A History of Florida: Through Black Eyes
By Judi Hayes
February’s Hot Topics luncheon found the League of Women Voters of Orange County celebrating Black History Month with music and fellowship. It began with a rousing singalong rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Dr. Ethel Wellington-Trawick, after which we delved into a conversation between Dr. Rebekah McCloud and Dr. Marvin Dunn, who wrote the book “A History of Florida: Through Black Eyes.”
A public scholar and retired educator. Dr. McCloud has spent nearly 50 years researching, writing, telling stories and giving voice to Black life, culture, and history. Dr. McCloud spent 40 years as a faculty member and administrator at UCF, a former school principal, and award-winning teacher. She is a published author, an award-winning journalist, and the former editor of The Florida English Journal. Dr. McCloud serves as Vice President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Central Florida Dorothy Turner Johnson Branch (ASALH).
Dr. Marvin Dunn, a native Floridian, is professor emeritus and retired chairperson of the Department of Psychology at Florida International University. He is the founder and president of the Miami Center for Racial Justice. Dr. Dunn is a renowned expert on race and ethnic issues in America and a nationally respected scholar, author, historian, documentary filmmaker and community activist. A listing of his books can be found with his full bio on the lwvoc.org Hot Topics page.
Dr. Dunn began with a description of Jim Crow laws — how it began with a racist minstrel act and became a system of laws that discriminated against and disenfranchised Black people.
He described his earliest memories of being treated differently because of the color of his skin and growing up wanting to study race and society. He wanted to get a doctorate degree from the University of Florida and was denied admission because of his race. He was admitted to the University of Tennessee on full scholarship.
Dr. Dunn said that the underlying motivations behind the Jim Crow laws are founded in sex — white men’s jealousy of Black men and the need to keep white women separated from them. Jim Crow is alive today, he said, in laws and policies that desperately impact one race over another. It’s less overt, sometimes, but just as prevalent and pernicious.
In discussing the impact of Jim Crow laws on education, Dr. Dunn points to leaving Florida and how it opened his eyes and expanded his worldview, throwing into sharp relief the effect that Jim Crow laws had on his early education. HBCUs, historically Black colleges and universities, saved a lot of Black lives by educating and training young Black minds, he said.
Voting rights for African Americans didn’t just happen, Dr. Dunn says, talking about visiting July Perry’s grave in Greenwood Cemetery and his “Teach the Truth” tours. He owns property in Rosewood, as the only Black landowner, and maintains the importance of learning and living with our history.
He discussed why it’s important to discuss history and learn what happened to Jewish people, Black people and every ethnic group to understand their pain, and why it’s important to get different groups in the same room together. The people who burned down Ocoee are gone, Dr. Dunn said, so people should put the anger aside and start learning.
Authentic Black history in Florida is written as though it began in 1619, but Black people accompanied Ponce De Leon on his exploration of Florida a century earlier, he said.
At Morehouse, an all-male Baptist school, Dr. Dunn was taught by a young preacher named Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Malcolm X’s expression “By any means necessary” was new to him then, and he still struggles with it.
Dr. McCloud and Dr. Dunn discussed their common experience of being the “first and only” at their schools or in the military — one of very few Black students or officers.
This was a powerful and thought-provoking discussion and perfectly timed for Black History Month.