Shelley Ritter has been the executive director of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale for nearly a decade. However, before that, Ms. Ritter was the first archivist with Elvis Presley Enterprises from 1990 to 1995, starting it from scratch. She also has been a volunteer with The Blues Foundation and the Center for Southern Folklore. In 1995, she moved from the Presley Enterprises to be a field services curator for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and remained there until 2003. There she was able to work with the Delta Blues Museum, the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland, both the Farish Street Museum and the Alamo Theater in Jackson, and the early stages of the B. B. King Museum in Indianola. Under her current leadership, the Delta Blues Museum has expanded its permanent collection as well as its physical space in 2012.
