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Beebe announces new minority health director Tuesday, Jun 5, 2007 Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Gov. Mike Beebe announced Monday he has appointed a former member of the Arkansas State Police Commission as executive director of the state Minority Health Commission. Wynona Bryant-Williams of Little Rock replaces Judy Smith, who recently resigned to accept the position of field director of transition services at the state Department of Workforce Education. Bryant-Williams, 57, was appointed to the State Police Commission in 1997 and served on the Racial Profiling Committee of the Arkansas State Police in 2003. Most recently, she worked in the Department of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She also helped develop the Black Families Studies Program at Philander Smith College in Little Rock and coordinated the Families First Nutrition and Wellness Systems Program at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Bryant-Williams earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Arkansas and her doctorate at Texas Woman's University. She is currently researching the correlation between HIV/AIDS and incarceration among blacks. She is the widow of Louis Bryant, a state trooper who was shot and killed by white supremacist Richard Wayne Snell during a traffic stop near De Queen in 1984. Snell received a life sentence for that murder but was executed in 1995 for the 1983 killing of pawnshop owner Bill Stumpp during a robbery in Texarkana. Bryant-Williams' appointment as director of the Minority Health Commission became effective May 15, Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said. Smith is a former Democratic state representative from Camden. She ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic challenger to then-U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey in 1998. She sought the 4th District Democratic congressional nomination again in 2000, but after finishing third in the Democratic primary she broke ranks with her party and endorsed Dickey, who lost to Democrat Mike Ross in that year's general election. |
