Author: WOAmemphis17

Women of Achievement
2003

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Wanda and Brenda Henson

Brenda and Wanda Henson set out to create a peaceful place for retreat and education in rural Mississippi. Instead, they were confronted with verbal, legal and physical harassment at their feminist education center, Camp Sister Spirit. They refused to abandon their vision of a safe place for women who faced abuse or discrimination. That vision evolved in Gulfport, Mississippi, where Brenda and Wanda met while serving as volunteer escorts at an abortion clinic. The attraction was immediate. Almost 19 years later, they remain together, sharing the same last name as a declaration of their commitment.

A few years after they met, Brenda and Wanda opened the first feminist bookstore in Mississippi. The store expanded into a crisis center, providing services for women, children, and lesbian and gay families. As that work grew, they decided to move to the country and focus on outreach.

The Hensons thought they had found the ideal place, a former pig farm in the tiny town of Ovett near Laurel, Mississippi. Their plan was to share the land with others who sought retreat in an environment that was free of violence, alcohol, illegal drugs and discrimination. Their arrival in the summer of 1993 was uneventful. Things changed a few months later after a copy of their newsletter was circulated among local residents.

The Hensons planned to hold workshops on topics including sexism, racism and homophobia. Through the newsletter, it became clear that Brenda and Wanda were lesbians and that they intended to bring more lesbians into the conservative community.

The response was quick: threatening mail and phone calls, gunfire near the property, a dead dog draped over a mail box, opposition statements made in local church pulpits and epithets toward women volunteers who were building a fence around the property. Soon the Southern Baptist Convention lent its support to a movement to buy the property and have the camp branded a public nuisance through a lawsuit. Some wondered why Brenda and Wanda didn’t just leave but the Hensons refused to respond with fear.

Their plight attracted the support of others, including then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who sent federal investigators and mediators.

Almost a decade later, the Hensons are still there. They won the public nuisance lawsuit and face no more litigation. They rarely encounter opposition.

More than 5,000 visitors have spent time at the farm, which has been converted to a conference center with meeting rooms, a 40-person dormitory and rental cabins. In the past decade, they have expanded their work in Ovett. In addition to educational events and the retreat center, they serve the local community, providing clothing, school supplies, emergency food boxes and funds for GED exams. Brenda, who didn’t complete high school, obtained her GED before obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is continuing her education. Wanda is sharing her knowledge as a Family Nurse Practitioner by working four days near Natchez, Mississippi.

Women of Achievement
2002

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sharon Pollard

Sharon Pollard never meant to become a warrior for workplace rights.

The men around her just went too far.

Sharon went to work for DuPont in the hydrogen peroxide unit in 1977 in Memphis. In 1995, she left her job with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by years of harassment and isolation at the male-dominated plant. In 1997, she sued DuPont. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court heard her sexual harassment case and unanimously cleared the way for larger damage awards to workers who lose their jobs because of illegal discrimination. The story of her battle appeared in newspapers nationwide.

A 1965 graduate of Westside High, Pollard was divorced and raising a daughter alone when she was hired at DuPont as an assistant operator at the company’s tank farm in North Memphis. One male coworker grabbed her rear end; another reached into her overalls. That was the extent of her problems until her promotion to operator in 1987. She moved from working outdoors, where she turned valves on giant tanks, to the control room where crews of six worked each shift monitoring the chemical process. She was the only woman on her shift and trouble with coworkers started immediately. One placed a Bible on her desk open to the passage “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man.’’ Men she worked with asked if she would like to have sex, cursed her and defaced the bathroom with a drawing of large breasts and graffiti.

As incidents stacked up, Sharon reported some and let others slide. The worst of the harassment started after Sharon spoke to girls visiting DuPont for Take Our Daughters to Work Day in 1994. Others on the shift were instructed not to eat with her, be in the break room with her or talk to her. And the men routinely used foul words for women. She went to management. She asked that the four women in that area work the same shift. Management refused. She asked for medical leave and began to see a psychologist. Determined to reach retirement, in February 1996 Sharon met with managers but the only offer was to go back to the control room. She declined and was fired. At trial in federal court, she listened to DuPont employees lie. But in federal court, she won a judgment for $407,000 in back pay and damages, a judgment affirmed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sharon went on to the Supreme Court to ask whether federal law limits the amount of damages victims of job discrimination can collect to make up for lost future earnings. The court ruled that she and others deserve more. “Hopefully, the message has been sent by the courts that you are going to have to straighten out the work environment and I feel really good about that,’’ Sharon said. The men who abused her still have their jobs. The main perpetrator never received a reprimand and was never disciplined. There was no further investigation. Sharon continues to work on her emotional recovery.

In October 2003, DuPont was ordered to pay Sharon $2.5 million in punitive damages but the $24 billion multinational company appealed the federal judge’s decision in November 2003.

On June 22, 2005 the Court of Appeals stood by the District Court’s decision to make DuPont pay Pollard $2.5 million in compensatory damages.

—
Sharon Blaylock Pollard passed away on August 10, 2025, at the age of 78.

Women of Achievement
2001

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Jodie Gaines Johnson

Jodie Gaines, daughter of a wealthy owner of a furniture factory in McKenzie, Tennessee, had just turned 18 when she was kidnapped April 18, 1978, by three men and held captive five days.

She grew up in Carroll County, about 115 miles northeast of Memphis. Starting in the 10th grade, she attended Lausanne, a private school in East Memphis. She’d make the two-hour drive to Memphis on Sunday evenings and return to McKenzie on Friday afternoons. On one of those Fridays, she had dinner with her parents at the Carroll County Country Club and was stopped by a car with police lights shortly after she drove away. Three men claiming to be conducting an undercover drug bust forced her into the back floorboard of her car. She was imprisoned, first in her car in the Henry County woods, and then in a concrete-block fishing cabin on Kentucky Lake where she was handcuffed to a bed. She was beaten repeatedly and raped.

On Monday afternoon, the men left to arrange and collect a ransom. They returned once, to get an answer to a question that would prove to her family that she was alive. The men left again and for hours, Jodie beat on the bed. She kicked it and hit it all night long. Sometime after dawn on that Tuesday, the bed broke and she freed herself. Meanwhile, authorities arrested the kidnappers, who never got their hands on the $250,000 her father had borrowed and placed under a river bridge. Two attackers pleaded guilty; Jodie testified in the trial of the third, who was convicted as a result of her testimony.

Jodi went on to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, but sometimes felt suicidal and hated men. She moved further from McKenzie, to California, worked as a waitress and met a firefighter named Jeff Johnson. They married about 18 months later and he persuaded her that McKenzie was a great place to raise a family. With Jeff as her rock, she rebuilt her life and they are raising four children.

Of her attackers, one remains in prison and one was paroled in 1986. Another, who masterminded the kidnap plan, was freed from prison in 1999 and returned to the McKenzie area to live and work. When state officials would not tell her when her attackers would be released or what they looked like, her campaign for victims’ rights legislation began.

“I have four kids and I don’t want to be in the grocery store and run into them because I’m not that strong,’’ Jodie has said. “I’m going to do whatever I can do … I’m going to speak out, especially for those people who don’t have a voice.’’

She has spoken to legislators in Nashville to push a constitutional amendment and bills providing notification and other rights to victims of crimes. She met with Vice President Al Gore regarding similar federal proposals and spoke at the 2000 Democratic Convention. A 1996 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing victims’ rights passed in Tennessee and now Jodie wants the same thing to happen across the nation.

Women of Achievement
1999

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sandra Harrison

Sandra Harrison was illiterate.

She was 46, but she could not decipher a utility bill, or choose a greeting card for a friend, or read a simple paragraph in a newspaper story.

Typically, people who cannot read will make their way in society as best they can, hiding their secret. Some take classes at the many literacy councils in the area. Some go on to get their general equivalency diploma (GED) and enroll in adult basic education classes.

Sandra Harrison was different. She decided to go back to school.

In 1996, she entered second grade at Drummonds Elementary School and began her education with 7-year-old children. With loving support from a dear friend and a fine teacher, she set out determined to learn to read and write.

She swallowed her pride, not only to get the education she needed, but also to prevent others from being illiterate. She told the story of her struggle on the front page of The Commercial Appeal. To her classmates, she said, “I can’t read. I come up the hard way. I don’t want you to go through what I did, the way that I was brought up. I want to be able to read, and be with you, and do things like you do.’’

Sandra’s family were Tipton County sharecroppers. She, her brothers and sisters – 11 of them – got to go to school when it rained. Otherwise the family worked the cotton fields.

In the 1950s and 1960s in rural Tipton County, no one thought to test Sandra for a learning disability. No one noticed or helped as she fell behind in her schoolwork, so Sandra began a lifetime of pretending and getting by. At last, a teacher said, “You can’t learn.’’

Sandra married at 16 and nearly 30 years later, her caring husband, W.H. ‘Bug’ Harrison, encouraged her to accept friend Inez Miller’s offer of reading lessons. After a year of grammar, spelling and phonics, Inez paired Sandra with veteran second-grade teacher Mable Jefferson. She became “Miss Sandra,’’ drilling with flash cards and reading from piles of picture books alongside youngsters with missing teeth.

“I love them books,’’ she told The Commercial Appeal. “I get excited about them books.’’

Years after a school system failed her, Sandra Harrison bravely risked humiliation and disappointment in her drive to change her life by learning to read and write. She bravely shared her story, in her community, at church and in the newspaper, to offer an example of hope and strength to others.

Sandra Harrison studied for four years and then stopped to tend to an ill family member.

Women of Achievement
1998

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Alison Williams

Alison Williams’ parents raised their daughter to be colorblind. So it was no wonder that as the newly elected 17-year-old student body president of Hernando High School, she questioned the race-based student election system that began during integration in 1970.

Freshmen, sophomore and junior classes elected co-presidents – a black student and a white student for each class – as a way to give representation to black and white students. The high school also had two principals – one black and one white. The common response was, “That’s just the way we do it here.”

“Race relations are good, so why does the school need this system?” Alison wondered.

She spoke up about this policy at a DeSoto County School Board meeting in May 1997. The school board quickly dismissed Alison’s question, but they couldn’t dismiss her conviction. She believed that the student body should be able to vote for student council representatives based on individual merit and the individual’s desire to run and serve. She decided to fight to the end.

With assistance from a local parents group, Alison and her parents persuaded the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education to investigate. As the investigation became publicized, Alison began losing friends at school. One teacher told her she was disappointed in her. Eventually the national media approached her – the Associated Press, Good Morning America, CNN, and 20/20.

A petition to have her impeached was started by a teacher and a few former friends. However, on June 2, 1997, the DeSoto County School Board announced that there would be no ethnicity requirements on any activity at Hernando High School. A month later, it became a countywide change. And she learned that the next year, there would be only one principal at the school.

Alison is now a senior and is thankful for the friends who stood by her in her fight. Alison has said that if she could go back, she would do it all over again. She is what we call people who challenge accepted practice and spark important debate about unpopular causes – a hero.

Alison completed high school out-of-state and is a straight-A student in criminal justice at Northwest Mississippi Community College. She works for the Sheriff’s Department and raises and trains horses.

Women of Achievement
1997

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Lisa Herdahl

A heroine is a woman noted for her courageous and daring acts. Courageous and daring are words used many times to describe Lisa Herdahl, a woman who exhibited tremendous heroism in her legal battle against the religious practices of the Pontotoc County School District.

In 1993, Herdahl and her family moved from Wisconsin to Mississippi and into the Pontotoc County School District. Five of her six children attended the North Pontotoc Attendance Center and were exposed to daily devotionals over the intercom, biblical history classes subsidized by local churches, group prayer sessions in the gymnasium and religious videotapes shown in classes.

With the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and the advocacy group, People for the American Way, Lisa challenged these long-standing religious practices publicly when she brought suit against the school systems.

The trial, which drew national media attention, was declared a victory for Herdahl and her family in July 1996. A U.S. district judge ruled that the Pontotoc County School District was in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of government establishment of religions and ordered the daily devotionals on the intercom to be stopped.

During the two-year legal battle, Lisa and her family were subjected to harsh criticism from students, teachers, townspeople and community leaders. They were ridiculed, taunted and belittled.

“My kids and I have been harassed for standing up for our religious freedom,” Herdahl said. “I don’t believe that any students should be forced to choose between going along with some official prayer or having to stand out and be ostracized.”

In response to her public stand on the school prayer issue, Lisa was called an atheist, was forced to quit her job and faced eviction from her home. But through it all, Lisa Herdahl held fast to her beliefs.

Lisa has been unable to find a job since the lawsuit. She is organizing a non-profit to help families assert their rights in dealing with public school systems regarding special education, disciplinary actions and other issues.

Women of Achievement
1996

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Pauline Jones Hord

From the day she began teaching first graders in 1929 to today as she teaches prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, Pauline Hord has been on a mission. That mission is to teach reading to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. From the Delta of the southern United States to the mountains and savannahs of Columbia, South America; in classrooms, with individuals and through television broadcasts, Pauline has battled heroically and creatively to end illiteracy.

After years of teaching in the city schools, Pauline learned the Laubach method of reading. Laubach had always emphasized each-one-teach-one, a worthy idea but slow. Given the large population of illiterate adults in the Mid-South, Pauline was interested in maximizing results. In the mid-’50s she took Laubach to the air by working as volunteer director for a literacy program for WKNO. The program was broadcast into homes and community sites such as libraries. There, instructors met with groups of students to speed progress. Sights aimed high, she also worked to establish the World Literacy Foundation.

Aware that illiteracy is a global problem, in the early 1960s, and now in her 50s, Pauline took a leave of absence from the city schools to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. Though speaking Spanish at only an elementary level, she had a good understanding of the written language. She was assigned to work in Columbia and stationed in Bogota. Using the Memphis model, she designed a Spanish language curriculum to be broadcast all over the country. The Peace Corps assigned over one-fourth of the young volunteers to help. One hundred twenty-five assistants fanned out over the country to tutor small groups, individuals and groups of prisoners.

By the early 1980s, Pauline had discovered the “Sing, Spell, Read and Write” teaching technique. She was convinced that this method could teach reading skills in a matter of months instead of years. She obtained a small grant from Plough to train eight elementary school teachers from one school. The next year the program doubled to 16 and by the eighth year, 454 teachers from 56 schools were trained to use the technique.

Aware that much of the adult prison population is functionally illiterate, Pauline decided to take the reading program for kids to the notorious Parchman Prison, the maximum-security facility in Mississippi, and by the time of her retirement from the school system in 1968, she had already begun. Working with equally dedicated nuns, she recruited as many prisoners as possible for the program. At one point, groups of students were working in five of the prison’s units. More than 30 years later, Pauline, who was 89 in April 1996, continued teaching in the prison, located 120 miles from her home.

In 2002, Pauline published a book of daily devotions titled Praying for the President which she has done daily since Jimmy Carter’s election in 1977.

Pauline Jones Hord passed away on March 5, 2005 at age 98.