A dilapidated sign in Minter City honoring Olympian Lusia Harris-Stewart is down, but plans are in place to erect another sign in her honor near Greenwood.
Board of Supervisors President Robert Collins said today the new structure will be built on county school district property near Harris-Stewart’s alma mater, Amanda Elzy High School.
Collins said private funds will be raised to pay for the new sign and that community activists Shun Pearson and Kyle Scott are leading the way.
Collins said District 1 Supervisor Phil Wolfe, whose district includes Minter City, told him Monday that the sign was on the ground.
Harris-Stewart, 57, gained fame by leading Delta State to three national titles and then the United States to a silver medal in the 1976 Olympics. The 6-foot-3 center was the first woman ever drafted by the NBA and is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
But her sign fell into disrepair in recent years. It has a large four-letter obscenity scrawled across it, and the county couldn’t identify its owner.
Wolfe had said during an April 9 board meeting that he planned to tear the sign down if another solution couldn’t be found. He said it would be illegal for the county to work on it because it’s private property.
The demolition plans had prompted calls from several sectors to save the sign.
State Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said last week that it’s part of the area’s tourism effort and too important not to be saved. “We’re going to restore the sign, but we’re going to need help from the county board of supervisors to do it,” he said then.
Alan Huffman, a freelance writer from Bolton, is part of a group of old friends from the Jackson area who for 15 years have made a weekend trek up the Delta to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.
He’d never heard of Harris-Stewart until they stopped one year just to get out of the car. They began learning more about her and made it an annual part of their trip.
Huffman said Harris-Stewart is a good role model and that he’s surprised anyone would want to tear down the sign. He said it’s little landmarks like it that make the Delta culture his group loves.
“You would think they’d be proud of her. Everybody should be proud of her,” he said.
