Ruby Bright

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Ruby Bright was a 15-year-old sophomore.

“I remember very vividly my family gathering,” she says. “And it seems as if the day had been a sunshiny day except, for that moment, the clouds rolled in.”

Bright, executive director of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis, is from nearby Byhalia, Mississippi, where her extended family all lived close together. She recalls gathering in her uncle’s yard that day, a dog howling as if a summons, her aunt removing King’s picture from the wall.

“People talked about the sadness, about what it meant,” Bright says. There was fear that the marching would stop, that communities would be burned. “I was frightened. I was sad,” she says. But it also served as a catalyst that would lead Bright to community service.

“I felt a sense of resolve that you have to be a part of change,” she says. This meant having no fear shopping in local stores and getting better school books. Her high school principal at her unsegregated high school gave students space to meet.

In 1970, Bright and fellow students of her Byhalia High School graduating class integrated a local restaurant through nonviolent sit-ins. “We talked about it and read about it as well as watched things on television,” she says. “Some things weren’t as positive as others. We had good conversations. We used that opportunity to talk about the sacrifices of our parents, grandparents, and the importance they put on having a stronger and better life.”

Bright recounts how in 1991, after Memphis’ first black mayor, Willie Herenton, was elected she grabbed her keys, put her children in the car, and headed downtown to celebrate. They considered the possibility that someone might try to kill Herenton. “We talked about that and about standing up,” she says. “We don’t ever know what’s going to happen. I allowed them to come with me that night. I was late, but I put them in the car. I wanted them to know that moment and feel that.”

“I was able to share about Martin Luther King the things he did and why he did it,” she recalls. “How does it affect me? What did you reap from that? It really helped my children understand the importance of giving back and volunteering.”

When Bright was young, she was charged with organizing her church’s Women’s Day fund-raiser. She was asked to raise $1,000. She said, “Why not $10,000?” She then set about getting 100 women to raise $100 each through selling pies, cakes, and hotdogs.

Fund-raising proved to be something for which Bright had a knack. After high school, following a job at a nursing home where her mother worked and a stint in the late 1970s as executive manager at Dave Williams Printing, Bright began volunteering for Junior Achievement. There, among other things, “I learned how to raise money,” she says.

Junior Achievement valued her work and hired her for a marketing position. She served the organization for 15 years, including four as president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Kansas City, before landing the position as executive director of the Women’s Foundation in 2000.

The Women’s Foundation announced its ambitious Vision 2020 program in 2015. The goal of the program is to improve the lives of those living in the 38126 zip code, the poorest in the Memphis area. This means securing government resources for needy families, providing job training, offering pre-school prep, working on youth development, and working on financial literacy.

“I think the most important thing philanthropy at the Women’s Foundation has done is to really help us understand the deep, core barriers that families without resources face — to be able to walk with them, work them through agencies, through leadership. It’s going to take a long time to make all that happen.”

When it comes to her leadership style, Bright describes herself as a “tough but fair manager.” The Women’s Foundation has a small staff (nine full-time employees), and Bright expects those she hires to bring vision beyond their current jobs.

“I have high standards,” she notes. “I push people to be creative: ‘What do you want to become?’ I look for potential and expertise, people who are energetic. And their interest must be beyond money.”

“Women have led the way, and I think that women can continue to do that. I think leaders in our community, both men and women, need to resolve howt we want to make change and go about doing it. If we all take a little piece of it and work that part — I know it seems a little ‘pie in the sky’ — but it’s such a doable approach.”

Asked what makes her optimistic about Memphis’ future, Bright points to the presence of the National Civil Rights Museum in the city, a day-to-day reminder of our civil rights history, along with the diversity of the city’s elected officials. But there’s plenty of room for improvement.

“My hope is that we will continue to really look at creating the best opportunities for children, so that they can what they need to have to succeed in life.”