Tallahassee, FL (2/16/2024)

Friday, February 16, 2024

We had some time this morning before our scheduled tour of the Lewis Spring House by Frank Lloyd Wright, so we sought out some Civil Rights sites in Tallahassee, FL.

Statue (1985, by David Lowe) of Reverend
C K Steele, former pastor of Bethel Missionary
Baptist Church, who marched with Martin
Luther King Jr and was a founding member of
the Southern Leadership Conference

We could not find the Rosa Parks Marker, touted by the Visit Tallahassee website, but may not exist.

First Presbyterian Church (1838, in Classical
Revival style) is the only church in the city
from the territorial days and had a gallery
for the enslaved to sit apart from the owners

Campus of the Florida Agricultural and
Mechanical University/FAMU (est 1887)
is a public historically Black university;
the eternal flame commemorates Time
Magazine's selection of FAMU as the
1997-1998 College of Year

FAMU Carnegie Library (1907-1908, by William A Edwards
in Classical Revival style) is the oldest brick building
on campus and the first Carnegie Library to be built 
on a Black land-grant college campus

The Carnegie Library was built on what was then the State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students because the city of Tallahassee refused it, since under Carnegie's rules it would have had to serve Black patrons. The college was in need of a library after their own was destroyed by fire in 1905.

We could not find the Jakes-Patterson Marker, which was supposed to be at Lee Hall at FAMU. The marker commemorates FAMU students Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson who were arrested for taking the only available seats and not moving to the back of a bus. A cross was burned on their lawn, and in response, FAMU students, led by Student Government Association President Brodes Hartley, held a mass meeting and voted to stop riding city buses. This act of passive resistance rallied Tallahassee NAACP leaders Robert Saunders and the Reverend C K Steele, and FAMU students to initiate a ten-month long Tallahassee Bus Boycott that ended segregation on the city buses, the second major successful economic protest of the Civil Rights Movement.

Bethel Missionary Baptist Church (est 1870, church c 1973
under Rev C K Steele) was where many meetings
associated with the Tallahassee bus boycott were held,
which made it a frequent target of Ku Klux Klan activities

Tookes Hotel (1920), Dorothy Nash Tookes turned her
home into accommodations for Black travelers in 1948;
four rooms were added in 1948, two in
the early 1950s and three in 1971

On the campus of Florida State University/FSU:
Integration (2003, by W Stanley Proctor)

Maxwell Courtney was the first full-time
undergraduate Black student admitted to
FSU in 1962, and the first to graduate (BA in
1965); he went on to work as a systems
management consultant to the Smithsonian

Fred H Flowers, 1965-1969 (BA) and
1973 (MS), was the first Black student
to wear an FSU athletic uniform in football
and as a baseball pitcher; he went on
to become a Civil Rights attorney

Doby Lee Flowers, 1967-1971 (BS) and
1973 (MS), was the first Black student to be
crowned Homecoming Princess in 1970;
the sister of Fred Flowers went on to a 
career in law practice management and
consulting, and was also instrumental in
the planning of this monument

Now for the highlight of the day, the Lewis Spring House:

Shortly before our scheduled 11:00 tour of the
Lewis Spring House, we arrived at the gate, to be met
by Byrd, not only the owner of and current resident,
but who also grew up in the house commissioned
by her parents from Frank Lloyd Wright

Lewis Spring House (design 1952, by Frank Lloyd Wright
in pod hemicycle style of the last phase of his career; built
in 1954) is the only house designed by Wright in Florida
that was actually built, and built during his lifetime

The entrance to the house is now under a temporary roof,
with hopes to replace the flat roof that had also covered
the carport to the right between the circular section
and the tool/utility shed; the carport was not used
to store the family auto because it would have
spoiled the view from the kitchen windows

Because of additional cost of pilings when
it was discovered the land was unstable,
some design elements were not completed,
such as the circular wall that was meant
 to enclose the back garden (KSS)

The resemblance to a boat was deliberate, as Wright
included family interests in his design after learning
the family spent much time on a boat built by the father

As is typical, Wright incorporated the use of local materials, being Ocala stone and red cedar wood.

No photos were allowed indoors where Byrd gave us
a thorough tour with lots of family lore; however, the
outdoors was delightful, here with azaleas in the forest

The construction of a senior living facility up the road,
with its retention pond, somehow interfered with the
freshwater spring (after which the house is named),
but there is hope the spring can be resurrected;
the spring fed a small stream that led to this pond

We so rarely get to see the Trillium spp

We very much enjoyed our personalized tour of the Lewis Spring House, and admire all the work being done to restore and improve the house according to the design of Frank Lloyd Wright.

One more stop on the way to Clearwater, FL:
Rosewood, Florida Historical Marker that
explains the tragic days in 1923 after a
white woman accused a Black man of
 assault, resulting in whites terrorizing and
killing members of this Black community,
as well as looting livestock and property,
then setting the town on fire

The Rosewood residents took a vow of
silence and lived in fear, never returning
to claim their property; only in 1994
was the silence broken and a claim was
filed at the Florida Legislature, resulting
in compensation to the survivors of the
Rosewood incident of racial violence