education.
Charles McLaurin
Charles R. McLaurin, was born in Jackson, Mississippi where he received his early education in the Jackson Public Schools and attended Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State Universities, studying Political Science and Black History.
In 1961, McLaurin attended a mass meeting at the Masonic Temple in Jackson to see and hear a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Inspired by Dr. King, the next day McLaurin joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC, and took part in Boycotts, sit-ins, picket demonstrations and voters registration drives in Jackson, Mississippi. Early in 1962, McLaurin, was recruited to participate in an intensive training program preparing for a massive voter registration campaign in the Mississippi Delta. McLaurin and two other SNCC organizers [Landy McNair and Charlie Cobb] came to Ruleville, in Sunflower County to mobilize black leadership, hold meetings on voter registration and to get persons 21 years and older to the court house in Indianola in an attempt to become registered voters. After the first organized bus trip to Indianola, McLaurin met Fannie Lou Hamer, who had a beautiful singing voice, and was very out spoken. These were the attributes that caught the attention of the national Civil Rights leadership.
In 1963, McLaurin served as campaign manager for Fannie Lou Hamer in her bid for Congress from the second congressional district. In 1964 McLaurin was a MFDP [Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party] Delegate from the Delta to the National Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. McLaurin also directed the 1964 COFO [Congress of Federated Organizations] Freedom Summer Project in Sunflower County. During the Freedom Summer Project, McLaurin and Mrs. Hamer became close friends and worked together until her death in 1977 on many social and political projects in Mississippi.
McLaurin was arrested and jailed more than thirty (30) times for his voter registration and for refusing to obey Jim Crow segregation laws in Mississippi.
After more than 20 years on the front of the Civil Rights movement. McLaurin now makes his home in Indianola, currently employed as Assistant Public Works Director for the City of Indianola. He is married and he and his wife Virginia have 3 sons and 2 grands.
Charles Reagan Wilson
Dr. Charles Reagan Wilson is a retired professor from the University of Mississippi. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of El Paso and his PhD from the University of Texas. During his academic experience, he was the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History, Professor of Southern Studies, and the Director of the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He is the author or editor of twelve books and many articles dealing with the religion of the South. He has presented at conferences around the world on the same subject.
Books:
Flashes of a Southern Spirit: Meanings of the Spirit in the South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, May 2011)
Southern Missions: The Religion of the American South in Global Perspective (Waco, Tex: Baylor University Press, 2006)
Editor in chief, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vols. 1-24 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2004-2013)
Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1995, 2nd ed. 2007)
Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1980, 2nd ed. 2009)
Coeditor with William Ferris, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)
Coeditor with Mark Silk, Religion and Public life in the South (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2005)
Editor, with Douglass Sullivan-Gonzales, The South and the Caribbean (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000)
Editor, with Randall Miller and Harry Stout, Religion and the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Editor, The New Regionalism (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997)
Editor, Religion in the South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985)
Series Editor, Cultural Perspectives on the American South, 1985-1991
Cathy Wong
Cathy Wong, a life-long Deltan, was born & raised in Hollandale & Arcola, MS. She graduated from Deer Creek School and MSU with a degree in Landscape Architecture. After college, she returned to the Delta, married and had 3 children & now has 3 grandchildren. Cathy and her husband, Raymond, operated the oldest Chinese Restaurant in Mississippi and finally closed the doors in 2007, ending an era of “family style Cantonese cuisine”. Cathy is very involved with the community, having been a member of different civic clubs, been on the board of many charitable organizations and her main focus now is the Greenville Chinese Cemetery Association, which has been in existence since 1928. Under her leadership, since 2000, land has been donated to the cemetery association and a perpetual fund is being generated for the constant upkeep of the 4 properties that belong to the association. Besides the cemetery, she is the Director of the Greenville Inn & Suites, a boutique hotel that once was the historic Levee Board building in downtown Greenville.
Reggie Barnes
Reggie Barnes, originally from Greenville, MS, was one of the first African-Americans to integrate the Greenville, MS, schools. After high school he was one of the first African-Americans to attend Delta State University. He went on to serve his alma mater as Dean of Students until he took the position of principal at Cleveland High School, Cleveland, MS. From this position he was elected superintendent of the Tallahatchie County, MS, schools. While in Tallahatchie County, he was involved with the making of the critically acclaimed documentary LaLee’s Kin. After his stint there, he became the Superintendent of Schools in Bolivar County, MS. Upon his retirement, he started his own consulting group the Excellent Group LLC which he operates today. Mr. Barnes is a speaker in much demand and he speaks to groups today all over the United States about his experiences in education and the Mississippi Delta.
Keith Johnson “Prince of the Delta Blues”
Keith Johnson is a 28-year-old MBA graduate of Delta State University. As an undergraduate Keith received a BA/degree in Entertainment Industry Studies with a concentration in Audio Engineering in December 2016.
Keith is also an accomplished blues musician, songwriter and winner of the 2016, 2018, and 2019 local International Blues Challenge Competition. He has amassed a songwriting catalogue of twenty-six original songs of which eleven has appeared on his debut “Come to Mississippi” CD that he recorded at the B.B. King Recording Studio in Itta Bena, Mississippi.
Keith is in the process of carrying on and upholding a family legacy in the entertainment industry as he is the great nephew of blues icon, Muddy Waters.
Keith currently works as a HR Business Partner at Harlow’s Casino Resort & Spa, a property of Churchill Downs Incorporated.
Brinda Willis
Dr. Brinda Willis graduated from Mississippi State University receiving a (BA) degree in Social Work (Medical concentration) and a (M.Ed.) degree in Guidance Counseling (Vocational Rehabilitation concentration). Her Ph.D. is in Theology from New Foundation Seminary in Terry, Mississippi. She has worked in hospitals, counseling centers, and insurance companies practicing social work, providing rehabilitation counseling and utilization services in Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Jackson, Mississippi. At present Dr. Willis is an independent arts/entertainment consultant, public speaker/educator with the Mississippi Humanities Council, and a freelance writer for the Jackson Advocate Newspaper. She resides in Richland, Mississippi.
Bill Abel
Singer and guitar player Bill Abel from the Clarksdale Mississippi area is a torch bearer of the gritty unorthodoxed modern day juke joint sound that originates from the Mississippi Delta. Born and raised in the small delta town of Belzoni, Bill learned his blues first hand from the musicians he played with which are a who's who list of delta legends that include Paul “Wine Jones”, Cadillac John Nolden, T Model Ford, Honey Boy Edwards and many others. He defies most blues categories with a hard driving electrified country blues, a sound that is rarely heard today. His guitar playing has been featured on award winning blues projects with artist such as Hubert Sumlin, Big George Brock, T Model Ford and a host of others which include the Broke and Hungry and Cathead records roster. A Mainstay on the Delta scene for 30 years, Bill has played on more than 25 records including his most recent recordings Rich Poor Man ,To That Land Where I’m Bound and Goin Over The Hill . In 2015 he also released The Celestial Train CD. “Celestial Train” is one of the purest offerings of hill country blues since R.L. Burnside, Fred McDowell, and Junior Kimbrough passed.” Scott Zuppardo – No Depression. “Some are simply blessed with an extra-deep gutbucket. Count the wooly Bill Abel among those fortunate bluesmen. His ferocious brand of guitar-stomp is as untamed and authoritative a statement of native Mississippiness as is that of the region's hardcore elders with who he's rumbled. Abel is right there with T-Model Ford and the late, great Paul 'Wine' Jones, his influential houserocking neighbor. The groove is still omnipotent: an intensely rhythmic tangle of plunging downbeats and nasty deep end that brutalizes amplifiers.” Dennis Rozanski – Bluesrag. Bill has toured Europe 12 times playing festivals such as Norway’s Notodden Festival, Sweden’s Amal Festival, Wales, England, Belgium, Italy, and also as one of the headliners for Switzerland's Blues Rules festival. Across the USA performances have included Beale Street Music festival, King Biscuit Festival and many others as well as playing clubs and art centers all across the U.S. Awards include: Blues Musician of the Year 2006 by The Mississippi Delta Blues Society of Indianola , Finalist in the 2012 International Blues Competition,and Nominated for Independent Music Award in 2012 for best cover song.
Wheeler Parker
Wheeler Parker Jr. is the first child born to Hallie and Wheeler Parker in 1939 in Slaughter Mississippi. In 1947 the Parker family relocated to Summit with the hope of providing better living conditions and a better education for their children.
Wheeler returned to Mississippi with his grandfather, Moses Wright during the summer 1955. Travelling with him was his 14 year old cousin Emmett Till. The events of that week changed his life forever. The incident at the store in Money; the night of terror when Emmett was taken from the home and murdered, and his return to Chicago alone and in constant fear for his own life, still causes him to tremble and weep. He always believed he would see Emmett again, not being able to accept that the horrific corpse returned to Chicago was Emmett, and he was able to cope by believing he was not dead. Wheeler is a survivor of this event that sparked the civil rights movement. He travels across the country speaking at Schools and Universities, telling his story of that night of terror and his survival. He challenges young people to be the catalyst for change and make a difference.
Wheeler returned to Summit and completed his education in the Summit school system and graduated from ACHS in 1958. He enjoyed playing the drums in the marching band and playing percussion in the orchestra, basketball and football, and was a member of the track team. He attended Molar Barber College and graduated in 1959. A Graduate of the School of Modern Photography, he has attended Moraine Valley Community College, C. H. Mason Theological Bible School, Global University, and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also served two years in the US Army as a Medical Specialists.
Elder Wheeler Parker Jr. accepted his call to the ministry in 1977, ordained a Minister in 1978; he served as an Associate Minister, was appointed Assistant Pastor in 1992, and appointed Pastor of Argo Temple December 5th, 1993. For his outstanding contribution to the youth in the community, the Summit Park District dedicated its basketball court to him in 1992. Also honored as Citizen of the Year, by the Summit Chamber of Commerce in 1992, for his work in organizing the Summit Community Task Force, an Inter- Faith nonprofit community based organization; where he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for ten years.
Married for forty-eight years to Dr. Marvel McCain Parker, they have enjoyed traveling world- wide to places such as Africa, Egypt, Israel, Italy, France, England, Switzerland, Germany, Central America and the Caribbean. They provide support to Calvary Temple School and Church in Belize City, Belize.
“Learning to Lean, Learning to Lean, Learning to Lean on Jesus, Finding more power than I ever dreamed, learning to Lean on Jesus.”
Keith Beauchamp
Award-Winning filmmaker Keith A. Beauchamp is writer/producer of the 2022 critically acclaimed feature film “Till,” co-produced by Frederick Zollo, Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Broccoli.
Keith attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., where he studied criminal justice with the intention of becoming a civil-rights attorney. As a young boy in Baton Rouge, Keith had his share of run-ins with racism but it wasn’t until an incident where he was assaulted by an undercover police officer after dancing with a white classmate at a party that he felt compelled to fight racism and move to New York. It was there he could pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker. And through this feat, he would attempt to remedy some of the past and present injustices that plague communities abroad.
In the fall of 1997, Beauchamp relocated from Baton Rouge to New York. He quickly found work at Big Baby Films, a company founded by childhood friends that focused on music video production. Keith honed his behind-the-camera skills during the day and spent his evenings doing research and reaching out to anyone who might have information on the Emmett Till case, a story told to Keith when he was just 10 years old. It was at this young age that Keith saw the issue of Jet magazine that contained a picture of Emmett Till’s dead body and was told the story behind Till’s murder in 1955.
In 1999, Keith founded Till Freedom Come Productions, a company devoted to socially significant projects that can both teach and entertain. He has devoted the past 26 years of his life telling the story of Emmett Till and has traveled extensively between New York, Chicago and Mississippi to investigate the historic murder. Through his journey, he tracked and spoke with witnesses who had never before spoken about the case, befriended the boy’s mother Mamie Till Mobley who took Keith under her wing, worked with such influential figures as Muhammad Ali and Rev. Al Sharpton, all while persistently lobbying both the State of Mississippi and the federal government to reopen the Emmett Till murder investigation.
On May 10, 2004, the U.S.Department of Justice re-opened this 50-year-old murder case citing Keith’s documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” as both a major factor in their decision and the starting point for their investigation. In May 2005, Emmett’s body was exhumed, and in 2006 the FBI turned over their evidence to the appropriate district attorney in Mississippi. Sadly, in February 2007, a Mississippi grand jury decided to not indict the remaining suspects in the case.
That same year, Keith began his collaboration with the FBI’s New Civil Rights “Cold Case” Initiative, producing documentaries on other unsolved civil rights murders in hopes of helping federal agents with their investigations that could lead to bringing remaining perpetrators to justice.
Keith is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities around the country. He has been featured on “60 Minutes,” ABC World News Tonight “Person of the Week,” Court TV, MSNBC, “Good Morning America,” CNN, BBC as well as in hundreds of publications around the world including The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, the Chicago Sun Times and the Jackson Free Press. Keith’s past works include TV One’s “Murder in Black and White” hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton and “Wanted Justice: Johnnie Mae Chappell’” or the History Channel and “BET’s Exceptional Black Women.”
Justin Krueger
Dr. Krueger is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at Delta State University.
In 2021 he was awarded the Woody Guthrie Fellowship through the BMI Foundation for his proposed comparative study on the lives and works of two of the U.S.’ greatest songsters: Woody Guthrie and Mance Lipscomb.
Most recently, he contributed two articles to ¡Arriba!: The Heroic Life of Roberto Clemente (2022) from the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR): “The Response to Clemente’s Death”, and “Remembrance and Iconography of Clemente in Public Spaces.” His research has previously been featured in The History Teacher, Multicultural Perspectives, the Journal of Educational Controversy, and the SABR Bio Project.
His current research focuses on the intersections of historical memory and public pedagogy, and the role of teaching and learning outside of traditional spaces of education. His dissertation, titled: Museum Educators' Conceptualizations: Teaching Social Studies Through Art addressed how museum educators use a variety of works of art and pedagogical practices to engage students in necessary conversations.
Previously, Dr. Krueger worked as a public-school teacher in Texas for 14 years. During that time, he was awarded the 2014 National History Day Behring Teacher of the Year for the state of Texas.
Dr. Krueger earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on social studies education from The University of Texas at Austin. He also holds an M.Ed. in educational leadership from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas and a B.A. in history from Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. He is an active member of the Society for American Baseball Research.
