Priscilla Hancock Cooper served as the founding Executive Director of the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium since it began as a project of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) in 2017. She retired from the Consortium in January 2023 and was named Executive Director Emeritus by the Board of Directors. After retiring from BCRI as Vice-President of Institutional Programs, she continued to work as a project consultant. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she received dual undergraduate degrees in journalism and history from Lincoln University of Missouri and a Master’s Degree from The American University, Washington, D.C. Cooper began work for the BCRI as copywriter for the permanent exhibition and education consultant from 1990-1992. She returned to the Institute in 2000 to direct the Birmingham Cultural Alliance Partnership (BCAP) project, an innovative after-school program honored by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She also directed the Institute’s Leadership Initiative for African American Museums. Cooper is an alumna of the 2008 Getty Museum Leadership Institute, Leadership Birmingham 2011, and Leadership Alabama 2013. In 2018, she received the Southeastern Museums Conference award for Museum Service and her article on the development of BCRI was published in The Public Historian.