Susan M. Glisson, a 1994 graduate of the Southern Studies master’s program, is completing the first year of her work as director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University. The Institute grew out of Glisson’s work as assistant director at the Center from 1998 to 2002.

In 1998 the University hosted the only Deep South meeting of the President’s Initiative on Race, and Glisson served as its coordinator, working with grass-roots community leaders in Oxford and with former Governor William Winter, who was a member of the commission that sponsored the work of the President’s Initiative on Race. Out of that successful meeting came the idea for an ongoing organization on campus to work with racial reconciliation efforts on campus and across the state. Center director Charles Reagan Wilson commissioned Glisson to work with that effort, which led to the establishment of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation. The University named the Institute for Governor Winter in February of this year.

The Institute works with such projects as the Mississippi Statewide Alliance, a leadership group that arose to promote reconciliation after the Mississippi flag vote in 2001; the Statewide Student Summit, which brings together students from campuses across Mississippi to encourage dialogue on race; SEED (Students Envisioning Equality through Diversity), a University student group; and the effort to create a civil rights memorial on campus.

Much of the Institute’s work involves organizing communities on specific projects that can foster constructive interracial relationships and lead to improvements in communities. Glisson worked with the people of Rome, Mississippi, for example, to create a youth library in its community center and supported a summer reading program for 25 children. The Institute has also assisted the community of Drew, Mississippi, in gaining a grant to restore the historic Rosenwald School and in conducting a youth art club.

The first International Conference on Race was held on campus October 1-4, hosted by the Institute. Speakers included civil rights activist the Reverend James Lawson and former attorney general Nicholas Katzenbazch, as well as theorists and practitioners of racial reconciliation projects around the world. This was the closing event of the Open Doors commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the admission of the first black student at the University. As part of the commemoration, the Institute’s oral history project, done in collaboration with the Center, produced interviews with almost 60 individuals associated with the integration of the University.

Glisson’s leadership of the Institute grows out of her academic work. After receiving bachelor’s degrees in history and religion from Mercer University, she came to the Southern Studies Program and earned her master’s degree after writing her thesis on Clarence Jordan and the theological roots of radicalism in the Southern Baptist Convention. She went on to earn her doctorate from the College of William and Mary in 2000, with her dissertation entitled “'Neither Bedecked Nor Bebosomed’: Lucy Randolph Mason, Ella Baker and Women’s Leadership and Organizing Strategies in the Struggle for Freedom.”

While serving as assistant director of the Center, Glisson worked with racial reconciliation projects and also with the Southern Studies graduate program. As a graduate of the program, she shared her experiences about the opportunities the Center and its academic program present for those interested in the interdisciplinary study of the South. She has also worked to organize Southern Studies alumni.

Glisson was selected to serve as assistant project coordinator for the Religion and Race Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, and she is assistant director of the University of Florida’s Southern Regional Council Oral History Project, both in recognition of her growing reputation as one of the South’s leading’s students and practitioners of racial reconciliation.

For additional information, visit the Web site www.olemiss.eud/winterstitute.

Charles Reagan Wilson