A Stone of Hope

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