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A Stone of Hope: Rising Above Slavery, Jim Crow, and Poverty in Glendora, Mississippi
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.
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.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published November 6, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 15, 2020
Ooof, I am struggling to write this review. Before I dig in, perhaps some context: I am an avid road tripper and I spend most of my journeys stopping at African American historical sites. So naturally, I had to head down to Glendora, Mississippi and met the man, the myth, the legend: Mayor Johnny B. Thomas. Checking out the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC) was a priority and I made it down just after Christmas 2019. Meeting Mayor Thomas exceeded my expectations and the center is one of the best homegrown museums I have ever been to.
If you read nothing else in this review: I highly recommend visiting Glendora, Mississippi.
That said, this book isn't very good.
> The cover art is pretty bad.
I understand the black and blue motif a la Louis Armstrong, but the cover is such a dark blue and the font is black making it difficult to read. Y'all know you did Johnny wrong on this one.
> What's up with Chapter 4?
It's written in a different style and tone from the rest of the book. Every other chapter has a strong historical lens... and Chapter 4 seems to be a truncated history of slavery told in a sort of faux "olden" Christian tone... but it doesn't directly talk about religion during slavery? (Also, every other chapter takes great care to say "enslaved people" and this chapter reverts to the outdated term of "slave." Maybe it's meant as a biblical reference? This chapter left me with more questions than answers.
> There's a lot of repetition.
As an example, chapters 2, 3, and 4 all begin with slavery: first told through the history of Glendora, then as its own separate Tallahatchie/Mississippi chapter, and then in a pseudo-religious tone from the lens of global slavery. Certainly, this could have been streamlined into a concise chapter.
> There are some plot holes.
Because of the weird stratification across chapters, there are a lot of pieces missing. Example: We learn that Glendora was founded in 1833, but there's no mention of Glendora during the Civil War. Then it's clarified that most services, like the post office and voting locations, arrive in the 1880's. But in the list of mayors, we learn that the first mayor of Glendora begins in 1900 - and we seem to be missing a lot of context for what happens in between all of these dates.
> Still, I'm glad this book exists.
There are some interesting passages in this book that are pretty interesting, most notably Thomas J. Durant Jr's interviews with older Glendora residents and Mayor Thomas' disclosure of his father's possible forced involvement in Milam and Bryant's violence against Till. A solid third of the book is focused on the last 20-30 years in Glendora as Thomas led the creation of ETHIC along with other revitalization programs. His many years of work and sacrifice merit a full book of its own.
This text is an interesting slice of Mississippi life, though I hope there's an updated version in the works because there is room for improvement - and Mayor Thomas and the people of Glendora deserve it.
If you read nothing else in this review: I highly recommend visiting Glendora, Mississippi.
That said, this book isn't very good.
> The cover art is pretty bad.
I understand the black and blue motif a la Louis Armstrong, but the cover is such a dark blue and the font is black making it difficult to read. Y'all know you did Johnny wrong on this one.
> What's up with Chapter 4?
It's written in a different style and tone from the rest of the book. Every other chapter has a strong historical lens... and Chapter 4 seems to be a truncated history of slavery told in a sort of faux "olden" Christian tone... but it doesn't directly talk about religion during slavery? (Also, every other chapter takes great care to say "enslaved people" and this chapter reverts to the outdated term of "slave." Maybe it's meant as a biblical reference? This chapter left me with more questions than answers.
> There's a lot of repetition.
As an example, chapters 2, 3, and 4 all begin with slavery: first told through the history of Glendora, then as its own separate Tallahatchie/Mississippi chapter, and then in a pseudo-religious tone from the lens of global slavery. Certainly, this could have been streamlined into a concise chapter.
> There are some plot holes.
Because of the weird stratification across chapters, there are a lot of pieces missing. Example: We learn that Glendora was founded in 1833, but there's no mention of Glendora during the Civil War. Then it's clarified that most services, like the post office and voting locations, arrive in the 1880's. But in the list of mayors, we learn that the first mayor of Glendora begins in 1900 - and we seem to be missing a lot of context for what happens in between all of these dates.
> Still, I'm glad this book exists.
There are some interesting passages in this book that are pretty interesting, most notably Thomas J. Durant Jr's interviews with older Glendora residents and Mayor Thomas' disclosure of his father's possible forced involvement in Milam and Bryant's violence against Till. A solid third of the book is focused on the last 20-30 years in Glendora as Thomas led the creation of ETHIC along with other revitalization programs. His many years of work and sacrifice merit a full book of its own.
This text is an interesting slice of Mississippi life, though I hope there's an updated version in the works because there is room for improvement - and Mayor Thomas and the people of Glendora deserve it.
January 1, 2024
Though it is redundant and needs additional editing, it is a quick read. I enjoyed hearing more about the town and the man that I met at EPIC.
September 29, 2024
A great little book about Glendora MS. Johnny B Thomas is a great man.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews