Panel 4: Personal Legacies of the Ell Persons Lynching

Michele Whitney is a transformational leader with over 20 years of diverse experience in nonprofit, for-profit, and government settings. Over the past 12 years, she has coordinated and facilitated various health research programs and has a passion for research in creating knowledge as one path to guide social change. Currently, Michele is the Director of Operations for Quantitative Science with the Manne Research Institute at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She is currently working on a Ph.D.

Stephen recently retired from Southwest Tennessee Community College where he taught American history for nearly 40 years. He interviewed his grandfather in 1972 obtain a family history and as part of that interview he discussed the lynching.

It made quite an impression on him and he remembered many of the facts exactly as they happened over 50 years later. Stephen wrote an article about the lynching after he researched it that was published in Memphis Magazine in 1980 entitled The Last Lynching in Memphis.

Laura Miller is a born and raised Memphian currently residing in Bartlett with her daughter Amelia, a 14-year-old freshman at Lausanne and dancer at the Dance Academy of Bartlett. They have two cats, Cutie and Angel, and one dog, Junie. As a registered nurse for more than 16 years, Laura spent nearly a decade in the NICU at The Med. For the last seven years her focus has shifted to telehealth and leadership positions. She is currently pursuing a masters in nursing with a focus in informatics.

Laura Faith Kebede is the coordinator for The Institute for Public Service Reporting’s Civil Wrongs project at the University of Memphis that investigates unsolved and unresolved murders of the civil rights era, lynchings, and racial massacres and analyzes their enduring effects. Laura is a Report for America corps member and recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special History, Justice and the Journalists on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area.

Richard is a Memphis native who graduated from Morehouse College and then Georgetown Law School. He has practiced in the area of intellectual property law in law firm private practice and corporate in house positions in Philadelphia, Chicago, and now Memphis. Outside of his law practice, Richard has volunteered his time serving at the local executive officer level in the Morehouse alumni networks in each of the three cities above. He reached the level of president in Chicago and in Memphis.