A journey worth traveling.
From rural Mississippi to New York in the 60s, to parenting, teaching, speaking, writing, and growing, Laverne has found her best joy in storytelling.
Laverne Greene-Leech, one of six black women to desegregate Mississippi State College for Women (now Mississippi University for Women), talks about incident in which she was harassed and humiliated in The Goose (the student union at the time).
Laverne Greene-Leech from the R.E. Hunt Museum & Cultural Center joins us to give an account of the museum's status after the recent tornado rendered the Hunt School a total loss. And we explore the role of the church and historically black colleges and universities in the African-American community.
About Laverne
Laverne Greene-Leech, a native Mississippian, is a civil rights pioneer, poet, breast cancer survivor, author, and life-long educator. She is one of three African-American undergraduate students who desegregated Mississippi State College for Women — now Mississippi University for Women (MUW) — in 1966.
Her story is captured in the The Price We Paid anthology, and the Mississippi University for Women pioneers website, which includes photos and oral history accounts. In 2016, MUW awarded Green-Leech the university's Medal of Excellence.
After leaving the “W”, Laverne worked for more than thirty years as an educator, including making history as the first female Dean of Christian Education for the Gethsemane Mt. Moriah District Association of Baptist Churches.
Laverne continues to make and preserve history through her work as the founding Director and curator of the R.E. Hunt Museum and Culture Center in Columbus, Mississippi.
Full bio available upon request..