Tag Archives: Samuel Proctor

“Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida” with Dr. Larry Rivers – Nov. 14

Posted on October 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

by samuel proctor oral history program

On the evening of Wednesday, November 14, the University of Florida hosts Dr. Larry Rivers, President of Fort Valley State University, for a public program at Pugh Hall at 6 pm on his new book, “Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida.” President Rivers will also be signing copies of his books “Rebels and Runaways” and “Slavery in Florida.”

Dr. Rivers is an award-winning author of numerous books and essays on African American history, including “Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation.” Under his leadership, Fort Valley State University has risen to become one of the top-ranked Black Colleges in the United States and was recently ranked 9th among the top regional public colleges in the South by U.S. News and World Report.

Larry Rivers earned his PhD at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1977. For more than twenty years, Dr. Rivers taught history at Florida A & M University, ultimately receiving the rank of Distinguished University Professor. During that time, he held a series of administrative appointments, leading to his selection in 2002 as Dean of the FAMU College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Rivers is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the Fort Valley State University National Alumni Association, Inc., the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sigma Pi Phi (The Grand Boule) Fraternity, the Urban League and Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.

Parking for the event at Pugh Hall is free. For those who cannot attend, the event will also be Live Streamed by the Bob Graham Center for Public Service on November 14th at 6 pm eastern standard time, and available on their homepage: http://www.bobgrahamcenter.ufl.edu/

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Posted in Articles, October 2012

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History and the People Who Make It: John DeGrove

Posted on September 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

transcript edited by pierce butler

This is the tenth in a continuing series of transcript excerpts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

John DeGrove, “the father of growth management law in Florida,” was interviewed by Cynthia Barnett [B] on December 1, 2001.

B:    You were in the infantry from 1942-1946?

Yes. We went over right after D-Day [June 6, 1944]. We landed at Cherbourg, in France, got on cattle cars, went across France, and into the front lines in Holland, Germany, Belgium. I got into leading patrols out behind the enemy lines and doing things like that. Pretty soon, our platoon  [was] down to a handful of people who were still alive. That’s how I became a sergeant and then I got a battlefield commission.

We were doing a counter-attack, I guess and some Germans were surrendering. Somebody in the back threw a grenade. Big mistake on their part. Knocked me out just for an instant. That apparently did some damage [to my lungs that showed up] later. Didn’t stop me right then at all. [After] that concussion [grenade], we went on and those guys were wiped out.

After the war, I went in to the hospital because I had a case of viral pneumonia. It developed into tuberculosis and they always said that the concussion grenade had weakened the structure of that lung, so that when I got the viral pneumonia, which [I] should have been able to shake off, it evolved into tuberculosis after I got in the hospital.

I [was sent] out to Colorado, a special place for tuberculosis types. I decided, I’ll be damned if I’m going to die out here in Colorado. I was [determined] to die in Florida, as close to home as I could get. They went along with all that. I went to the tuberculosis sanitarium. They had several of these, and they were ahead of their time. I was in the hospital for almost four years. I missed the marvelous streptomycin and the TB drugs, the ones that would have kept me in the hospital for a month or two, just by a few months.

I became president of the student body at Rollins. I led a revolt at Rollins against the president. We threw him out.

Well, he was a bad guy. We went into an enrollment decline. In the process of cutting back, he was firing the best people. His concept of how to get Rollins straightened out and going right was just wrong. I had some board of trustee members who agreed with me. His name was Wagner. We did every kind of thing to force this guy out.

I finished my master’s in nine months at Emory [University in 1954]. My thesis looked at the Swamp and Overflow Lands Act. That really got me into realizing how badly it’s possible to manage resources. Swamp and Overflow Lands Act of 1849, I think it was, granted to Florida twenty million acres of land. Turned out that a lot of it wasn’t swamp and overflow at all.

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Posted in Articles, September 2012

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History and the People Who Make It: Sonja Diaz

Posted on July 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

transcript edited by Pierce Butler

This is the ninth in a continuing series of transcript excerpts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

Community organizer Sonja Diaz was interviewed by Prof. Paul Ortiz [O] on June 3, 2010.

I am a third/fourth generation Chicana. My dad’s side of the family was born and raised in Southern California back to my great grandparents. My mom is sixth generation Tejana. My mother was a farm worker and my father grew up in East L.A., a construction worker with my grandpa. Both of my parents were the first in their families to go to college. My mom was active in the UFW and my father in the East L.A. Walkouts. I grew up in East L.A. in a family that was very socially conscious. Every weekend we’d go to an art event, a protest, a march. For instance, the César Chávez marches in East L.A.; protesting Prop. 187, to take away social services for undocumented people; Prop. 209 which ended affirmative action. We called it “Radio Fire activism” ‘cause my brother and I would get in our red Radio Fire and our parents would drag us along. So, activism was spurred through our family: my father, being an urban planner and advocating on behalf of urban communities of color; my mother, working in social services and for empowerment of blacks and Latinos. It just was natural at UC Santa Cruz to continue activism along racial/ethnic lines. So, definitely East Los Angeles, El Sereno, and my parents shaped who I am today. It gave me that community education that was so lacking in LAUSD public schools. They taught me in a way where I felt proud of not only being a Chicana, but also of where I grew up and of the people and community that supported me.

My mom started working the fields at age five. She talked about not having water, not having bathroom breaks, not getting paid. She told me about my grandpa, who was born in Mexico and didn’t have formal education, taking notes about all the hours that his compadres worked because they weren’t getting paid for everything.

On my dad’s end, both my grandparents were very vigilant that they went to Catholic schools. If you had more than three kids, after the third it was free, so it was a deal for them. But it was very racist and he would talk about discrimination based on skin, based on class.  His counselors refused to give him a college application. And to this day, I look at that story as something—wow, you know—that’s what used to happen, but it’s still happening.

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Posted in Articles, July-August 2012

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History and the People Who Make It: Marshall Jones

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

TRANSCRIPT EDITED BY PIERCE BUTLER

This is the seventh in a continuing series of transcript excerpts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

Former UF faculty activist leader Dr. Marshall Bush Jones, a WWII Navy Medical Service Corps veteran, was interviewed by Marna Weston [W] on March 9, 2009.

W: When you wrote Berkeley of the South, who were you writing it to?

I wrote it, in the first instance, for myself. I had spent five solid years in movement activity and I wanted to get it out on paper. I wrote it mainly to the people I worked with in those years. For Jim Harmeling, too. I wanted the story of his life to be written down accurately.

Jim was a very unusual young guy in many ways. He was very gifted, attractive, intelligent. He didn’t believe that people were bad or malign. He had a hard time adopting actions which would injure people, even people with whom he very strongly disagreed. He suffered on that account.

Well, they were out for Jim. There’s no question about that. [UF Graduate School Dean Linton] Grinter especially. But you know the part that injured him was not so much the actions, as their malevolence. It was hard for him to understand.

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Posted in Articles, March 2012

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History and the People Who Make It: Margaret Block

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Transcript edited by Pierce Butler

This is the sixth in a continuing series of excerpts from transcripts in the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

Lifelong civil rights activist Margaret Block was interviewed by Paul Ortiz on September 18, 2008.

I got involved in the movement like in – when I was about 10 years old, I used to hang around with this man named Mr. Amzie Moore. They organized the Regional Council on Negro Leadership, and I was aware of something being wrong because listening to my parents and everybody talk about it. I wasn’t able to do anything until 1961 when I graduated from high school. Then I joined the movement. I didn’t join SNCC until ’62 because we didn’t have nothing in Cleveland [Mississippi] in 1961 but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I joined it. That was we were teaching people how to read and write and how to take that test that you had to take from the state of Mississippi interpreting the Constitution.

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Posted in Articles, January-February 2012

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