Don Manning-Miller

Don Manning-Miller is a native Mississippian who is currently Community Development Associate with the Holly Springs (Mississippi) Community Development Center. He is retired after twenty-four years as Vice President of Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Don is an ordained Baptist minister who was forced out of his pulpit in the 1960s for his civil rights activities. His work has been primarily in the areas of anti-poverty and civil rights, mostly in the South. He has been Senior Field Representative for the Office of Economic Opportunity and the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare during poverty program days and Director of Program Operations for one of the nation’s largest Head Start programs.

He was Director of the Mississippi Hunger Coalition, funded by the Ecumenical Funding Table and a member of the activist board of the National Council of Churches Commission on the Delta Ministry. During his four years in Bloomington, Indiana, he was was Chair of the Congregations for Justice and Peace. In Kentucky, he was active in the Berea Peace and Justice Task Force before returning to Mississippi in 1997.

He has served as an executive in various non-profit and economic development organizations, has been a community organizer and worked in progressive political causes and movements locally and nationally. Don characterizes his work as an ecumenical ministry for progressive, contemporary Christianity.

His late wife, Dr. Carmen Manning-Miller, was Coordinator of the Journalism Graduate School at the University of Mississippi, then Department Chair of Mass Communications at Savannah State University and at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.