name is Shirley Fox Nose, City Clerk for the City of Tampa and I would like to just welcome you to come out, that you come out and thank you for coming out in this weather. You're going to enjoy the program. We have two great speakers and you'll learn a lot. There's going to be a test afterwards, okay? But anyway, you're here to celebrate the City of Tampa's 139th birthday, which is part of our annual Archives Awareness Week. This brochure has a schedule for the week which includes exhibits and a total of 17 free programs with our Archives Awareness Week partners. Before we begin, we would like to recognize all current and former elected officials who are in attendance. Only you, Fred. Rodney, too. And we have more coming. Judge Salcinis and his beautiful wife. Yes. If there's another very important person that I didn't recognize yet, please stand to be recognized. I see a lot of them. Y'all can stand? Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone for their service. We would like to at this time welcome Fred Hearns, Curator of Black History at the Tampa Bay History Center. Fred has two master's degrees, one in Human Services from Springfield College and one in Africana Studies from the University of South Florida. He's with us today to talk about Black History Month. Welcome, Fred. Thank you, Shirley, and good afternoon, everyone. And I'm so pleased to be here today. As Shirley said, I work at the Tampa Bay History Center along with Rodney Powell, and you'll hear from Rodney a little later today. And this is a special time because we're in preparation for next year, on Juneteenth, opening Tampa's first Black History Museum. That museum has been a long time coming, and we are very excited. We're making preparations now at the Tampa Bay History Center. So next year, when I come before you for Archives Awareness Week, the museum will be open. And we hope that you all will have an opportunity to join us on Juneteenth next year. I also have to say that I'm nervous now because Judge Celsinas and his wife just walked in. And he is the master at this. I have sat at his feet for many years. I learned a lot. Judge, you don't know how much you've helped me. I thought I was a fair public speaker. Not really. Not after I heard Judge Celsinas. So I'm going to try to do justice to him today as we talk about Tampa's black history going back 100 years. 100 years ago, and today specifically, 50 years ago, because there were some very significant things that happened along the way. I have a few images I'm going to show you as we talk about what happened 100 years ago. And let's go to this gentleman. You may be familiar with him, President Abraham Lincoln. We know that President Lincoln, who famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which began the process of freeing those enslaved black people who had been here in America for hundreds of years serving during enslavement. And the Emancipation Proclamation was the beginning of tearing down that very ugly, violent institution known as slavery. President Lincoln also was born on February 12, 1866 is when his birthday became sort of a national celebration. And after he was assassinated in 1865, every year after that, several people celebrated the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, just like many of us celebrate our birthdays, his birthday was celebrated for many years. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the first black man that we know who did some extraordinary things in looking at black history and elevating it to the importance that he felt that it needed to be on in our nation. And so Dr. Woodson, who was born in Virginia, December 19, to formerly enslaved parents, James Henry and Anne Eliza Woodson. Fortunately, because they were enslaved, his mother's master taught her how to read and write. And she taught Woodson how to read and write. Very unusual for a youngster growing up in the 1880s. To make a long story short, he developed a thirst for knowledge. He went on to attend college. He became the second black person to receive a PhD from Harvard University. He studied abroad, he taught abroad, he taught abroad, he was a very learned individual. Second only perhaps to Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, who was just a little older than Woodson, who was the first black person to earn a PhD at Harvard. Now, when Frederick Douglass died February 20, 1895, there were many black people who felt that because of what Douglass meant to the nation that he deserved special recognition every year also, as did President Abraham Lincoln. And so Woodson later on came up with the idea, well, what if we celebrated the birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass? Now, Frederick Douglass, like many enslaved blacks born in the 1800s, never really knew his birthday. Birth certificates were not very well kept for black people during that time. If you were fortunate, someone may have written down the day you were born in a Bible. That Bible may or may not have still been around later on. And so many enslaved blacks never really knew their birthday. They knew maybe they were born in the spring or they were born during the winter time. If they were fortunate, they may have known the year, but the actual birth date was not often kept by many blacks. And so he got to choose his birthday. And he said, well, I think I will celebrate my birthday in February, the second week of February, which happens also to have been the time that we know Abraham Lincoln was born. And so many years later, along came Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who said, I'm going to create a time when we can celebrate the birthdays of two great Americans in their own right for what they did during their lifetime, one white and one black. So the second week of February, when Abraham Lincoln was born and when Frederick Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday became Negro History Week in 1926. And I can remember in the 1960s when I was in seventh, eighth, ninth grade at Booker T. Washington Junior High School, we celebrated Negro History Week every second week of February. I didn't know all of the history that I just talked about, but I knew it was a special time that we got to demonstrate what we had learned in school up until that time. This was February, so we were well into the second half of the school year. And so it was an opportunity for us to do speeches. You know, we would practice our little speeches and we get to go on stage and recite our speeches. I played in the band, so the band would practice a couple of numbers and we get to play those numbers. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, I'll never forget that, without really knowing deeply what it really meant. But we did it and we enjoyed it. And I'll never forget, I wish I still had it, but we got these little pins, Negro History Week. We'd pin them on our shirts and on our blouses. A very special time, Negro History Week. And that lasted from 1926 until 1976. This is Frederick Douglass. You may know this gentleman, former President Gerald Ford. Now in 1976, President Gerald Ford decided after meeting with many leaders in the black community and other historians that maybe it was time to extend Negro History Week to a whole month, Black History Month, February. And so contrary to what a lot of people have thought over the years, not because it's the shortest month, not because it's often the coldest month. It happens to be when Abraham Lincoln was born and when Frederick Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday. That's why Black History Month is in February. So, President Ford actually, let me jump ahead a little bit and show you his proclamation that he signed, declaring that all citizens should celebrate black history in the month of February. Not only celebrate it, but learn as much of this history as possible. Now, to take it one step beyond that, he didn't mean that's the only time we should study black history. But he did want a special emphasis to be put on it. Now, we know that there are some places where there's more of an emphasis put on it than in other places. But this is something that the president ever since Gerald Ford, every president since President Ford, has issued a proclamation in recognition of February being Black History Month. Now, let me go back to 1915 and give you a little more background as to how we came to get a whole month, Black History Month. Again, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Dr. Woodson, in 1920, attended a meeting or a conclave of the Omega Sapphire Fraternity, Incorporated. He was one of the men who was giving the keynote address on the opening day of this conclave. And he really stressed to his fraternity brothers, he was an honorary member of the Omega Sapphire Fraternity, Incorporated, Incorporated. He really stressed to his brothers that what we need to do is have a special time when we reach out and we elevate young people as well as all people to learn, appreciate, and help spread the word about black history. First of all, he was involved in doing research and putting it down in black and white so that we would have information to study and learn from. You might know that the 1920s, that was sort of the beginning of what was called the Harlem Renaissance. And so Harlem, New York, was sort of the center of this renaissance. This new thirst for learning, this new activity among Black people on stage who were musicians, Black people who were writers, who were poets, who were playwrights, who were artists, who were doing all of these wonderful things. And many of them gathered in New York City, and they came from all over the country. And so this was part of that movement, the Harlem Renaissance. The role that Carter G. Woodson played was in the area of Black history. That was his contribution. So the Omegas, after 1920, each year began to have an activity where they would focus on scholarship, and Achievement Week was started in the fraternity. And then a few years later, as I mentioned, 1926, that's when Woodson took his initiative worldwide, and especially here in the United States, focus on Negro History Week. He also, in 1915, formed an organization that is carried on that tradition, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. That was the original name. Years later, the name was changed to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. And the acronym is ASALH. ASALH. Young people, I know you all have your phones with you. As soon as this program is over, I want you to Google ASALH. You will learn about Dr. Woodson. You will also learn that each year, this organization has an annual meeting and conference. ASALH. The acronym is pronounced ASALH. I've been attending that meeting for over 20 years. It brings together scholars in black history from all over the world, especially here in the United States, and they meet in different cities around the nation. They've never met in Tampa, but ASALH has met in Jacksonville, I think, three times already, and there'll be another meeting in Jacksonville coming up in a few years. And this is where people come, and each year it is ASALH that comes out with the national theme. Every year there is a different theme for Black History Month. And so this is the legacy of Carter G. Woodson. We are fortunate here in Tampa that we are one of only two public schools in the state of Florida that has a school named for Carter G. Woodson. There's a school in Miami that has a Woodson school. I believe it's an elementary school. But we have the Carter G. Woodson Pre-K through 8 Leadership Academy here in Tampa, in North Tampa. It used to be Van Buren Junior High School. And there was an elementary school, forget the name of it, right next door. But they merged several years ago, and now they're the Woodson School. And it's a public school. And we have people who come from all over to visit that school. As I said, there are not many schools. There are some private schools in the state, but this is a public school that pays tribute to Dr. Woodson. By the way, that didn't happen by accident. The ASALH group, the Tampa Bay branch of ASALH, is one of five ASALH groups in Florida. And no other state has more than three. We have five in Florida, including the one here in Tampa. We lobbied for 10 years, the Hillsborough County School Board, to name a school for Dr. Woodson at some point. 10 years. There's a lesson in that, young people. Don't give up. Don't give up. If you know that your cause is a righteous one and you believe in it, don't give up. So about six years ago, I think, we had the school board to unanimously agree to name that school, which was the merger of a middle school and the elementary school for Dr. Carter G. Woodson. I could talk all day about him. I won't do that, but I will say, if you're ever in Washington, D.C., the former home that he lived in is now a museum, and it's operated by ASALH. It's walking distance from the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he taught for many, many years. There were some other men who joined with him to form a solid William B. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps. But the name Woodson is the one that's most prominent. He also started a book that he finished in 1915, the education of the Negro prior to 1961. Think about that, the education of the Negro prior to 1961. 1961 is when the Civil War began. There were very few educated blacks in the country prior to that time, and those that did exist were probably in the north. But he did the research, and this is exactly why ASALH is so important, because the scholars who are active in ASALH do research into areas that may have a lot of information that people aren't aware of, may be surprised to learn. There were black colleges before the Civil War began. That's a surprise. In fact, the oldest black college goes back to the 1820s, started by the Quakers in Pennsylvania. So this is where Woodson made his focus. In 1916, he started the Journal of Negro History. The Journal of Negro History. And here's a quote from 1920 by Dr. Ernest E. Just. We have a school name for Dr. Ernest E. Just. Well, we've had it since 1962. It closed two years ago in West Tampa, but it's being rebuilt. Hallelujah. We thought we had lost just middle school or elementary school, but the school board reversed a vote it had taken earlier when it had planned on closing just, and it reversed that vote, and it decided to build a brand new just elementary school, which is right next to Stewart Middle School. So I believe just is going to remain in elementary, rather, just elementary, right next to Stewart Middle School on Spruce Street, right around the corner from Blake High School. One of the things that the Tampa Bay History Center does is we do walking tours. And I do four black history walking tours. And one of them is in West Tampa. And we go right in front of Blake High School on North Boulevard, around to the campus of Stewart Middle School, which was the original Blake High School building, built in 1956. And right next door to that is the old Just Elementary School, which is going to be torn down and rebuilt. So that is some living history, I call it. Because once again, there are not that many public schools. There may be a few private schools in Florida named for Ernest E. Just, a brilliant microbiologist, a very brilliant man. And we have right next to his school, a school, Stewart, named for Mr. Garland V. Stewart, who for 12 years had been principal at Middleton High School here in Tampa. After that, he went into administration with the school district. He was the first black administrator at a top level in the school district. And so we have those two schools named for those two men right next to each other. And right around the corner, we have Howard W. Blake High School. So December 1920, again, that was the opening session of the Omega's Conclave where Woodson made his mark. The fraternity that hosted that event was founded in 1911 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. And it was known as one of the top-rated historically black colleges and universities in the country. It's still known as that, Howard University. Some of the people who I mentioned earlier, the Harlem Renaissance and some of the people who came out of that era, some of these names you may be familiar with, Langston Hughes, Zoro Neal Hurston, who was a Floridian, writer Claude McKay, musician Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. They all began to rise on the national horizon during that time. Painter Jacob Lawrence, humanitarian, attorney, actor, singer Paul Roberson, another name you may not have heard before who actually visited Tampa on one occasion. And that's maybe we'll do a special program about Paul Roberson. We could talk all day about this this man and what he was able to accomplish. Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, also from South Carolina, but we adopted her as a Floridian. And today, Dr. Bethune has one of the bronze busts in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., representing the state of Florida. Each state has two persons represented in statues. She is the first black and the first woman to be in a statue in Statuary Hall. Dr. Barron McLeod Bethune. Nanny Helen Burroughs was also someone whose name came on the horizon at that time, opened a special school for black women. And we had some of her former students who actually lived in Tampa. Here's a name I know all young people here are familiar with, Armwood, Armwood High School, named for Blanche Armwood. On a national level, this woman was special. Blanche Armwood, born here in Tampa, attended Harlem Elementary School, St. Peter Claver Catholic School, graduated from high school at the age of 12. Before she turned 13, she had a teaching certificate. But rather than teach, which she could have done, amazing as that may sound, before she was 13, she decided to continue her education. She went to Spelman College in Atlanta, which is still active, very active, known as a very special place, especially for black females. It's all girls school. Graduated from Spelman College at the age of 16, came back home, and that's when she began her teaching career. Later on, her parents moved to Washington, D.C., and they were elderly, and they were under the weather. She went to D.C. to help take care of her parents. And I think she might have had a little extra time on her hands, so she decided to go to law school. And she graduated from Howard University School of Law, Blanche Armwood. She had intended, and there are some letters that were written, she had intended to come back to Tampa and practice law. But before she did, she was on a speaking engagement tour in New England. She took sick, she had some issues, and she was hospitalized, and she died before she could return to Tampa. So she is, we know that Senator Artina Joyner is the first black female to practice law in Hillsborough County. But Blanche Armwood was on that track, and she died in 1939. She's buried here in Tampa at the Italian Cemetery. And there are some other names that I could mention, but you get the picture. The 1920s, that's when so many great things were happening, and 1926 was right in the middle of that era. Woodson, actually, he never really believed that President Lincoln, even though he recognized President Lincoln's birthday as part of Negro History Week, he never believed that he alone freed enslaved blacks. He wanted to give a lot of that credit to the 180,000 black soldiers who joined the Union Army and fought the Confederacy and helped to defeat the Confederacy and helped to defeat the Confederacy. That's what really freed enslaved blacks. That was Woodson's position. Although, of course, he recognized President Lincoln as president and who paid the ultimate sacrifice with his life. But Woodson wanted Negro History Week, and I'm sure he would want Black History Month, to be dedicated to students as well as adults learning as much black history as possible and sharing that knowledge with others. That's what he really wanted Black Negro History Week to be about. We are fortunate also in Hillsborough County, and there are a lot of things that we're doing in the school district. I'm not sure if there's many people that should be aware of it, are aware of it. We have an African American History Task Force that's, I think, been in operation now maybe eight years, something like that. Founded by school board member Lynn Gray and some other folks from the community. Each year they have a Black History Brain Bowl. Any of you familiar with that? Any of you all heard of that? Any of you all participated in that? I see a couple of hands. Great. It's always in what month? Guess. February. It's always in February. Also, there are, I think, 180, the number may be larger than that now. At least 180 public schools, and maybe this is something private schools can pick up on, but there are over 180 public schools that have Thurgood Marshall History Clubs. What a wonderful idea, right? Thurgood Marshall, first black man on the Supreme Court. Not only that, but long before he was named to the Supreme Court as a justice. He was lead attorney for the NAACP. He was the driving force behind the Brown decision, which said that there shall no longer be segregated schools, that black children and white children shall attend school together. This was 1954. Brown too came in 1955, but still it took many, many years after that before Hillsborough County and many other school districts in the South completely desegregated schools. So we had all black schools and all white schools really here up until 1971, and that's when Middleton High School no longer was an all-black high school, and those schools actually took on a different appearance as middle schools, and the black students who would have gone to Blake to graduate or would have gone to Middleton to graduate, those were your choices if you were black and in high school in the 1960s. Those students graduated from all of the other schools in the county, and Blake and Middleton became seventh and eighth and ninth grade centers. That happened in 1971 in Hillsborough County. It happened different times in different locations, but that was part of what Thurgood Marshall did. He also was very instrumental in getting equal pay for black teachers. There was a tier system for earning salaries for teachers up until the early 1940s. I don't think this changed until 1941 or somewhere around that time where white males were paid the most and for doing the same work, white females were paid just a little under the white males, and then under the white females were black males, and the ones paid the least amount of money for doing the same work were black females in the classroom. That had to change, right? And it did change thanks to Thurgood Marshall NAACP and some other persons who worked to make sure that that came to an end. So I'm going to draw to the end now. I do want to say that Woodson decided, and this is something I discovered also in doing black history talks in the community, that it's good to speak to students, and I'm happy that I see so many young people here today. But there are a lot of adults who are thirsty to learn more black history because I didn't get it when I was in high school. I didn't get it that much in junior high. I knew about Negro History Week, and I knew the name Booker T. Washington, and that's about as much as I knew. So Woodson said, you know what, we need to do something to educate our adults who are thirsty for this knowledge because after all they can share it with their children. So he established a black studies extension program to reach black adults. That was something that he thought was very important to do. And so that has continued with Asala, as I mentioned earlier, at these annual conferences that we have where black scholars share information with the community and with other scholars. So this is the proclamation again that President Ford signed designating February as black history month. So we've come a whole hundred years since 1926 when I began my presentation today, but we've still got a long way to go. There's still so much more for us to learn. There's more for us to discover and there's more for us to share with each other. And while we have the Tampa Bay History Center where we have history of the Tampa Bay region going back 500 years, we're going to have a very special place for black history starting Juneteenth next year, Tampa's Black History Museum. And if you go to our website, you can follow us and you'll learn all about it. And I want to thank the city of Tampa again for the invitation. This is really something I look forward to every year. Next year, I'll try not to be so long. Thank you. I have something for you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to now welcome Rodney Kite Powell. Rodney is the director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Florida and a Master of Arts degree from the University of South Florida, both in American history. He is the author of three books, including one on David P. Davis and Davis Island, which is the topic of his talk today. He will be discussing the mysterious death of D.P. Davis in 1926. Please welcome Rodney Kite Powell. Thank you so much, Shirley. Thank you all so much. You know, what Fred spoke about is obviously very important history, in some parts groundbreaking history. My bit is a little more scandalous, a little less important, perhaps, but hopefully it's enjoyable nonetheless. So 1926, really 1920s in general were a really amazing time in Florida history. And as we're going through the 2020s, we're hopefully not seeing a total repeat of this, but a lot of what we're seeing now in the 2020s happened in the 1920s from a standpoint of incredible growth. A lot of people coming into Florida with a lot of money and changing the landscape that we see. And so where we see now a lot of houses that were built, you know, maybe 50, 70 years ago being torn down, new houses being built, new developments, new high-rises, whole new parts of town being built. In the 1920s, you had a very similar thing called the Florida land boom. And it was where literally hundreds of thousands, about millions of people began moving into Florida to invest, but also to live their lives. Now, one of those who already was here was this man named David Paul Davis. Unusual among the land boom real estate developers, he actually was from Florida. A lot of the guys who were coming into Florida to develop people like Carl Graham Fisher, who developed Miami Beach and a lot of others, came from either the Northeast or the Midwest. But Davis himself was a Floridian, and he is going to be on the thing above me in just a second. We'll come back at some point. We'll see Davis with some friends of his. So that is kind of a snapshot of a lot of the most powerful figures here in Tampa at that time. The man seated on that kind of barrel on the right is D.B. McKay, a multi-time mayor of Tampa. The current mayor of Tampa is the man sitting, you know, kind of between the two standing gentlemen in the front. That's Perry Wall. And Davis is looking off to the side just in the back row, kind of in the center. Short in stature, but kind of larger than life character. He did some developments in Miami, but really coming back home, he grew up in Tampa in 1924 to develop these little mud flats that were out in Hillsborough Bay, just off the coast of downtown Tampa. And we know them as Davis Islands today. It was billed as a 30 million dollar development, would have multiple hotels, high rise apartments, lots and lots of single family homes, and even a golf course, a little par three golf course that would attract people to live here either during the wintertime as winter residents or live here full time. This is what Davis Islands looked like then and now. So this is a marketing piece. The top image is the northern part of the island. North would be to the right side of the image. And that was the first section that was sold. And then the lower image is the island in its entirety. And again, north is to the right. And you can see a little bit of the Bayshore in downtown Tampa. It was, again, an amazing development dredged almost entirely from the Bay Bottom. And by this was beginning in October of 1924, by late 1924, into going into 1925, he had really made a great name for himself. And he made this big boast towards the end of 1925. And that is that he would marry the next queen of Gasparilla. So Gasparilla is the annual celebration that we have here, put on by a mystic group of Gasparilla. They have an annual coronation where they elect a king and a queen. And you're not supposed to know who is that, who the king or the queen is. But despite knowing, or maybe not knowing, uh, who that would be, and this is her, Elizabeth Nelson, Davis did in fact marry that next queen of Gasparilla. She was about 20 years younger than him. And he also had a girlfriend at the time, who also was about 20 years younger than him. I will say that Davis had been previously married to a woman named Marjorie. So if you're familiar with Davis Islands, there's a park in the north end called Marjorie Park, named in her honor. When he was still in Miami, before he moved to Tampa, she passed away following the birth of their second child. So when he moved to Tampa in 1924, he was a widower with two young children, both boys. He also, by this time, so this is during Prohibition, so alcohol consumption and sale was illegal, but also it was rampant everywhere, particularly in a place like Tampa, he'd become a bit of an alcoholic. And so he's drinking a lot, he's making a ton of money, he's getting married, and he has a girlfriend, uh, by late 1925 or early 1926. So a lot's going on in Davis's life, kind of a busy guy. He also decided that while Davis Islands was going so well, he's selling the, the, the lots very, very quickly, making a lot of money, at least on paper, he thinks, you know what, I'm going to do one better than here in Tampa and Davis Islands. I'm going to go to St. Augustine. I'm going to develop an island there called Anastasia Island, uh, which is just to the, I guess, to the south of, uh, the original town of St. Augustine, and I'm going to build something that's twice the size. It's going to be called Davis Shores, and it's going to be a $60 million development. It's going to have a grand 18-hole golf course, even more hotels. It's going to be the best thing that St. Augustine has seen since Pedro Menendez established it in 1565. Well, he had great plans, but he didn't know that by early 1926, the land boom was beginning to falter. People were beginning to lose faith in Florida real estate as an investment. Northern banks were tired of having all these people take their money out and invested in real estate. They began to actually restrict what people could do with their money, and some, uh, kind of natural disasters and man-made disasters began to happen to make the building part of the land boom difficult. There was a shipwreck down in the harbor at Biscayne Bay in Miami that clogged up a lot of supplies coming in. There was actually a hurricane that hit Miami in 1926 as well, so there's a lot of stuff going on. So Davis actually had to sell Davis Islands so he could keep putting money into Davis Shores. He also had divorced and remarried Elizabeth Nelson twice during this time, and he was still carrying on with his girlfriend, a woman named Lucille Ziering. So again, a lot going on with Davis. This is a shot in St. Augustine when he made the announcement to build Davis Shores. There's a market there that's where he spoke. That is him sightseeing at the Castillo de San Marcos. He's the one pointing towards Anastasia Island and Davis Shores just to the south of the ancient city. And this is what he was going to, he was going to build, again, these grand hotels and clubs and all kinds of wonderful things. So in September of 1926, he's again estranged from Elizabeth. She goes off to France with a friend of hers just to get away and get out of town. He decides he's going to go to France and he's going to go find Elizabeth. So he gets on board this ship, the Majestic, which was kind of a sister ship to the Titanic, a grand ocean liner vessel. And he books passage with his son, the older son, his name's George. He's about 10 years old at this time. And he has his lawyer, he has his accountant, he has his private investigator, and he brings Lucy, his girlfriend, and Lucy's mom all on this ship to go to France and encounter Elizabeth. There's also talk that he wanted to develop the French Riviera and turn it into another Davis Islands. No one exactly knows what he was going to do with Elizabeth when he got there, whether he was going to divorce her, hence the attorney, or remarry her, hence some other thing, I don't really know. But we will never know because he didn't make it. Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean during the night, he went overboard and drowned. And now the real mystery is, how did he go overboard? Was he pushed? Did he jump? Or was it an accident? Now again, he was drinking heavily during this time. He allegedly had a confrontation with Lucy in their stateroom, where they had previously been a party, and allegedly there's a story of him sitting on in the window of the ship. It's not like a little porthole, he was in like first class, so he had nice big windows. And saying, I can make money or lose it, I can go on living or end it, it all depends on you, meaning Lucy. And then all of a sudden there's a scream and he's gone. And so again, did he slip and fall out? Did she push him? Did he jump? We will really never know. Though I did actually get a chance to interview George Davis, his son, who was on the ship, not in that room, but on the ship, 80 years later. He was 91 years old. And he, after a long discussion, he actually began to tear up. And he said, you know, I don't know if my father committed suicide, but he certainly put himself in a position to hurt himself. And kind of a lesson in that. And, you know, don't live your life so extreme that you end up putting yourself in these awkward positions. Again, we will never know exactly what happened to Davis. And I didn't ask George this question, and I wish I had. He's since passed away. Because when he, when they made, you know, landfall in France, they eventually made their way to Paris. And Lucy, the girlfriend was, he was in her custody. But he came back to this country, went to New York before he came back to Tampa, with Elizabeth, his stepmom, in essence. So there had to be this conversation between Lucy and Elizabeth that he may have witnessed about, you know, did you do it? Did he shoot himself? Did you kill him? You know, whatever happened? Where's the money? And so we, but we will never know that. I will say that there was money, because he was wealthy, and there was insurance policies. And so actually the insurance company declared his death as accidental, not suicide. So it did pay out. Although there is a kind of subtext to that story that it was a new insurance company, and they didn't want to look like they were just going to cheap out on paying a policy. They wanted to show they could actually pay their policies. So it might have been they just looked the other way and, you know, dismissed the possibility of suicide. Both boys ended up with large trust funds. The younger boy, David Davis, Jr., who was just a toddler at the time, ended up kind of doing very well with himself. He was an executive with Dole Pineapple and made a zillion dollars. The older son, George, blew all of his money, but then won the California lottery and became a millionaire. And so they both were like little parts of their dad's own personality. Davis Islands, as we know, succeeded. This is the headline from when Davis died. I believe it was, yes, October of 1926. It was, you know, front page headlines, not just here in Tampa, but really around the country. The land boom is really popular, and Davis himself had made a name for himself that this was news really everywhere. I always feel bad for Henry Snow when I see this, because he gets second billing. He also has the smallest park in the city name for him, right at the intersection of Lafayette. Or not Lafayette. Grand Central and Kennedy. Used to be Lafayette. Grand Central and Kennedy. It's a very small little triangular park. But this is the headline from when Davis died. But as I said, Davis Islands to continue. It was, before he died, it was purchased by a company called Stone and Webster, based in Boston. They actually owned Tampa Electric at the time. And they continued the process of building Davis Islands. And so there are about a hundred buildings that were built, mostly houses on the island before 1929, when everything else crashed with the Great Depression. And now there are, of course, hundreds and hundreds of houses is one of the places to live. Although they did a little flood a few years ago with the last hurricanes. But it is still a really significant place to live. And it's really, it was all the dream of this guy named David P. Davis, who died mysteriously. So that's it. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you, Rodney. Do you all have questions from Rodney? That's some juicy stuff. Questions? Anybody? Gloria, I know you have a question. The whole thing was really, you know, if there was a scandal newspaper at the time, that was, and that was part of it. She ended up marrying a prince and she did fine herself. But she was, she was kind of a C-list actress. She was what was called a tax Senate bathing duty. So kind of a, you can describe her today. It's kind of like a Kardashian, I guess. But she did. Why did he divorce and marry? Well, she kept, she kept leaving him because he was just a trainer of the person. When they got back together again, her brother, who was a man named Edwin Nelson, the family owned a florist shop. And he was actually interviewed by the newspapers. And he said, there were reports of the Nelson family being happy about the reunion or false. The family did not like Davis. I know you have questions from the Omega Man, Fred. Questions. Fred spoke on. Yes, ma'am. As an attorney for the NAACP, and by the way, he was assisted by several able black attorneys. Francisco Rodriguez would have been one of those from Tampa. But over in Fair Harvey Park, we have an area. Oh, thank you. Okay. All right. They want to pick this up. So over in Fair Harvey Park, uh, in downtown Tampa, we have an area known as Leader's Row. And one of the seven black people featured there is Miss Georgette Gardner, who was a high school, not high school, a elementary school principal of black schools in Tampa during the forties and fifties. And the reason that she's there, one of the reasons, because there are many other people who were principals of schools at that time, but the reason she was chosen was because Thurgood Marshall spoke so highly of her when he interviewed her. Uh, he was taking testimony from different people involved in education. And what he said about, uh, his interview with Miss Gardner was he was most impressed with what she said when she pointed out that whatever you do, attorney, uh, I want to make sure that everybody gets some help. The people working in the lunchroom, you know, the custodians, everybody at the school, not just the principal, not just, you know, the teachers, but everybody on this campus, everybody involved in educating our children needs to make more money because they were all making less than their white counterparts. Um, so that was very important because, uh, as he made the case and eventually they were able to get raises for this people, but you may know, excuse me, excuse me, that there were a lot of people who were, uh, a little afraid to come forward. Uh, Mrs. Turner was one of those people who was not afraid. And when Mrs. Turner, who was a black teacher, uh, was actually the one who signed her name on the lawsuit when the black teachers sued the school district for getting less pay for doing the same work that their white counterparts were doing, you know, it was Thurgood Marshall who played a key role in using the testimony of, of course, uh, Mrs. Turner, who signed the lawsuit, Mrs. Gardner and others who were brave enough to speak up. And that was during a time when, you know, we, we look now at, uh, some of the inequities in society, but can you imagine what it was like in 1940, 1941 for blacks in education? So, um, we don't have, to my knowledge, anything, any structure here locally named for Thurgood Marshall. Somebody correct me if you're aware of one. I'm not aware of any, uh, but we do have, uh, the Thurgood Marshall History Club. So maybe that's the beginning. Thank you. We have another question. Yes. Yes. You wouldn't happen to have a book with you, uh, would you? Hold it up, hold it up. Ron Thompson was head of vocational education for the Hillsborough County School District, uh, in the 1940s. And when black men came back from World War II, many of them did not have a high school diploma. And so the school district decided to open up a school, not only for the young men, but also for women who needed to attend high school and get a diploma and they built this school. Well, the building was already there. They converted it old, I guess it was a warehouse, converted it to a high school for blacks. If you remember the Morgan Street jail, those of you who might remember back a little history, that's where the Don Thompson high school, uh, was open. Uh, my father actually graduated from there in 1948 and your father was a teacher. The welding teacher, the driver's ed teacher and the auto mechanics teacher. Yeah. So Don Thompson is another school. And, and I think we have a marker there now, right now. We're going to have a marker. Okay. So we will have a historic marker soon. But when I talk to, uh, Megan, it's going to be around December, November, November, December. She said, I just recently talked to her and I thought we should get that because there's absolutely nothing in that area to show that the school, anything existed down there. I'm trying to get the front of the picture right on Morgan Street and Scott and Laurel. And that's, that's what my book shows, just that area. They were all blacks. So that's another story that we need to know more about. Don Thompson high school and Don Thompson, uh, I think the only picture I've ever seen of him was, uh, during the Gasparilla celebration that he had on a pirate hat. That's the only photo I've ever seen of him. There may be others available. Uh, I know that when the Don Thompson Alumni Association wanted to have a reunion and they reached out to his family, uh, he has family in Texas, I understand, they were not able to really get a lot of information from them. But that was the school that existed before Howard W. Blake. So when Don Thompson opened in 1945, it existed until 1956. 1956, Howard W. Blake was built on Spruce Street and Don Thompson closed. And, but we need to remember it because it is a big part of our history. What I'd like to say, it's never shown that it's a community, that whole area was a community. And in the book, it shows what, uh, Morgan Street in front of the school. Look, we lived directly in front of the school. In the, in the book, you can see the old driver's ed car and everything in the side of that, everything on that street, the houses and, uh, excuse me, the houses, the side of Don Thompson as well, both sides. But that area was a total of full, full neighborhood. And actually people lived, had their businesses and everything. It's much more than Central Avenue. We only hear that, but other people lived around with their businesses. It's there. She's agreeing. Because the only thing, and I know I wasn't on the program, but the only thing is, my thing is to show that we were a community. When you mentioned, uh, that we lived there, it's only said in Central Avenue, the Jackson House, and, uh, the Longshoremen, the park. But there's nothing to show that whole area. Igbo City was predominantly black. And they lived there. And via Columbia restaurant, it's never mentioned that any of that's black, that, uh, blacks lived. On Morgan Way, Don Thompson was, there was homes all around. There were people actually lived here. You can see mine, part of my parents. But also, a lot of people don't know that FAMU was also a vocational in college, which brought my father to Florida. They had my parents originally from Texas. And he taught well that at FAMU. Then, in the 1940s, I think, 43, 44, when he left FAMU, is when Don Thompson, that he taught there. But when you go downtown now, when you go to Morgan Street, the only thing you see is the parking lot and the bus terminal. There's absolutely nothing to show that we ever existed there at all. It's still another part of the shrubs. There still was a part of that that was considered dead. We still part of it, which went all the way back to what I want to say, uh, Adamo Drive, part of that, Third Street, going all the way over to, uh, you have part of West Tampa. But that area is called the shrubs. It's a large area. I think I just read where we was as large as Harlem, uh, in New York. Any other questions? I wanted to highlight that because that has been forgotten, uh, in our area. And that's why I have also there's pictures of the, uh, students, the teachers that taught there, full pictures of that. And I want to say, uh, I think two, two people, one person wrote the book because they saw the welding class. They were so excited. They had not seen an all-black welding class dressed in their outfits. Another young man found his father, Most Powerful, that was a teacher, and he was excited about it. So he bought the book. So it's a lot of old memories in the book. And a lot of things for you young people have no clue that we lived anywhere around there and that we were successful. Also in the book is the elite ladies of the clubs. Fusely Funeral Home, Mrs. Stone, Walker's Lake, and I know you all know none of that. But those are things that look at and actually see. And I'm trying to make our history that we were a community, that we just said dance and have business on Central Avenue. Any other questions? Yes, sir. Rodney, I'd like to, was there any family relation between Davis Island and the Ben C. Davids, or were they separately by different families? Any other questions? Now's the time. Get all the juice here. Yes, ma'am. She was interviewed. She said that he fell out. He slipped out the window. They were having an argument. I think one story said the wind blew him. Yeah, so that's the story. Oh, sorry. As the story goes, he was in the window kind of like this, you know, stateroom this way, ocean that way. And either, again, this is a massive boat. And they said a wave hit the boat and may have dropped him over. It's not the size of a cruise ship, but it's still really big. A wave's not going to rock the boat. Or that he'd been drinking, and so probably a little unstable, arguing, very animated, and may have just lost his balance. Or she went like this and shoved him right over me. We'll never know. Yes, ma'am. That's actually a great question. Yes, the ship captain had the ship circle the waters for, they said, three hours looking for him. But it was night, and there may have been a storm. And so it was, then it's a big ocean. And so probably, think about, you know, now the communication, even on the ship's probably pretty slow, but very fast relative to back then. They would have had to have somebody run from his room to wherever the captain was to then get to the bridge where they're operating the ship to then have them turn around. So, and then they don't, you know, the navigation, they knew kind of where they were, obviously. But they didn't know exactly the path that they had taken. So trying to circle back to where you were would have been really, really difficult. Plus, just turn this thing around. So who knows if they're looking in the right place. But they did make an attempt for about three hours and then realized no one's treading water for that long. And they abandoned the search and continued on their way. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? This is where you get all the juice. I wanted to recognize Naya Young, our councilwoman. This is District 5. Thank you for joining us. Any other questions? Well, we want to thank you sincerely. And we sincerely hope that you've enjoyed today's program. We would like to thank the Mayor's Youth Corps for all of their assistance. Would you stand, please? Could you stand and let everybody see you? As you exit the program today, members of the Mayor's Youth Corps will be passing out our commemorative booklets. Before you leave today, please stop by the first floor to see our Tampa in 1926 exhibit in the mascot room and enjoy light refreshments next door in the Sister Cities room. There will be many other great history programs during Archives Awareness Week. And they're listed in the book. And don't forget, next year we'll be celebrating 140. Who's that old? Anyway, throughout Tampa and we hope to see you there. Thank you for coming and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.