Credit Courtesy of Donna Odom
Odom was named a Kalamazoo YWCA Woman of Achievement recipient in 2018. She is a scholar on the Underground Railroad’s presence in Southwest Michigan. Odom used to coordinate history programs and special projects at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum for 16 years, including holding a summer youth camp on the Underground Railroad. A major traveling exhibit about race had come to the museum during the same year that she retired from there in 2010.
Odom kept the conversation about race going by launching a multi-racial, community-wide book group that met in public spaces to encourage racial healing; it was founded within months of the exhibit’s conclusion. That discussion and reading effort is now a joint project of SHARE and the Kalamazoo Public Library.