Elijah B. Odom

Elijah B. Odom was born in 1859 as a slave in Mississippi. Despite the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, his descendants believe he was still kept a slave as a child, forced to pick berries by his owner. Elijah and his brothers eventually escaped to freedom, swimming across a narrow part of the Mississippi River. He later attended Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and became the only black doctor in Biscoe, Arkansas. He also owned a store and a pharmacy there. Elijah had 8 children, including Ruth Bonner, who on September 24, 2016, at the age of 99, joined President Barack Obama and four generations of her own family, including her 7-year-old great-granddaughter Christine, in ringing a bell dating back to 1880s from First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, to dedicate the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC.[1][2]

Elijah was also the father of Vernon, the youngest of Elijah's 8 children. Vernon was born in 1921 in Biscoe, Arkansas, and attended Morehouse College with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a recipient of the Bert Polsky Humanitarian Award, retired from his job as executive director of the Urban League in 1992 and died at the age of 74 on May 22, 1996.[3]

References
  1. "New Smithsonian museum chronicling black history opens". The Blade. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
  2. Contrera, Jessica; Contrera, Jessica (2016-09-25). "Descended from a slave, this family helped to open the African American Museum with Obama". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2017-09-01.
  3. bjstaff. "Local history: Vernon Odom went to college with Martin Luther King Jr". www.ohio.com. Retrieved 2017-09-01.


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