The Florida State Teachers Association (FSTA) was an organization of Black educators, administrators, other staff, and parents in Florida. [1] African American teachers faced discrimination and underfunded schools. Educators in the group served as activists advocating for civil rights and educational opportunities. [2]
It was the largest teacher organization in Florida. [3] Hubert Humphrey prepared a speech to the group in 1964. [4] The group published the Florida State Teachers' Bulletin.
The Tampa branch helped organize the Turner v Keefe lawsuit targeting lower pay for Boack teachers. [5]
Emmett W. Bashful, a political scientist at Florida A& M University, sought to survey members about voter registration and voting by group members. [6]
The Florida Archives include a photo of the group's kitchen in Tallahassee. [7]
Edward Daniel Davis [8] and Gilbert Lawrence Porter were leaders in the group. A book discusses Porter's work [9] and a Miami elementary school is named for him. [10]
School boards closed schools for African Americans and many black teachers and administrators lost their jobs. [11]
Thomas LeRoy Collins was an American politician who served as the 33rd governor of Florida from 1955 to 1961. Collins began his governorship after winning a special election in 1954, was elected to a four-year term in 1956.
Cecil Farris Bryant was an American politician serving as the 34th governor of Florida. He also served on the United States National Security Council as director of the Office of Emergency Planning during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who also appointed Bryant chair of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.
Josiah Thomas Walls was a United States congressman who served three terms in the U.S. Congress between 1871 and 1876. He was one of the first African Americans in the United States Congress elected during the Reconstruction Era, and the first black person to be elected to Congress from Florida. He also served four terms in the Florida Senate.
Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) is a school district that runs the public school system of Hillsborough County in west central Florida and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. It is frequently referred to as the School District of Hillsborough County (SDHC).
Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment, and transportation have been systematically separated in the United States on racial categorizations. Segregation was the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from whites, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority and mainstream communities. While mainly referring to the physical separation and provision of separate facilities, it can also refer to other manifestations such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, and the separation of roles within an institution. The U.S. Armed Forces up until 1948, black units were typically separated from white units but were still led by white officers.
The history of Tallahassee, Florida, much like the history of Leon County, dates back to the settlement of the Americas. Beginning in the 16th century, the region was colonized by Europeans, becoming part of Spanish Florida. In 1819, the Adams–Onís Treaty ceded Spanish Florida, including modern-day Tallahassee, to the United States. Tallahassee became a city and the state capital of Florida in 1821; the American takeover led to the settlements' rapid expansion as growing numbers of cotton plantations began to spring up nearby, increasing Tallahassees' population significantly.
North Florida Christian School (NFCS) is a private Christian school in Tallahassee, Florida, originally founded as a segregation academy. The school is administered by North Florida Baptist Church, formerly known as Temple Baptist Church.
Doak Sheridan Campbell was from 1941 to 1957 president of Florida State College for Women and its successor coeducational school, Florida State University. He oversaw the creation of this new university. His opposition to the admission of African-American students has caused controversy about the naming of Doak S. Campbell Stadium in his honor.
Thomas DeSaille Tucker or Thomas DeSaliere Tucker was an African-born lawyer, educator, and missionary. He was the first president of the State Normal College for Colored Students, which eventually became Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students based on their ethnicity. Where they were not prohibited from schools and denied an education, various minorities were barred from schools for whites. Segregation laws were dismantled in the late 1960s by the U.S. Supreme Court. Segregation was practiced in the north and segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the South after the Civil War. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated school laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990. Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant.
Sybil Lenora Collins Mobley was Dean Emerita of the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) School of Business and Industry. She led its business program and was the founding dean of its Business School. She also oversaw community projects including a revitalization program for majority African American Gretna, Florida.
Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston is a 2005 book by Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., published by the Texas A&M University Press. Brown, Not White discusses Chicano activism in Houston, Texas during the 20th century.
Carver Junior College, in Cocoa, Florida, was established by the Brevard County Board of Public Instruction in 1960 to serve black students, at the same time that it founded Brevard Junior College, now Eastern Florida State College, for white students. It was named for the black agricultural researcher George Washington Carver. Like 10 of Florida's other 11 black junior colleges, it was founded as a result of a 1957 decision by the Florida Legislature to preserve racial segregation in education, mandated under the 1885 Constitution that was in effect until 1968. More specifically, the Legislature wanted to show, in response to the unanimous Supreme Court decision mandating school integration, that the older standard of "separate but equal" educational facilities was still viable in Florida. Prior to this legislative initiative, the only publicly funded colleges for negro or colored students were Florida A&M University, in Tallahassee, and Booker T. Washington Junior College, in Pensacola.
The Tallahassee bus boycott was a citywide boycott in Tallahassee, Florida, that sought to end racial segregation in the employment and seating arrangements of city buses. On May 26, 1956, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, two Florida A&M University students, were arrested by the Tallahassee Police Department for "placing themselves in a position to incite a riot". Robert Saunders, representing the NAACP, and Rev. C. K. Steele began talks with city authorities while the local African-American community started boycotting the city's buses. The Inter-Civic Council ended the boycott on December 22, 1956. On January 7, 1957, the City Commission repealed the bus-franchise segregation clause because of the United States Supreme Court ruling Browder v. Gayle (1956).
Florida Agriculture & Mechanical Hospital (1911-1971) was the first institution in Florida providing medical care to African Americans, who, during the segregation period, were not permitted to receive care at whites-only hospitals. There was no other such institution within 150 miles (240 km) of Tallahassee. In 1940, "less than a dozen" counties in Florida had hospital facilities for Negroes.
Margaret Just Butcher was an American educator and civil rights activist. Butcher worked as an English professor at Howard University and Federal City College. She also taught for years overseas. She was a fellow of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. In the 1950s, she was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at two universities in France. In the early 1960s she taught in two cities in Morocco, and then served as a cultural affairs attache in Paris, returning to Washington, D.C., in 1968. She taught in its public schools for a time.
Cocoa Junior High School is a historic school building in Cocoa, Florida. Built in 1923-24, it is one of the oldest remaining Rosenwald Schools in Florida. After the school closed in 1954, the building served as a community center and later as an African-American history museum.
William F. Thompson was a lawyer, law school teacher, justice of the peace, tax assessor, state legislator, and delegate to Florida's 1885 Constitutional Convention.
Leedell Wallace Neyland was an educator and author in Florida. He was a professor emeritus of history, provost, and dean at Florida A&M University where he joined in 1956 and retired in 1991.