The 2018 Women of Achievement

Honoring women who have made an impact in Memphis.

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Too much of the work women do in the community to make change and solve problems and simply be leaders is not recorded,” says Deborah Clubb, executive director of the Memphis Area Women’s Council and co-founder of Women of Achievement. “It’s not celebrated in the way that much of the history created by men is. That was what we were confronting back in the early 1980s.”

While men were honored at lavish public dinners for their leadership roles and accomplishments, working women had little more than a Secretary’s Day. To address this disparity, Women of Achievement was founded in 1984 to recognize the accomplishments of female civic leaders, educators, artists, and others, whose work to promote positive change in our community deserved to be saluted.

In its 34 years, Women of Achievement, a group of individuals and local organizations, has honored female politicians, musicians, nonprofit leaders, scientists, and more whose stories and work have inspired the city. The youngest among the honorees was Caroline Turns, a 9-year-old battling a rare cancer, who received an award for heroism in 2009. Turns shared her story with others, promoting awareness and encouraging other children fighting cancer at St. Jude.

Turns’ is just one of 240 individual stories shared via Women of Achievement since its inception. Each year, nominations are submitted by the public in seven categories: courage, determination, heritage, heroism, initiative, steadfastness, and vision. Heritage is awarded posthumously to women whose work still resonates and endures. Steadfastness is given for a lifetime of achievement. Women of Achievement’s member committees review and select the finalists who are honored at an awards ceremony, in front of as many as 500 attendees, each March.

“This is a moment that we, on behalf of the whole community, say thank you,” Clubb says, “for that sacrifice, for enduring that danger, for continuing to believe in what you’re doing, for pressing on even after you had children, after you had an illness, after you were told what you were going to do wasn’t going to work.”

Clubb says the most compelling component of the annual ceremony is hearing directly from the honorees, “in their words … why they’ve done what they did. What did it demand of them? What sacrifice was there? And, how would they encourage the rest of us to continue doing what we do for the community or to participate in the kind of thing that they’re interested in? We’ve heard rousing and heartfelt comments made by honorees over the years.”

This year’s celebration, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, paid “tribute to all past honorees whose work emulated the issues and courage of Dr. Martin Luther King.” The following new Women of Achievement honorees were also recognized.

COURAGE

For a woman who, facing active opposition, backed an unpopular cause in which she greatly believed.

Kamilla Barton

Kamilla Barton survived a traumatic childhood, found the courage to escape an abusive marriage, and has gone forward to become a fighter in the battle to help others struggling to remove themselves from domestic violence. With the help of the Family Safety Center, Barton forged ahead and speaks out on behalf of victims of battering. 

She has completed her GED, graduated from Southwest Community College, and is now studying social work at the University of Memphis. Barton has worked as a victim’s advocate for the Family Safety Center and the YWCA Immigrant Women Services Blueprint for Safety program. A tireless volunteer, she has participated in the Rhodes Mentoring Program and domestic violence awareness events at such venues as LeMoyne-Owen College, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Southwest Community College.

In November 2016, Barton founded and became first executive director of STEPS (Successful Transitions Empowering Permanent Safety), a nonprofit dedicated to assisting victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse. Through STEPS, Barton works to help families dealing with domestic violence using experiences she has faced and overcome. She connects individuals with local resources. For meetings with social services agencies, legal services, medical appointments, the search for housing, or help with finances, she goes with them as their personal advocate, available 24/7.

Barton’s dream is for STEPS to serve the many. She would like to have a facility to house those in need, a safe place to live in a more permanent environment than shelters can provide until lives are stabilized and on track. As resources grow, services will expand.

DETERMINATION

For a woman who solved a glaring problem despite widespread inertia, apathy, or ignorance around her.

Rachel Sumner Haaga

In 34 years, Rachel Sumner Haaga is the first living abolitionist honored by Women of Achievement. Determined to raise awareness and help victims of human sex trafficking – modern slavery in all its ugliest forms – this Memphis native works every day to rescue women and children from the grip of evil predators.

Sumner Haaga learned about human trafficking while working as a youth missionary in Cambodia. Upon returning to Memphis, she joined a local nonprofit called Operation Broken Silence, working on human trafficking as the assistant director of the anti-trafficking team in 2010. Restore Corps was birthed out of that team in 2013 as Sumner Haaga worked as a waitress to pay her bills and dedicated every possible moment to building awareness and resources to help victims of trafficking.

Her team wrote and lobbied for 19 legislative changes, all of which are now in effect and which have made Tennessee a national leader in anti-trafficking law. Gradually, support grew for Restore Corps, and by 2016 Sumner Haaga was able to serve as the full-time executive director of the program, housed at Memphis Leadership Foundation. Last year the first part-time staff member, a survivor, was hired, joined this year by three more staffers and the opening of Restore Corps’ first transitional residence for adult survivors. Services for children include coordinating with foster parents.

Restore Corps’ vision is “to see a slave-free community through the rehabilitation and empowerment of survivors and a community galvanized against human trafficking.” The care network Sumner Haaga built provides housing and full support services for persons rescued from the bondage, addiction, and persecution of sex trafficking.

HERITAGE

For a woman of generations past whose achievements still enrich our lives.

Lois DeBerry (1945-2013)

An outspoken politician, Lois DeBerry was the first woman to be chosen as speaker pro tempore of the Tennessee House of Representatives. A Democrat, she was elected to represent the 91st District in Shelby County in 1972, beating four male candidates, and headed for Nashville in 1973, one of only five women in the Tennessee General Assembly, the second African-American woman elected, and the first from Memphis. DeBerry served for four decades, and at her death in 2013, was the longest serving member of the House.

During the 1960s DeBerry took part in the Civil Rights Movement, despite her parents’ objections. She participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and was part of the Student Sit-In Movement against segregation in public places. She marched the 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965, publicizing the lack of voting rights for African-Americans. After graduating from LeMoyne-Owen College with a degree in elementary education in 1971, she worked as a counselor for a federally funded program in Memphis housing projects as a link between families and schools. She soon realized she was a token African-American, as well as one of the few women in a program that wasn’t doing its job to motivate black children to stay in school. She called on a few male politicians voicing her doubts and, getting no response, felt frustrated.

A chance conversation with an older African-American woman who told her, “Baby, the only way you can change the system is to get in the system,” catalyzed her run for office.

HEROISM

For a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond.

Tami Sawyer

Tami Sawyer founded #TakeEmDown901, the successful movement to remove Confederate statues in a predominantly African-American city seeking to heal from a history of racial strife.

The shooting of Trayvon Martin six years ago was a transformative moment for Sawyer. She was then living in Washington, D.C., working as a diversity analyst. Seeing the gentrification of her neighborhood drive out black businesses and homeowners, she began thinking about moving back to Memphis. Upon her return, she worked for Shelby County Schools before assuming a position with Teach for America - Memphis. Once connected to a vibrant group of young activists, Sawyer emerged as the energizing force behind #TakeEmDown901, the citizen group that pressured the city to remove two Confederate statues from downtown parks.

As part of that effort, Sawyer called a public meeting at which some 300 citizens, from diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and experiences, stood to testify to the pain that these memorials had caused or to decry the distorted history they promulgated. Speaking to groups across the city, she also collected thousands of petition signatures, and, with other local groups, proposed ways that the statues could be legally removed.

Sawyer was recently elected Shelby County Commissioner. She is also the managing director of diversity and community partnerships at Teach For America - Memphis, and a writer, speaker, social justice activist, and education advocate. Sawyer organizes, speaks, and writes about the continued movement for social justice and racial equity in the South and has been featured on CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and Huffington Post. She was named by The Tennessean as one of 18 Tennesseans to watch in 2018.

INITIATIVE

For a woman who seized the opportunity to use her talents and created her own future.

Wanda Taylor

Overcoming a background of childhood neglect, substance abuse, domestic abuse, teen pregnancy, and homelessness, Wanda Taylor turned her life around and took the initiative to use her experiences to help other addicted and abused women. She founded a nonprofit for troubled women in 2013 called LINCS (Ladies in Need Can Survive) with the goal of helping women in crisis to recover and transition successfully back into society.

At the age of 21, she found the strength to turn her life around so her children would have better lives. She couldn’t read or write but was determined. While working full- and part-time jobs, she returned to school to earn her high school diploma. She went on to attend Southwest Tennessee Community College, receiving a technical certificate in substance abuse counseling and an associate of science degree in human services.

Taylor has used her own experiences to educate and motivate others, teaching through the Salvation Army, Serenity Recovery Center, Shelby County Rape Crisis Center, Department of Human Services, and Shelby County Child Support Office. She also volunteers to share her story — to women in prison, women in homeless situations through Project for the Homeless Connect, and teenagers through juvenile court.

LINCS today provides a one-year residential program with structured training. Participants go through an intensive drug and alcohol outpatient program, counseling, anger management, domestic violence education, parenting and life skills coaching, job readiness, career and financial planning, and a health and wellness program, along with first aid/CPR and SIDS training and housing assistance.

STEADFASTNESS

For a lifetime of achievement.

Miriam DeCosta-Willis

Civil rights activist, educator, and author Miriam DeCosta-Willis has spent a lifetime working for change. Active in the local movement and denied entrance to then-Memphis State University graduate school due to her race, she later returned to become the first African-American faculty member at the university. She left Memphis to continue her career in higher education but remained an activist wherever she was and wrote or edited many books on the black experience and diaspora. Her works include Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers, Notable Black Memphians, and Singular Like a Bird.

DeCosta-Willis has steadfastly worked to advance the cause of civil rights. She understands what it means to break racial and gender barriers and defy the odds and embodies much of what the Women’s and Civil Rights Movements hoped to accomplish in the last half of the twentieth century.

DeCosta-Willis organized her first protest while a high school junior in Orangeburg, South Carolina. That same year, she integrated into the prestigious, all-white Westover School for girls, in Connecticut. There, she graduated at the top of her class. In 1952, she attended Wellesley before marriage brought her to Memphis. After being denied admission to Memphis State, she applied to the Johns Hopkins program in 1959 under her married name, Sugarmon, and was accepted because the school thought she was Jewish. She completed a master’s and later became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. there.

Over the years, in addition to Memphis State, DeCosta-Willis has taught or served in administrative positions at Howard University, LeMoyne-Owen College, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. Now retired, she continues to write.

VISION

For a woman whose sensitivity to women's needs led her to tremendous achievements for women.

Cherisse Scott

The deception she faced at a crisis pregnancy center as a young, pregnant, African-American woman in Chicago pushed Cherisse Scott to devote her career to reproductive justice, particularly for women and girls of color, poor women, rural women, and their families. She founded SisterReach in Memphis in 2011 to provide information that lets women and girls make informed decisions about their bodies and reproductive power and to advocate for preservation of reproductive rights.

Scott has worked in the reproductive justice movement for more than 10 years. She understands the need for social support to aid in making informed decisions about reproductive health. She also knows how life changes positively when a woman is empowered with access and information about her reproductive and sexual health. Scott’s organization, SisterReach, is currently the only reproductive justice organization in the state of Tennessee.

Recent accomplishments under her leadership include releasing a 2015 report on the need for comprehensive sexuality education for Southern youth of color, a pro-woman billboard campaign in opposition to anti-abortion billboards erected in Memphis targeting black men, the roll-out of a state and nationally based clergy cohort partnering with and training faith leaders on social justice issues, and Scott’s own presentation to the United Nations Working Group on the issue of discrimination against Women in Law and Practice regarding the impact of the fetal assault law on Tennessee women. SisterReach’s work, along with state and national partners, on the fetal assault law led to a victory of defeating HB 1660, which criminalized mothers struggling with drug addiction.

Do you know someone who should be saluted? Nominations are accepted throughout the year. Visit womenofachievement.org to download the nomination form or to read more about previous honorees.

To find out more about membership, for individuals or organizations, or to become a supporter, visit the website or email Deborah Clubb at dclubb@memphiswomen.org.