Board

Iris Love Scott is a native Memphian, attended Overton High school and is a graduate of the University of Memphis.  Iris’s work has been embedded in the Memphis community for over 25 years as she has worked tirelessly as a community advocate and grassroots efforts for the better part of her professional career.  

Iris came to LSP quite by accident after researching lynching victims in the south. This interest was piqued when a friend suggested going to Birmingham, Alabama to participate in a soil collection project with the Equal Justice Initiative and Bryan Stevenson. It was such a moving experience that she connected with the Lynching Site Project of Memphis.

Iris is a mother of one son, four grandchildren and three fur babies (two cats and one dog). Her hobbies are sewing, gardening, good cooking, picture taking and reading.

I was born in Philadelphia, PA, and raised in the Southern New Jersey area (a town called Bridgeton). I would later move to the Atlanta area with my family shortly before the Olympics. In 2008 I moved to Wisconsin with my wife and two children, where we lived for nine years. During that time I was able to obtain bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Interpersonal/Organizational Communication. I moved to Memphis, TN in 2017 seeking a Master’s degree in Philosophy. After a year I was able to move into the doctoral program at the University of Memphis.

I learned about the Lynching Sites Project while attending a history class with Jennifer Mitchell Bennie. She would race off to the weekly meetings as our class was ending. It was through her invitation that I attended my first meeting last year. I was drawn to the mission of the organization in part because of my own academic interests. I am currently focusing on the thought of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her anti-lynching work. It was after attending a commemoration service last year that I was convinced that I wanted to join the work of LSP. I was working alongside an organization dedicated to social justice work while in Wisconsin and was glad to find an organization here in Memphis where I could continue with that work.

I believe strongly in the work of the Lynching Sites Project. I agree with Wells-Barnett that we can only move forward through truth-telling. It is the truth that will set us all free together. I deeply appreciate LSP’s dedication to telling the truth.

Mary McIntosh, a native of Minnesota, teaches Pre-AP World History/Geography, Facing History and Ourselves, and Contemporary Issues at Central High School in Memphis, TN. She joined LSP in 2016 upon learning that some Central High School students in 1917 had been spectators at the lynching of Ell Persons.  She helped to plan an all-school assembly focused on telling the story of the lynching and then coordinated participation of Central High students in the Memorial Service marking the 100^th anniversary of the lynching which included the 2017 Central High Choir singing a spiritual as people walked the path to the lynching site. 

Mary has long sought to incorporate lessons of history to the cause of social justice today.  In 2014 in response to the protests in Ferguson MO around the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police, she began a club called Courageous Conversations dedicated to providing a space for young people to learn to talk about current political and social justice issues with compassion and integrity while also being grounded in history and empirical facts.   She also leads the Facing History Student Leadership Group at her school and is partnering with Narrative 4, an international organization that uses the power of sharing individual stories to encourage young people to lead with empathy. Most recently, she has begun a club called “History: Challenges and Choices” which provides space for students to study recent legislation that attempts to influence the way history is taught in public schools.

She has studied with the World War II Museum in New Orleans and in Normandy, France, participated as a Bezos Educator Scholar at the Aspen Summer Ideas Festival and in 2019, was named a Belz-Lippman Holocaust Educator of the Year (TN) and the High School Teacher of the Year for Shelby County Schools.  Mary believes that teaching history allows her to help students understand how the realities of society today are often echoes of the stories and identities of events and people from the past.  Grateful for the call to do work that truly matters each day, Mary and her husband Stephen have two grown children who live in Nashville, TN and Eugene, OR.