Jackson Free Press

Ericka M. Wheeler, a Millsaps College student from Carrollton, Miss., was recently named a Rhodes Scholar and is one of 32 selected this year. She is the first female, African American Rhodes Scholar in Mississippi's history and the sixth Millsaps student to earn the honor.

"In Mississippi, a lot of times people say things like, 'Nothing good comes from the Delta but the blues,'" Wheeler said. "... I want people to know to never let things like that—the status quo or stereotypes—get them down or affect who they are."

Wheeler, 22, will graduate from Millsaps in May 2016 with bachelor's degrees in English and history. She plans to study either medical anthropology or criminal justice and criminology at Oxford University in England and then go to medical school with the goal of becoming a doctor to help underserved areas in Mississippi. She has not decided where she will go.

Having studied structuralized racism and the Jim Crow era in her history classes, and seeing members of her family have trouble with police throughout her life, Wheeler has a strong sense of justice that she feels could serve her well in a career in either medicine and health care or law.

"Part of my identity in both my personal and familial experiences has had to do with race and the law," Wheeler said. "That's why I focused my honors thesis, 'Crime, Race and Police Brutality through Historical Fiction,' on the subject. My father and brother and a lot of men in my family have had to deal with the justice system in one way or another throughout my life, and status and race have played a part in making some of my family members targets. You don't have to even know their status to know they can be discriminated against as black men."

Wheeler's interest in medicine began with her grandfather, Setoria Martin, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the last 20 years of his life. Wheeler said it wasn't until she saw her grandfather losing his memory to the disease that she realized how much she had lost in not speaking with him more.

"I would go and talk to him about his problems and his perspective in life in those years, and I realized I had never asked about his life," Wheeler said. "By the time I realized that, he could no longer have complete conversations with me. He and my grandmother were some of the first African American teachers integrated into the Cleveland public school system in the '60s, and I never got to ask my grandfather about any of that and what it meant it to him to live through those times."

Now, Wheeler is an active volunteer in various programs in Jackson and the Delta area, working with Alzheimer's patients to document their stories and life narratives.

Wheeler hopes that her receiving the Rhodes Scholarship can serve to inspire other African Americans in the state who come after her.

"I feel honored and humbled by the amount of people who have come up to me and said that I'm a role model for their daughter or someone else," Wheeler said. "Standing where I am now and getting this honor lets other little African American girls see that they can do it, too."

*This story has been edited to reflect factcheck changes. Her grandfather suffered from Alzheimer's for the last 20 years of his life, not three. Also, she has not decided where she will attend medical school.