The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta’s civil rights center names new head
Atlanta’s Center for Civil and Human Rights named Jill Savitt as the new chief executive officer after a yearlong search.
A human-rights advocate for the past 20 years, Savitt is the acting director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash- ington, D.C.
Brian Tolleson, interim CEO at the Atlanta center, will step down but will con- tinue to serve on the board.
“Jill begins her tenure at a fantastic moment for us,” said former Mayor Shirley Franklin, board chair at the center, in a statement. “She is a strategic visionary and a skilled, incisive communicator.”
Savitt’s predecessor was Derreck Kayongo, a one-time refugee from Uganda who served from 2015 until 2018.
Kayongo founded the Atlanta-based Global Soap Project in 2008, eventually sending millions of bars of reclaimed soap to refugees around the world.
The center, housed in a striking lens-shaped building in downtown Atlanta, opened in 2014.
It offers three galleries. On the main floor it tells of Atlanta’s civil rights legacy. On the third floor is an exhibit addressing the issue of global human rights. The basement offers a rotating exhibit of the papers of Martin Luther King Jr., from the Morehouse College collection.
In 2007, Savitt founded Dream for Darfur, a campaign that pressed the Chinese government to seek a resolution to the Darfur crisis. Dream for Darfur was recognized for influencing the Chinese government to change its policies on Sudan in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics.
The center announced recently that, through a grant from Coca-Cola and Fed Ex, it will offer free admission through the end of February as a boon to Super Bowl visitors.