John Beifuss,Ted Evanoff|Memphis Commercial Appeal
This story has been updated to correct JennaGoodloe Wade's name.
Russell T. Wigginton Jr., who becomespresident of the National Civil Rights Museum on Aug. 1, is a scholar and historian who believes history is something that is experienced, not just studied.
He comes by this idea naturally, given hisbackground.
His parents were classmates at Louisville Central High School with Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay.
His father was friends at Howard University in Washington with civil rights activist and Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael.
His mother helped organized Louisville lunch counter sit-ins.
“As a child, I was the kind of person who had an inclination and interest in listening to my elders talk about their experiences,” said Wigginton, 55. “I wasn’t necessarily associating that with a plan to be a historian, but I was captivated by their narrative.
“My great-grandfather had to tote bags for the L&N, the same railroad where my father became human resources manager. So what’s the story behind that? How did we get from there to here?”
The civil rights museum, he said, provides an ideal venue for exploring answers to suchquestions.
But don't assume Wiggintonspends all his time contemplatinggreat leaders, big ideas and culture-changingmilestones.When he reflects on his personal history, sometimes he has to laugh.
“Have you ever ridden in a hot dog going about 80 miles per hour around the Indianapolis 500 track? I have.”
RUSSELL WIGGINTON: National Civil Rights Museum names Russell Wigginton president
Wigginton's path to the Memphis museum
The son of Russell and Benny Wigginton (high school sweethearts who will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary this summer) and the oldest of three siblings, Russ Jr. grew up in Louisville, also the original home base for "a role model who was very influential for me," Whitney M. Young Jr. (1921-1971), a highly educated social worker who became the longtime director of the National Urban League.
Wigginton's family moved to Nashville when Russwas in seventh grade, and Wigginton attended Father Ryan High School, the city's first racially integrated high school.
Wigginton came to Memphis to attend Rhodes College in 1984 (the year the college changed its name from "Southwestern at Memphis"). He graduated in 1988 with a history degree and went to work.
A stint in sales and marketing with Oscar Mayer took him — and the company’s famous Wienermobile — to “some really cool places,” including the Indianapolis 500, he said.
But Wigginton soon realized the workaday business world was not for him, even though he was very successful at Oscar Mayer. "My yearning for history not just for history’s sake but as a professional pursuit around social justice began to emerge.” He earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and returned to Rhodes in 1996, as a William Randolph Hearst fellow and, eventually, a history professor and administrator.
His duties at Rhodes — special assistant to the president, vice president for college relations, vice president for student life, and so on — were not bureaucratic but creative. According to colleagues, hebuilt bridges between the school and greater Memphis community, and developed initiatives that enabled Rhodes students to essentially look history in the eyes rather than simply read about it on the page.
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Crucially, he launched the "Crossroads to Freedom" project, a digital archive of materials collected by Rhodes students, who interview Memphians about their experiences with civil rights in the city. "He wanted to document and spotlight the civil rights tradition here, and not just the well-known moments but the broader tradition of resistance," said history professor Charles Hughes, 39, director of the Lynne and Henry Turley Memphis Center at Rhodes.
“That was his brainchild,” said JennaGoodloe Wade, Rhodes vice president for development. “He got the resources for it, he trained the students and he got the faculty excited, as well.”
“He’s an example of how a historian can create something life-changing not only for students but for everyone,” said Rhodes President Emeritus William E. Troutt,72, who led the college from 1999 to 2017. ”He really got Rhodes connected to greater Memphis in some very meaningful ways.”
Wigginton also made connections with the civil rights museum.
“Being back in Memphis with the emerging National Civil Rights Museum, it was a natural thing for me to incorporate the resources of the museum,” said Wigginton, who joined the museum board in 2010.
In 2019, Wigginton left Rhodes to become a senior executive at the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education, a Nashville-based statewide nonprofit. The job allowed him to remain in Memphis. "I consider myself a Memphian," he said. "I've lived here longer than anywhere else."
He continues to sit on a number of influential or significantnonprofits, including the Overton Park Conservancy, ArtsMemphis, CodeCrew (dedicated to making computer education more accessible to students in underfinanced schools) and Communities in Schools in Tennessee (which calls itself a "dropout prevention organization").
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Museum board member to museum president
After Terri Lee Freeman announced at the end of 2020 that she planned to leave the civil rights museum after a six-year stint as president, the museum boardhired DRG, a New York-based "talent advisory group" for nonprofits, to conduct a nationwide search for Freeman's successor.
According to retired First HorizonBank executive and longtime museum board member Herb Hilliard, 190 people applied for the job, and a search committee interviewed nine candidates. Ultimately, the best choice, he said, was not only in their own back yard but in their own boardroom.
“We wanted someone who could come and manage the museum,” Hilliard said. “Having the academic background he has in African American studies is something special, but really it was his administrative skills and his ability to get things done that impressed us."
Incorporating much of the structure of the Lorraine Motel, where King was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, the National Civil Rights Museum opened to the public in 1991 as something of a "sacred" place,in the words of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy,King's close friend and colleague, who participated in the museum's 1989 groundbreaking.
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Since then, Nashville, Birmingham, Jackson, Mississippi, and, of course, Washington have dedicated museums to aspects of Black history and the civil rights experience. The institutions' directors say the museums are intended to complement rather than to compete with each other, but a challenge for Wigginton is tomaintain and expand the museum's appeal in an era of expanding options for history and "heritage" tourists.
“I was a sophom*ore in college when Dr. King was killed," said Hilliard, 74. "If you are under 53, you were not alive when Dr. King was alive. You have to constantly work to make sure that you stay relevant. Russ absolutely understands that. He's the right person to take us through the next several years."
At Rhodes, "He was instrumental in creating... a broader focus on Memphis, and in thinking about the ways the college could be connected more substantively to the city," Hughes said.
"He has built such important partnerships and relationships, I can't think of a better person to leadthe civil rights museum. I think he is going to be someone who is going to celebrate our really, really crucial local identity, but also bring the museum even more into the conversation about what's happening in Memphis right now, while at the same time understanding the role the museum can play as a national and even international institution."
Russell T. Wigginton Jr.
Age: 55
Profession: Historian
New role: National Civil Rights Museum president
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
School: Rhodes College, Memphis
Family:Wife is Tomeka Hart Wigginton, managing director, Blue Meridian Partners; His son isRyan, a University of Richmond senior.
