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Escambia County is the westernmost and oldest county in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 321,905. The county seat and largest city is Pensacola. Escambia County is included within the Pensacola Metropolitan Statistical Area. The county population has steadily increased as the City of Pensacola and its surrounding bedroom communities continue to grow with residential and commercial development. The county is part of the Northwest Florida region of the state.
Pensacola is a city in the Florida Panhandle in the United States. It is the county seat and only city in Escambia County. It is the principal city of the Pensacola Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had 511,503 residents in 2020. Pensacola is the first settlement established by Europeans in the United States, in 1559.
Reubin O'Donovan Askew was an American politician, who served as the 37th governor of Florida from 1971 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 7th U.S. trade representative from 1979 to 1980 under President Jimmy Carter. He led on tax reform, civil rights, and financial transparency for public officials, maintaining an outstanding reputation for personal integrity.
John Adams Hyman was a U.S. Congressman from North Carolina from 1875 to 1877. A Republican, he was the first African American to represent the state in the House of Representatives. He was elected from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, including counties in the northeast around New Bern. Earlier he served in the North Carolina Senate.
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.
Charles William Jones was an American attorney and politician. A Democrat, he served as a United States Senator from Florida from 1875 to 1887. Jones abandoned his seat near the end of his second term, and it remained vacant for a year until a successor was elected. Jones was later diagnosed as mentally ill, and was hospitalized at a Dearborn, Michigan asylum for seven years before his death.
Jesse Johnson Finley was an American politician and military officer who was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and a member of the United States House of Representatives from Florida after the reconstruction era. He also served as mayor of Memphis, Tennessee; an volunteer officer in the United States Army during the Second Seminole War; a member of the Arkansas Senate; a member of the Florida Senate; and a Circuit Court Judge in Florida.
More than 1,500 African American officeholders served during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) and in the years after Reconstruction before white supremacy, disenfranchisement, and the Democratic Party fully reasserted control in Southern states. Historian Canter Brown Jr. noted that in some states, such as Florida, the highest number of African Americans were elected or appointed to offices after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The following is a partial list of notable African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900. Dates listed are the year that a term states or the range of years served if multiple terms.
St. Joseph Catholic Church is a historic Black Catholic parish in Pensacola, Florida. On July 10, 1979, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The history of Pensacola, Florida, begins long before the Spanish claimed founding of the modern city in 1698. The area around present-day Pensacola was inhabited by Native American peoples thousands of years before the historical era.
William Washington Jones Kelly was the first Lieutenant Governor of Florida.
The Escambia County Sheriff's Office (ECSO) or Escambia Sheriff's Office (ESO) is the primary law enforcement agency of unincorporated Escambia County and the town of Century. ECSO is headed by a sheriff, who serves a four-year term and is elected in a partisan election. The current sheriff is Chip W. Simmons.
Booker T. Washington Junior College, the first and longest-lasting junior college for African Americans in Florida, was established by the Escambia County school board in 1949. Previously, the only higher education available in Florida to African Americans was at Bethune-Cookman College, Edward Waters College, Florida A&M University, and Florida Memorial College, all historically black.
Mathew McFarlan Lewey, was an American newspaper editor and publisher, postmaster, lawyer, politician, and justice of the peace in Florida. He also served as an officer in the Union Army, and as a militia officer. Lewey, who was from Baltimore, Maryland, was the first licensed Black male lawyer in Florida. He was a member of the National Negro Business League. He also used the name M.M. Lewey.
William Bennett Scott Sr. was a pioneering newspaper founder and publisher, mayor, and civil rights campaigner who helped found Freedman’s Normal Institute in Maryville, Tennessee. He was the first African American to run a newspaper in Tennessee and had the only newspaper in Blount County, Tennessee for 10 years. A Republican, he switched his and his paper's allegiance to the Democrats in the late 1870s.
Zebulon Elijah became a state legislator and government official in Florida after having been enslaved. He was born in Santa Rosa County, Florida. Elijah served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1871 to 1873 representing Escambia County. He later became a postmaster in Pensacola from 1874 to 1878 and a tax assessor in Pensacola from 1881 to 1882. He resigned from the legislature after the passage of a Federal law prohibiting federally appointed officials from also holding state or municipal offices. George E. Wentworth also served as postmaster in Pensacola.
St. Michael's Cemetery is a cemetery in Pensacola, Florida. The land around the current location of the cemetery has been used as a burial ground beginning in the mid to late 18th century, with the earliest above-ground markers associated with Pensacola's Second Spanish Period.
John Sunday Jr. was a carpenter, merchant, mechanic, cotton inspector, and state legislator in Florida. He served with fellow African American Charles Rouse representing Escambia County, Florida in 1874. He also served as a councilman in Pensacola.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Florida's Black Public Officials by Carter Brown Jr. page 116
- 1 2 3 4 5 Reeves, D. C. "Righting the past: Pensacola's only Black mayor, Salvador Pons, is dead at 55". Pensacola News Journal.
- ↑ "Salvador T. Pons Historical Marker". www.hmdb.org.