Our Board and Staff

THEOANGELO PERKINS, President

Co-founder Theoangelo Perkins is now in a fourth-term as Mayor of Harpersville. He is a former teacher, a realtor, and a minister. His McGinnis ancestors came to the Wallace farm after emancipation and have been connected with the Wallaces over generations.

joey brackner, vice-president

Joey Brackner is a recently retired state folklorist serving as such at the Alabama State Council on the Arts from 1985 to 2022. He is the author of Alabama Folk Pottery (UA Press 2006) and host of the Alabama Public Television series Journey Proud from 2013 to 2019. Brackner is a native of Fairfield, Alabama, with degrees in Anthropology from UAB and the University of Texas (1981). He and his wife Eileen Knott live in Montgomery.

Thomas Hoynes, Treasurer

Tom Hoynes is a freelance Film Producer based in Berkeley, California. He is a direct descendant of Samuel Wallace, five generations removed. Raised in the suburbs of New York City, with little connection to his Alabama heritage, he has been in California since 1987. While on a recent, memory lane tour with his father, Louis Hoynes, Jr., he was fortunate to reconnect with the Wallace House, extended family, and the Shelby County community.

Kathryn King, Secretary

Kathryn King, Midwestern born and bred, taught English for twenty-five years at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. She published work on early women writers previously lost to history. In retirement she turned her attention to lost histories closer to hand. She co-edits the monthly Untold Stories of Black Montevallo and co-founded the Montevallo Legacy Project, a nonprofit which works to give voice and visibility to the local African American community. She was co-leader of a citizen's coalition that brought an EJI lynching marker to Montevallo's Main St.

Mary Datcher

Mary Datcher is a media, branding, and political consultant in Chicago.  She is Vice President of Communications for APS & Associates, a public affairs and political consulting firm. She was formerly District Director for Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush (retired) and Congressman Jonathan L. Jackson; a former senior staff writer/arts & entertainment editor for The Chicago Defender.  Datcher’s father left Harpersville during the Great Migration and relocated to Chicago.  She is a descendant of Lucy Wallace Baker, who was enslaved at the Wallace Plantation.

Peter Datcher

Albert “Peter” Datcher is a farmer and family historian in the Cresswell Community outside Harpersville.  A member of the Board of the Shelby County Historical Society, he has placed historic and contemporary photographs and articles on every wall of his ancestral home, creating a history house.  Datcher is descended from Lucy Wallace Baker who was enslaved on the Wallace Plantation and who, after emancipation, was first in three generations of midwives.  Her uniform, tools and records are in the collection of the Alabama History Museum.

Ann Florie

Ann D. Florie was the Executive Director of Leadership Birmingham from 2004-2018 and then was interim Executive Director of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.  She has served on many boards, including the United Way of Central Alabama, the McWane Science Center, and the Birmingham Business Alliance, and was elected to the Mountain Brook Board of Education for 10 years.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Newcomb College/Tulane University.

beverly oden johnson

Beverly Oden Johnson, a retired nurse, has been an elected member of the Harpersville Town Council for over 16 years. She is descended from Anderson Wallace, who was enslaved on the Wallace Plantation.

Nell Gottlieb, Executive Director

Cofounder Nell Wallace Harrell Gottlieb was born in Birmingham AL, moving away in 1962. She spent the summers of 1950 at the Wallace House with her grandmother. She inherited the house in 2018 and gifted it to Klein Arts & Culture in 2019. A retired professor, she is now an artist. (Email her.)

Jennifer McCohnell, Programs and facilities manager

Jennifer McCohnell is a conceptual artist and former high school English teacher. She will support the Wallace Center’s mission by building community relationships and developing programming that engages broad audiences, helping define the Wallace Center as a model for reparative historical interpretations/ experiences. (Email her.)