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Windham Honored, Women's History Month, New SEC Commissioner

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Friends, family, and fans of the late Kathryn Tucker Windham gathered today just outside of Selma as the storyteller became part of the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame. APR’s Pat Duggins was there and says there were plenty of stories to go around…      

The daughter of Kathryn Tucker Windham has a favorite story she used to tell. Dilcy Windham Hilley of Birmingham attended today’s ceremony at Judson College in the town of Marion for her mother’s induction into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame. Hilley says her mother would have considered it an honor to join the like of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King.

“My mother was a very modest, humble woman. And this might have been an embarrassment to her.”

March is Women’s History Month and a recent study shows twenty percent of all women in Alabama live in poverty. Nearly forty percent of those women in poverty are the heads of their households.  That's according to the group Bread for the World. Director Asma Latif* says the wage gap between men and women is a major factor in their struggle.

“Women earn 78 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as their male counterpart, so eliminating that wage gap would go a long way from raising incomes for families that are headed by women.”

Latif says one of the reasons this is the case is because women are proportionately under-represented in congress. According to Bread for the World Alabama ranks as one of the top ten with hunger and poverty.

Greg Sankey will replace the retiring Mike Slive as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

Vanderbilt Chancellor Nick Zeppos, the president of the SEC presidents and chancellors, announced Sankey's appointment on Thursday. Slive, the SEC's commissioner since 2002, said in October he would retire effective July 31.

Sankey is in his 13th year with the SEC and has served as the conference's executive associate commissioner and chief operating officer for the league office since 2012. Before joining the SEC staff, Sankey was the Southland Conference commissioner for nearly seven years.

Arkansas Chancellor David Gearhart headed the search committee that decided on Slive's replacement. Gearhart said in a release, "Greg possesses all of the traits we were searching for in the next commissioner of the SEC."

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