Commissioner of Education's African American History Task Force

Formed in the 1930s to boost unemployment during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps was instrumental in the building of the first eight Florida state parks. At the time, many of the organization's corps were segregated, and it was one of these Black CCC corps that traveled to Sarasota in 1935.
Battling discrimination, as well as biting insects and intense heat, these brave workers helped build Myakka River State Park from the ground up, and many of the facilities they built are still in use today.

Images and content credit: Florida State Parks

Born in bo***ge in Gadsden County, in 1835, Florida, Robert Meacham became a leader in Florida during Reconstruction, holding various occupations, including State Senator. He retired in Tampa in 1896 and died from failing health on February 27, 1902.
Image credit: Florida Memory

On this day in history, in 1864, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. A true pioneer, she battled deep-seated prejudice against women and African Americans in medicine. After earning her degree in Boston, she spent time caring for formerly enslaved people in Richmond, Virginia, after the American Civil War. In 1883, Dr. Crumpler published her Book of Medical Discourses. It chronicles her experiences as a doctor and provides guidance on maternal and child health.

Images credit: Boston University, PBS, Content credit: National Park Service

On this day in history, in 1990, The National Register of Historic Places recognized the Daytona Beach home of Dr. Howard Thurman as a National Historic Preservation Site. Located: 614 Whitehall Street, Daytona Beach, Florida 3214

Author, philosopher, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman spent most of his childhood in this late 19th-century, two-story, wood-frame vernacular residence. In quiet moments before a civil rights march, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., used to read from Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited--a book that laid much of the philosophical foundation for a nonviolent civil rights movement. According to Thurman, fear, deception, and hatred prohibit a peaceful end to racial bigotry.

Images credit: DaytonaBeach.com, Historic Maker Database
Content credit: Dr. Maxine Jones & National Park Service

The original structure (left) no longer exists, but the current building is located at 1456 Van Buren Street, Jacksonville, Florida 32206.

Content and images credit: Dr. Maxine Jones and The Jaxson

Clifford Chester Sims was born in Port St Joe, Florida, on June 18, 1942. He entered the Army from Jacksonville, Florida, and served with the 501 1st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, rising to be a Staff Sergeant. Staff Sergeant Sims died in an explosion protecting members of his squad on February 21, 1968.

Eye witness reports the following:

"Before the squad reached their destination, they encountered a bunker, and SSG Sims took it upon himself to see if it was empty. As he moved forward, a b***y trap went off, and everybody froze. But SSG Sims shouted a warning and then dove on it, fatally wounding him. However, he had covered the blast with his own body and thus saved the lives of those in the area." - Virgil Meyers, Danny Gipson, and James Noe.

Sims posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War. He was 25 at his death and was laid to rest at Barrancas National Cemetery, Pensacola, Florida.

Content credit: Congressional Medal of Honor Society
Images credit: Congressional Medal of Honor Society, The Tennessean, The Wall of Faces, VVM Fund

Images credit: Museum of Modern Art and Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Image credit: National Museum of American History/Behring Center

When Talbert T. Gray joined WESH-TV in Orlando in 1969, he became the first black newsman on a commercial station in Florida. In a long career in TV, newspapers, magazines, and radio, Talbert blazed trails and opened doors, changing media in the South forever. He also published the first African American magazine to celebrate diversity in Central Florida and hosted a talk show on public television station WMFE-TV. Talbert now lives in North Carolina.

Image and content credit: Orange County Regional History Center, Celebrating African American Inventors & Innovators

Born in 1938 in Alachua County, Florida, Clarence Fort, at the age of 21, served as the president of the Tampa Florida National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council in 1960. Fort organized and participated in the city's first lunch counter sit-ins in the Woolworth Department store. The successful protest ended with no incident as a result of being served.

Images credit: Hand Art Center and Bay News 9

Dr. Daniel Webster Roberts was known to be the first African American physician in St. Augustine, Florida. His practice was the largest in Florida, servicing patients from Ponte Vedra to Ormand Beach. During the deadliest Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Dr. Roberts stayed ready three horses, wrote sixty prescriptions a day, and miraculously did not lose a single patient during the ordeal. He also tutored white doctors who were entering the profession. Sadly, Dr. Roberts passed away from pneumonia at 52 due to an automobile accident. With the countless lives he saved, Dr. Roberts leaves an indelible legacy of early Black doctors. All heroes do not wear capes; some have stethoscopes. We remember and salute Dr. Daniel Webster Roberts.

Photo credit: L-R: Ann Dixon and Florida Memory