Digital Commons Network^™

The Ruthless Hand Of War: Andrew A. Humphreys In The Second Seminole War, Matthew T. Pearcy

Florida Historical Quarterly

In late February 1836, 2d Lt. Andrew A. Humphreys (1810-1883) reported for duty at Fort Drane in the remote interior of the Florida peninsula. Green and untried, the young West Pointer chronicled his first experiences at war in a leather bound journal tucked away among his personal possessions. "I delight in extremes," he wrote in its opening pages, "and certainly my profession leads to them - from the center of civilization to the wildest forests, I am transferred in a few days. In January luxuriating in the delights of our capital, in February suffering from hunger, thirst and fatigue in …

End Notes, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Recently Published Books of Interest; Editor's Notes

This Seems To Be Our Darkest Times: The Florida Brigade In Mississippi, June-July 1863, Jonathan C. Sheppard

Florida Historical Quarterly

In June 1860, as the United States advanced toward the secession crisis, headmaster Samuel Pasco watched his Waukeenah Academy students exhibit the knowledge they had acquired over the past term to a crowd of proud parents and friends. During the program, the boys demonstrated their proficiency in subjects such as geography, spelling and reading, chemistry, grammar, arithmetic, and translation of Latin.1 Following the formal examinations, the students acted and sang various orations and songs for their guests.

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Berry, My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations, by David H. Jackson, Jr.; Thursby, Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living, by Craig Thompson Friend; Rymph, Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right, by Michael Bowen; Leuchtenburg, Ihe White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Tmman, Lyndon B. Johnson, by Richard V. Damms; Vandiver, Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South, by Robert Cassanello; Mohl, South of the South, Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960, by Sarah …

I Was One Of The First To See Daylight: Black Women At Predominantly White Colleges And Universities In Florida Since 1959, Stephanie Y. Evans

Florida Historical Quarterly

Kitty Oliver, a celebrated journalist, nonfiction writer, and oral historian, entered the University of Florida in 1965. She was one of only 35 African American students of 18,000 enrolled and one of only 5 black freshmen to integrate campus housing. Her story, told in Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl (2001), is intriguing for its portrayal of the first-wave of black students who integrated the predominantly white institutions in the Florida State University System. Oliver, from Jacksonville, traced her mother's roots to the South Carolina Gullah people. She was an only child and the first in her family to …

A Monument To The Progress Of The Race: The Intellectual And Political Origins Of The Florida Agricultural And Mechanical University, 1865-1887, Larry Eugene Rivers

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University entered the twenty-first Century as the nation's largest historically black college or university and, in doing so, it continued to fulfill its principal historical mission by producing more minority educators-to-be than any other institution in the United States. These face may catch many Floridians unaware; yet the context within which FAMU managed to accomplish its teacher education mission, having virtually disappeared from our collective consciousness, may offer even greater surprises. The tale involves threads of history drawn from abolitionist professors at Oberlin College; military schools at Hampton, Virginia: the farsighted vision of Florida's only …

Title Page, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Title page for Volume 85, Number 1. Includes the Table of Contents

Terrible Terrell: The Forgotten Story Of Carolyn Daniels, Olivia Moll

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Olivia Moll ’22
Major: History
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

My thesis explores the participation of black women in the Civil Rights Movement, more specifically the contribution from Carolyn Daniels. Daniels is a mother and SNCC activist from Terrell County, and her story has yet to be told. I am here to tell Daniels’s story; her success towards the SNCC voting registration project that took place in the summer of 1962. The beauty of the Civil Rights Movement is that everyone’s story and activism matters, especially the story of women.

Race Films & American Society, Angie Pierre

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Angie Pierre ’25
Major: Global Studies
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

This project will explore Black cinema, specifically the race film industry and its relationship to Black identity and American society. Through an analysis of a number of early race films and archival documents from the 1920s, the project seeks to reveal how these films contributed to positive political, social and economic changes in Jim Crow America. Ultimately, the successes of race film pioneers are reflected throughout Black film history and the Black films we still watch today.

Belz, Elmore F., 1892-1918 (Sc 3496), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3496. Letters to his family, 1918, and related personal papers of Elmore F. Belz, Dayton, Kentucky, created while he was stationed at Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. He describes his military training, diet and leisure, and comments on the prevalence of influenza in the area. When he falls ill, he writes of his hospital stay in letters dated two days before his death on 7 October 1918. Includes a letter to Belz’s parents from his battery commander praising his qualities as a soldier; also includes a …

Bryant-Thomson Family Papers (Sc 3636), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3636. Miscellaneous papers of the Bryant and Thomson families of Fayette County, Kentucky: agreement for the sale of land; lease; power of attorney to act on the sale of lands in Texas; and prescription for medicinal liquor.

Lucas, Mary Melton - Collector (Sc 3635), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3635. Items related to research for the book That Perfect Feeling in the Air: The Life of Victor Herbert Strahm, a biography of the highly decorated veteran of both world wars, co-authored by Mary M. Lucas, Gilbert T. Calhoun and Jonathan Jeffrey and published by Landmark Association (Bowling Green, Ky.) in 2017. Consists of correspondence; a compact disc with the manuscript and various notes; notes of a telephone conversation with the widow of Strahm’s stepson; text of programs on Strahm given by Lucas and Calhoun; Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame Class of …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Taylor, The Key West Lighthouse; A Light in Paradis, by Steve Belko; Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, by Rebecca Montgomery; Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, by Jonathan M. Atkins; Walker, Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia: Survival in a Civil War Regiment, by Brian D. McKnight; Johnson, Southern Ladies, New Women: Race, Region and Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1890-1930, by Ann Short Chirhart; Feldman, ed. Politics and Religion in the White South, by E. Stanly Godbold, Jr.; Jackson and Brown, eds., Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African-American History, by Jennifer Roady-Lawson; Green, Before His …

Index, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Index to Volume 84

Florida Room: Battle For St. Augustine 1964: Public Record And Personal Recollection, Claudia S. Slate

Florida Historical Quarterly

To the casual observer-the tourist-St. Augustine of the 1960s seemed more like a tropical paradise than a racial battleground. This unique city of 15,000, the first permanent settlement in the United States, prided itself on its quaint streets, historic buildings, and pristine Atlantic Ocean beaches. Not surprisingly, it depended on tourists for much of its economy. Black buggy drivers chauffeured tourists through the downtown, past the Old Slave Market where blacks and whites congregated on benches to chat. Although most outsiders would not have considered Florida part of the Deep South, paradoxically, beneath St. Augustine's facade hid "the vilest kind …

Raising Her Voice: Ruth Perry, Activist And Journalist For The Miami Naacp, Judith G. Poucher

Florida Historical Quarterly

Ruth Willis Perry sat rigidly in the witness box, clutching her purse and facing the television cameras. Her strained expression reflected not only the tension of a possible jail sentence but also the escalating effects of three years of threats against her life, her reputation, and her career. A few feet away, her would-be assassins smirked and jostled one another. It was February 25, 1957, and Miami's White Citizens' Council had occupied the front rows of the courtroom since early morning. They were ready for a showdown, but so were Ruth Perry and the National Association for the Advancement of …

More Courage Than Discretion: Charles M. Hamilton In Reconstruction-Era Florida, Daniel R. Weinfeld

Florida Historical Quarterly

At the close of the Civil War, Union army officers arrived in Florida to serve as agents of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the "Bureau"). In addition to their official Bureau duties, the agents, often the sole representatives of the Federal government in their assigned districts, acted as protectors of the newly freed slaves against a recalcitrant white population that refused to accept the blacks' liberated status. As Congress implemented its Reconstruction plan, the agents helped organize the Republican Party in Florida in anticipation of readmission and encouraged the freedmen to become loyal Republican voters. The Bureau …

Title Page, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Title page for Volume 84, Number 4. Includes the Table of Contents

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Fogelson, The Handbook of North American Indians. Volume 14, Southeast. Swanson, Documentation of the Indians of the Florida Keys & Miami, 1514-1765, by Andrew Frank; Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links, by Matt Clavin; Coclanis, ed., The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel, by Carl Keyes; Dibble, Joseph Mills White: Anti-Jacksonian Floridian, by James Cusick; Bennett, Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War by Susannah U. Bruce; O'Brien, Henry Adam and the Southern Question, by Paul Escott; Turner and Bramson, The Plant System of Rail Roads, Steamships, …

A Splendid Idea In China Turned Sour In Florida: The Rise And Fall Of The Florida Splendid China, Wenxian Zhang

Florida Historical Quarterly

Although Florida had been promoted as a tropical paradise to people with health concerns since the granting of statehood in 1845, the Sunshine State did not become a top vacation destination for thrill-seeking Americans until Disney World opened its doors in the early 1970s. Disney's appearance spawned several other major theme parks, including Sea World and Universal Studios, and some smaller attractions such as Wet and Wild. Florida Splendid China joined the ranks of Central Florida's regional theme parks in 1993. A high profile project, it represented one of the first and largest joint investment ventures between the United States …

Mythic Landscapes Of The Boom And Bust Weedon Island, Florida, Sheila K. Stewart

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Weedon Island Preserve is a 3,164-acre nature park situated on the shores of Old Tampa Bay in northeast St. Petersburg.1 A mosaic of mangrove forest, tidal marshes, pine flatwoods, and remnants of hammocks, the preserve also encompasses a famous prehistoric archaeological site, which was excavated by the Smithsonian Institution in the 1920s and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972. Of national, state, and regional significance, Weedon Island's wild landscape carries a strong sense of place for the citizens of Pinellas County and in the last thirty years has captured community support for the …

Title Page, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Title page for Volume 84, Number 3. Includes the Table of Contents

Hidden In Plain View: Eugene Poulnot And The History Of Southern Radicalism, Elna C. Green

Florida Historical Quarterly

"Outside agitator" is an epithet frequently hurled by southern white conservatives at those with opposing political positions. Claiming that they cannot fathom how any "true" southerner could reject regional orthodoxies, white conservatives conclude that such a person must be from somewhere else. Beginning in the antebellum era, southern conservative partisans have attempted to tarnish their political opponents with the stigma of being "an outside agitator." In an assertion of a southern ideological monolith, conservative whites have used the label against abolitionists, feminists, civil rights activists, labor organizers, and radicals of varying hues. Indeed, in the collective mind of the white …

History News, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Editor's Note; Call for Papers

Florida History Directory, The 2005 Blue Book, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

The organizations that promote the study of Florida history are as diverse as the geographical regions of our state. The 2005 Blue Book, a directory of Florida's historical societies draws from numerous sources. Florida's sixty-six counties were used to arrange the list. Sources included local chamber of commerce websites and Internet yellow pages. Numerous online lists and links produced by historical groups around Florida contributed to the effort.

Review Essay: Clever Men And Cool Brains: Rethinking The Mind Of The Old South, John Mayfield

Florida Historical Quarterly

The Southerner," wrote Frederick Law Olmsted in 1854, "is greatly wanting in hospitality of mind, closing his doors to all opinions and schemes to which he has been bred a stranger, with a contempt and bigotry which sometimes seems incompatible with his character as a gentleman. He has a large but unexpansive mind." Harsh words, but they stuck. For decades after the Civil War, Northern observers such as Henry Adams and Southern grouches such as Wilbur J. Cash echoed Olmsted to one degree or another. Southerners had 'temperament," not "mind," the argument went, and if they thought at all it …

Britain's 1814 Occupation Of Pensecola And America's Response: An Episode Of The War Of 1812 In The Southeastern Borderlands, Nathaniel Millett

Florida Historical Quarterly

With the appointment of Alexander Cochrane to Commander of the North American Squadron in the summer of 1814, Britain began to formalize a strategy that called for a systematic series of campaigns against the Chesapeake, New England, South Carolina, Georgia, and New Orleans with the ultimate aim of bringing the United States to its knees while protecting Canada. The bulk of the attack on New Orleans was to be carried out in a straight-forward assault by the Royal Navy, but forces were to come from a number of directions. In the build-up to the attack, it was envisioned that some …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Oatis, A Colonial Complex: South Carolina's Frontier in the Era of the Yamusee War, 1680-1730, by Timothy P. Grady; Sweet, Negotiating for Georgia: British-Creek Relations in the Trustee Era, 1733-1752, by Dan Murphee; Hawkins, Jose de Bustamante and Central American Independence: Colonial Administration in an Age of Imperial Crisis, by Dennis Halpin; Wells, Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861, by Anthony Carey; McDonough, Nashville: The Western Confederacy's Final Gamble, by Kevin N. Levin; Revels, Grander in Her Daughters: Florida's Women During the Civil War; Weatherford, Real Women of Tampa and Hillborough County From Prehistory to the Millennium, by Robert …

Wrongful Defeat: The 1934 Florida Senatorial Democratic Primary Between Claude Pepper And Park Trammell, John M. Brackett

Florida Historical Quarterly

In 1934, the state of Florida faced a midterm election in which one of its two U.S. senators came up for reelection. The campaign began with five candidates, but Claude Pepper and incumbent Park Trammell stood out as the most viable contenders to win the Democratic nomination. As in other southern states, the Democratic Party dominated Florida's elections, and the winner of the party primary won the office. As the campaign between Pepper and Trammell progressed, it became a bitter fight marred by widespread smear tactics. When neither candidate won a majority in the June 5 primary, Pepper and Trammell …

A New Deal For Welfare: Governor Fred Cone And The Florida State Welfare Board, David Nelson

Florida Historical Quarterly

In May 1937, Florida suffered from the crippling effects of the Great Depression. The governor's oflice received letters daily from out-of-work laborers, single mothers, starving children, and elderly dependants pleading for assistance and state action. Yet, Florida's government rested upon a shallow tax base making the state's ten-year old welfare system almost entirely dependent upon federal aid. Only two years earlier, the federal government had demanded that the state re-vamp its State Board of Public Welfare, requiring an increased state financial commitment, stiffer welfare laws, and higher qualifications for welfare employees before millions of federal dollars would pour into the …