In the run-up to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Leon County hosted a celebration at the Leon County Courthouse. Attendees are looking to King’s life at a time when some people believe civil rights are at risk.
“What some people may not know, especially young people my age, is that Dr. King spent time in Florida with our local civil rights icons, Reverend CK Steele and family…Reverend Daniel Speed…Laura Dixie and her husband, Samuel Dixie, Sr. …and other members of our local Inter-Civic Council.”
Skyy Proud, a fourth grader at Pineview Elementary, recounts Tallahassee civil rights history and the impact King had on the city—which included helping to inspire some of its student-led protests and boycotts. Proud didn’t shy away from even darker moments of the state’s racial strife.
“Florida was a hotbed for inequality and racial violence against Black people. Our state had the highest number of lynchings per capita during the first half of the 21st century,” she said.
Massacres like those in the Black communities of Rosewood and Ocoee are now commemorated in state history and required to be taught in schools. But few people know about them. At a time of renewed racial and cultural tensions, Leon School Board member Darryl Jones says it’s important that kids get a good education.
“We don’t care what they say – those mediocre people of mediocre minds and mediocre intelligence and mediocre integrity,” Jones said. “We’re going to teach African American history in our Leon County schools.”
Jones is critical of recent state efforts that discourage conversations on diversity, equity and inclusion. And he says controversial changes to the state’s Black history standards—like teaching that some slaves benefited from slavery—are ignoring history altogether.
“I need you to decide today when we leave this King holiday the important role that YOU will play in saving our children,” he said. “It is important that we not stand idly by as they pass laws that try to undermine our children, create weaponized bigotry. When the Moms for Liberty come to the school board meeting, I want to see the Deltas and the AKAs come and talk to the school board.”
During the past two years, at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Legislature has passed a number of new laws aimed at how history is taught and discussed in public schools. It’s added fuel to a culture war in which education has emerged as the main battleground.
