Category Florida History
Throwback Tuesday: From Florida Memory, Gov. Farris Bryant Testifies in front of US Senate
The Florida Division of Library Services has a wonderful website called Florida Memory where they share photos, videos and audio from some great moments in Florida history. If you are a junkie of this state’s history like myself, you are sure to spend hours on the site as I have done in the past. In […]
Throwback Tuesday: Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 Florida votes.
2013 marks 500 years since Juan Ponce de León first landed in our state and claimed the territory for Spain. While the first PERMANENT colonial settlement did not occur until 1565, this year is rightfully the 500th anniversary of our state’s founding. Four hundred years later African-Americans in the south still did not have full […]
Throwback Tuesday: How Florida Happened; The Political Education of Buddy MacKay
Buddy MacKay is one of the most influential and underrated figures in Florida’s development from backwater to thriving mega-state. His impact has been under-appreciated by Democrats many of whom undercut his Gubernatorial campaign in 1998 in an attempt to selfishly preserve individual political influence both within a post Chiles/MacKay Democratic Party and in a Bush […]
Throwback Tuesday: Claude Pepper & Ed Ball – Politics, Purpose and Power
Florida, much like other southern states in the early part of the century, had an inherent conflict between business and populism. Florida was the boom state of the 1920s but after the land bust, stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression a liberal New Deal hero emerged – Claude Pepper. Ed Ball […]
Launching “Throwback Tuesday” Florida history feature
Beginning next Tuesday, we will feature some aspect of Florida History including book reviews and historic videos. Reader recommendations are welcome in the comment thread below.
Zest of the Day: The Mission Culture in North Florida
As part of the continuing celebration of the 500th anniversary of the first European landing in the state, Florida Trend has this excellent story on the Mission culture in northern Florida. Those of you visiting Tallahassee for session should check out Mission San Luis which is one of the least publicized but greatest historic treasures […]
1951: When Terror Struck Florida
With last week’s events in Boston in addition to several History Channel programs last week on the Ku Klux Klan reminded me of one of the darkest episodes in Florida’s history, the murder of NAACP leader Harry T. Moore. In 1951 when Moore was murdered in Mims, local Democrats in Orange and Brevard County were […]
Zest of the Day: USA Today Founder Al Neuharth, 89
Arguably the most influential person in Florida newspapers, Al Neuharth died this evening in Cocoa Beach, the Atlantic coast city from which he built his Gannett Company, Inc. media empire. Besides USA Today, Gannett also publishes the Tallahassee Democrat, the Ft. Myers News-Press and FSView, the student-run newspaper that — with the conservative Neuharth’s help […]
Zest of the Day: The Great Robert Remini, Jacksonian and Congressional Historian Dead at 91
This is not really a Florida story at all but we leave Florida for the day because one of my favorite historians passed away recently it was announced this morning. Remini’s historical works about Andrew Jackson are among the best works about arguably the most important figure in American political history. (note I said political […]
Martin Luther King Jr. and St Augustine
Today is the 45th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and this week was the 500th anniversary of Juan Ponce de León’s landing. Let’s look back at when Martin Luther King Jr. visited St Augustine in 1964 at the beginning of the 400th anniversary celebrations of St Augustine’s formal founding. The oldest city in […]
