A Stone of Hope

<p>Glendora is a small rural town located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Th e people of the town<br />take pride in living in a quiet close-knit community where everybody knows their neighbors.<br />However like many small rural towns in the South Glendora inherited the eff ects of slavery Jim<br />Crow and poverty in addition to having the unfortunate experience of being the town where a<br />fourteen-year-boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered and thrown into the Black Bayou<br />that energized the Civil Rights Movement in America. Th is book tells a story about the struggle of<br />this small town to rise above a “mountain of despair” that plagued the town for decades to a “stone<br />of hope” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in<br />Washington DC in August 1963. For the past four decades Glendora’s hope for a brighter future<br />has rested in the hands of Johnny B. Th omas who rose from the son of sharecroppers on a local<br />plantation to the mayor of the town. When Th omas became mayor he inherited a town that had<br />been ravaged by the eff ects of poverty neglect isolation a heritage of plantation sharecropping<br />servitude and a culture of racial suppression of the civil rights of African Americans. Th is book<br />provides a historical account of the struggles and challenges that Mayor Th omas faced in building<br />the Emmett Till Museum to promote education about civil rights and to promote cultural<br />tourism to generate much needed revenue for community development in Glendora. Th is book<br />also includes much information about the rich history and culture of the people of Glendora as<br />they continue their journey to become one of the stones of hope in the Mississippi Delta.</p>