Joe Akerman
Professor of History
North Florida Junior College, Emeritus. | "Jacob Summerlin: King of the Crackers"
A native of Orlando, Joe Akerman holds degrees from Rollins College and the University of Florida. He also earned a post-graduate certificate in Southern and Negro History from Johns Hopkins University. Akerman has had a distinguished and varied career as a writer, public speaker, and teacher. A Fulbright Scholar in British Columbia (1967-1968), Akerman is a leading authority on the history of cattle ranching in the United States. He is the author of The Florida Cowman: A History of the Cattle Industry in Florida (Kissimmee, 1997), currently in its ninth printing, and American Brahman: A History of the American Brahman (Houston, 1982), and most recently, Jacob Summerlin: King of the Crackers (Melbourne, 2004), which won the Florida Historical Society’s Charlton Tebeau Book Prize in 2005. His articles have appeared in many journals and newspapers, including the Florida Historical Quarterly, Orlando Sentinel, Tallahassee Democrat, Jacksonville Times-Union, and Vancouver Sun. |
T. D. Allman
Journalist, Writer | “Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State”
Rarely, if ever, has a book on Florida history generated as much discussion and controversy as T. D. Allman’s Finding Florida. From Ponce De Leon to Trayvon Martin, Allman’s take on his native state has aroused debates, stirred up controversy, and inspired spirited arguments throughout Florida and the nation. The book has drawn extensive comment in national media and reviews in major publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the London Daily Mail. Allman himself brings a lifetime of experience reporting and writing to the task. Mainly known as a foreign correspondent, Allman’s writing has been featured in publications such as Harpers, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New Republic, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Economist, and National Geographic. Allman is also the author of four other books including Miami: City of the Future. Allman’s style is provocative, daring, and challenging. All of those present at this event will be challenged to join the conversation. |
Hon. John Antoon II
Judge, U.S. District Court,
Middle District of Florida | “America’s Courts: State and Nation”
The Honorable John Antoon II will draw from his vast experience with the legal system to address what he considers to be the most significant issues facing today’s courts. Among the topics he will address will be the importance of maintaining the judiciary’s freedom from political influences. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to engage with a premier legal expert and gain an insider’s perspective on the American judicial system. The Honorable Judge John Antoon earned his bachelor’s degree from Florida Southern College (1968) and his law degree from the Florida State College of Law (1971). He has earned an M.S. from the Florida Institute of Technology (1973) and a L.LM. from the University of Virginia (2001). Judge Antoon’s nearly forty year career in the law has provided him with a unique opportunity to view the courts from a variety of perspectives. Prior to his nomination to the federal court by President Clinton in 2000, Antoon served as prosecutor, public defender, private practitioner, Circuit Judge of the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, 1985-1995, and Judge on the Fifth District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, 1995-2000. |
Reubin O'D. Askew
Distinguished Professor of Public Policy,
Florida State University | "A Conversation with former Governor Reubin O'D. Askew"
A former prosecuting attorney, state legislator, Governor, former chairman of two federal commissions, and Ambassador and Cabinet member, Reubin Askew has served at every level of American government. Askew attended Florida State University (B.S. 1951), and after a stint in the Air Force, he attended the University of Florida Law School (J.D. 1956). Askew practiced law in Pensacola and in 1958 was elected to the Florida legislature. Askew served in both the House and Senate until his election as governor in 1970. Askew's tenure as governor placed him among the leaders of a new generation of progressive Southern governors. The Askew years have been widely characterized as years of achievement, reform, and successful transition for Florida. In fact, one study conducted at Harvard University rated Askew as one of the ten greatest American governors of the 20th Century. In 1979 Askew joined President Jimmy Carter's administration as a U.S. trade representative. In 1984 Askew sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Since that time he has remained active in the study and discussion of Florida's public policy issues. |
Ace Atkins
Writer
Oxford, Mississippi | "The White Shadow *The Robert and Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture"
Born in Troy, Ala., Ace Atkins attended Auburn University where he honed his skills as both a writer and a defensive end on the undefeated 1993 Auburn University football team. Before turning to writing full time, Atkins worked as a crime reporter in the newsroom of The Tampa Tribune, earning a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his seven-part series on the 1955 unsolved murder of Tampa socialite and gambling king pin Charlie Wall. Atkins wrote two crime novels set in the South, Crossroad Blues: A Nick Travers Mystery (1998) and Leavin' Trunk Blues (2001) while working as a reporter. Commercial success as a novelist and an offer to become a visiting journalism professor at the University of Mississippi convinced him to concentrate on writing full time. He wrote the highly acclaimed Dark End of the Street (2002), Dirty South (2004), and White Shadow (2006). The latter is based on his five years of research on the Wall slaying, including sealed court and police records, countless interviews with players of that period, and even an extended research trip to Havana. Atkins resides near Oxford, Miss., with his wife Angela and their dogs Elvis and Polk Salad Annie. |
Ed Ayers
President Emeritus, University of Richmond | "From War to Freedom: Reflections on the Civil War"
Southern historian Edward L. Ayers will reflect on the transformative nature of the American Civil War and its relationship and relevance to the society we live in today. Prof. Ayers brings a lifetime of study to the task as a scholar, public intellectual, and college administrator. Recently retired as the president of the University of Richmond, he is known equally as an astute historian of the Civil War and as an enthusiastic lecturer. He has written or edited 11 books, including the Bancroft Award-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies, a study that explores the Civil War in two communities, and he has directed a groundbreaking digital history project, The Valley of the Shadow. Prof. Ayers co-hosts BackStory, a popular weekly radio show and podcast produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. He received the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2012, and his books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. |
Jeff Baker
Architect, Mesick Cohen
Baker Architects, Albany, N.Y. | “Discovering and Restoring Frank Lloyd Wright’s Vision for Florida Southern College”
Even frequent visitors to the Florida Southern College campus do not see what Jeff Baker sees when he is here. The lead architect for the College’s restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, he knows intimately the plans that Wright had for a “great education temple in Florida.” Baker will offer a glimpse into the great architect’s vision for the campus – as well as a look at the spectacular buildings that were left on the drawing table. A member of the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Association for Preservation Technology, Baker holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has restored dozens of significant American landmark buildings, including some designed by Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s Pope Villa in Lexington, Ky.; and the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass. Some of his past projects include restoration work at Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello; James Madison’s home, Montpelier; and the President’s House at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. He also has helped restore the New York State Capitol; the Vermont State House; the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum in St. Johnsbury, Vt.; and Richard Morris Hunt’s Ochre Court in Newport, R.I., presented by historic Lakeland, Inc., promoting awareness, understanding and an appreciation of Lakeland’s history and assuring the preservation of those things which represent the character of our city and are significant to its history. |
Edward Baptist
Professor of History,
University of Miami | "Creating an Old South: Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier before the Civil War book talk and signing"
Dr. Edward E. Baptist grew up in Durham, North Carolina. He graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service with B.S.F.S. in 1992 then went on to study American History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in 1997. In 1998, Baptist became the Charlton Tebeau Professor of Southern History at the University of Miami, where he currently teaches various history related courses. He and his wife Stephanie have two children, Lillian, 4, and Ezra, 1, and they live on campus as associate masters of Mahoney Residential College. Creating an Old South: Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier Before the Civil War, was published in 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press. Baptist is currently researching and writing a book about the forced migration of enslaved African Americans to the Mississippi Valley and Deep South after 1790, which he sees as an essential but neglected part of the story of how the South was created. |
Cynthia Barnett
Senior Writer, Florida Trend Magazine | “Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S”
Cynthia Barnett is a long-time journalist who has reported on freshwater issues from the Suwannee River to Singapore. Barnett’s first book Mirage won the gold medal for best nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards and was named by The St. Petersburg Times as one of the top 10 books that every Floridian should read. Her latest book, Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, calls for a water ethic for America. Blue Revolution was named by the Boston Globe as one of the top 10 science books of 2011. The Globe describes Ms. Barnett’s author persona as “part journalist, part mom, part historian, and part optimist.” Ms. Barnett, has worked for newspapers and magazines for 25 years. Her numerous journalism awards include a national Sigma Delta Chi prize for investigative magazine reporting and eight Green Eyeshades, which recognize outstanding journalism in 11 southeastern states. She earned her bachelor’s in journalism and master’s in environmental history, both from the University of Florida, and was the recipient of a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she spent a year studying freshwater supply. Ms. Barnett lives in Gainesville with her husband and two water-loving grade-schoolers. |
Bill Belleville
Author,
Sanford, Florida | “Losing it all to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape”
Bill Belleville is an award winning author & documentary filmmaker specializing in nature, environmental issues, and “sense of place.” The author of four books and over 1,000 articles in such publications as Newsweek, Audubon, the New York Times, Sports Afield and Oxford American, he has worked overseas as a writer on Discovery Channel expeditions in the Galapagos Islands and Cuba. Belleville has scripted and co-produced five PBS documentaries, including the recent “In Marjorie’s Wake: Rediscovering Rawlings, a River and Time,” and winning an Emmy for the production and scripting of “Wekiva: A Legacy or Loss?” Losing it all to Sprawl (2006) focuses on Belleville’s personal battle to save his “Cracker” farmhouse and his beloved rural landscape in the face of urban sprawl that engulfed his Seminole County community. The book laments not only the consumption of Florida’s natural landscape, but the loss of Old Florida neighborhoods and their history. He has lectured widely on environmental literature and was named Environmental Writer of the Year by the Florida Audubon Society and Florida Wildlife Federation. Sponsored by Historic Lakeland, Inc. Promoting awareness, understanding and an appreciation of Lakeland’s history and assuring the preservation of those things which represent the character of our city and are significant to its history. |
Arch Frederic Blakey
Associate Professor of History,
University of Florida | "The Florida Phosphate Industry, An Overview"
Arch Frederic Blakey was born in West Pam Beach, but grew up in Pahokee, Florida. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D degree from Florida State University. Professor Blakey has held teaching appointments at Florida State, the University of Southern Mississippi, and most recently the University of Florida. His major field of specialization is the U.S. in the nineteenth century with special emphasis on Southern, economic, and military history. His first book appeared in 1973, The Florida Phosphate Industry: A History of the Development and Use of a Vital Mineral, published by Harvard University Press. Since that time Professor Blakey has published many articles and three more books, including General John H. Winder (Gainesville, 1990), and most recently, Rose Cottage Chronicles: The Bryant-Stephens Families of North Florida (Gainesville, 1998). |
Kevin Boyle
Professor of History,
Ohio State University | “Arc of Justice: Bartow’s Ossian Sweet, Clarence Darrow and the Fight for Racial Equality in America”
Kevin Boyle, a native of Detroit, attended the University of Detroit and the University of Michigan where he earned his Ph. D. degree in 1990. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and in 2003 was appointed Professor of History at Ohio State University. A specialist in twentieth century American history, Boyle’s most recent book is Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York, 2004) which won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 2004 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Ithaca, 1995); Muddy Boots and Ragged Aprons: Images of Working-Class Detroit, 1900-1930 (Detroit,1997) with Victoria Getis. His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, The Journal of American History, Labor History, The Michigan Historical Review, and various anthologies. Dr. Boyle has held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He has lectured and held teaching appointments at the University College Dublin, Ireland, Harvard University and other universities. |
H.W. Brands
Professor of History,
University of Texas, Austin | “Franklin Roosevelt, Florida, and the South”
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s relationship with Florida was both delicate and dramatic: As president-elect, he was the target of an assassination attempt in Miami. He came to the Sunshine State to rehabilitate after contracting polio. And he worked to keep Southerners, especially those in the Senate, on board even though most of them were skeptical of his New Deal. Roosevelt’s relationship with Florida and the South, and how it illuminates central themes of his life and presidency, will be the topic of H.W. Brands, one of America’s most popular and best-selling historians. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes on topics ranging from the California Gold Rush to the Cold War to the Republic of Texas. He has published a number of best-selling books, including two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Traitor to His Class details FDR’s experimentation with the New Deal and his revolutionary efforts to save democracy during the Great Depression and World War II. |
Douglas Brinkley
Professor of History and Fellow in History at James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University | “Franklin Roosevelt, Florida, and the South”
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s relationship with Florida was both delicate and dramatic: As president-elect, he was the target of an assassination attempt in Miami. He came to the Sunshine State to rehabilitate after contracting polio. And he worked to keep Southerners, especially those in the Senate, on board even though most of them were skeptical of his New Deal. Roosevelt’s relationship with Florida and the South, and how it illuminates central themes of his life and presidency, will be the topic of H.W. Brands, one of America’s most popular and best-selling historians. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes on topics ranging from the California Gold Rush to the Cold War to the Republic of Texas. He has published a number of best-selling books, including two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Traitor to His Class details FDR’s experimentation with the New Deal and his revolutionary efforts to save democracy during the Great Depression and World War II. |
Dr. Canter Brown
Professor of History,
Florida A&M University | "Henry Bradley Plant: The Real Story of the King of Florida"
Known far and wide in the late 19th century as the “King of Florida,” the railroad, hotel, and steamship magnate Henry Bradley Plant was one of the wealthiest men in the post-Civil War South, but no substantive biography of him has been written until now. Historian Canter Brown, Jr., reveals the previously unexplored heartbreak, loss, treachery, scandal, and triumph of the man who opened much of peninsular Florida to settlement and left as a breathtaking legacy the magnificent Tampa Bay Hotel. Dr. Brown, a native of Fort Meade, has authored or co-authored a score of works on Florida and Southern history, including a two-volume history of Polk County. |
J. Hyatt Brown
Chairman and CEO Brown & Brown, Inc., (NYSE) and Former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, 1978-1980 | "The Politics of Democracy and Where It's Taking Florida"
Currently one of Florida's outstanding businessmen, J. Hyatt Brown was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1972, serving as speaker from 1978-80. Brown served in the Florida legislature during a time of turbulence and change, the last days of the "Pork Choppers," rural lawmakers who dominated the legislative agenda at that time. As an urban businessman elected to the legislature in a time of mostly rural representation, he was instrumental in reforming the political process in Florida to reflect a more urban state. After his career in politics, Brown returned to his native Daytona Beach and built his family's insurance business into one of the nation's largest publicly owned insurance brokers, with offices in twenty-nine states. Brown's commitment to education and public service is demonstrated by his service on many educational and non-profit boards including the Florida Board of Regents (1982-89), the Stetson University Board of Trustees, the Florida Council of 100, and the Florida Chamber Foundation. During his productive career in politics and business, Brown has received many awards and commendations. In 1979 Time Magazine named Brown one of the nation's 50 young leaders, and in 1977 and 1978 he was voted the Most Effective Member of the House. Investor's Business Daily named him one of their "Top 10 Leaders & Successful CEOs for 2001" and A.M. Best listed him in its "People to Watch in 2002," listing of persons likely to change the insurance industry in the year ahead. *Robert W; and Susan E; McKnight Political Affairs Lecture. |
Bertram Wyatt-Brown
Professor of History,
University of Florida, Emeritus | “The Honor of Andrew Jackson”
One of the most distinguished historians of the American South, Professor Bertram Wyatt-Brown, holds degrees from the University of the South, Cambridge University and Johns Hopkins University where he received his Ph.D under eminent American Historian C. Vann Woodward. Past President of the Southern Historical Association, Dr. Wyatt-Brown taught at Case Western Reserve University and in 1983 was appointed Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. His publications include Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982); Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York, 1986); The House Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family (New York, 1996); The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, 1760s – 1890s (Chapel Hill, 2001) and Hearts of Darkness: Wellsprings of a Southern Literary Tradition (Baton Rouge, 2003). He is also the author of over 150 essays and reviews. He has appeared in television documentaries for Discovery, A&E, and PBS. Currently Wyatt-Brown serves as series editor of the Louisiana State University Press’ Southern Biography Series. Dr. Wyatt-Brown and his wife Anne reside in Baltimore, Maryland. |
Douglas Brinkley
Professor of History,
Rice University | “Saving Wild Florida: From John James Audubon to Barack Obama”
What would Roosevelt think? That’s the question being posed by presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who in 2009 published Wilderness Warrior, a biography that focuses on Theodore Roosevelt’s pioneering crusade to create national parks and preserve environmental havens such as the Everglades. President Roosevelt, an avid bird-watcher, naturalist, and founding father of America’s conservation movement, camped and fished along the very Gulf Coast that is now struggling with the after-effects of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Brinkley, dubbed by The Chicago Tribune as “America’s new past master,” is professor of history at Rice University and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. A prolific and widely acclaimed author, Brinkley has had six of his books selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and his 2007 book, The Great Deluge, the story of Hurricane Katrina, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. This summer he published Witness to America, a newly updated collection of 150 firsthand accounts of American history from the Revolutionary War to present. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University and a master’s and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. |
Al Burt
Writer, Journalist | "The Tropic of Cracker’: Understanding Florida’s Native Folks"
Al Burt was born in Georgia but grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. After graduating from the University of Florida in 1949, Mr. Burt became one of Florida’s premier journalists. Joining the Miami Herald in 1955, he served as its city editor, Latin America editor, and editorial writer. In 1965 he was wounded and disabled while covering the civil war in the Dominican Republic. From 1973 to 1995, Mr. Burt served as the Herald’s roving Florida columnist, studying the state with the insight of a native and the detached eye of a foreign correspondent. Mr. Burt has won numerous national and state awards, including the Ernie Pyle Award for stories written about Cuba in 1961. In 1984 he won the Florida Audubon Society’s outstanding journalist award. In 1998 the Florida Historical Society awarded him its Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Book Award for Al Burt’s Florida: Snowbirds, Sandcastles, and Self-Rising Crackers (Gainesville, 1997). Mr. Burt is the author of five other books, including Papa Doc: Haiti and its Dictator (Markus Wiener, 1990) and Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes (Florida Classics, 1983). His latest book, The Tropic of Cracker (Gainesville, 1999), will be available at his program. Mr. Burt and his wife Gloria reside in the north Florida community of Melrose. |
Orville Vernon Burton
Distinguished Professor of Humanities,
Clemson University | “The Age of Lincoln: Then and Now”
Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the decades surrounding it comprised one of the nation’s most bloody and turbulent periods. Still, the conflict ultimately produced a unified nation that rests proudly on the foundation of personal liberty for all of its citizens. Through his efforts to expand the Founding Fathers’ incomplete view of freedom, Lincoln helped create a country that more closely resembles the ideal of “liberty and justice for all.” Vernon Burton will bring this era to life through a dynamic discussion of the impact of Lincoln’s life and legacy. Burton’s lecture will be derived from his latest book, The Age of Lincoln, (2007), which won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction. A native of Ninety-Six, South Carolina, Burton is one of America’s leading scholars of Southern History, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. He earned his doctorate in 1976 from Princeton University, and soon thereafter joined the faculty at the University of Illinois where he taught for over 33 years. He has authored or edited 16 books and over 180 articles, including his classic work, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina, (1985). |
John Capouya
Professor of Journalism, University of Tampa | "Florida Soul: From Ray Charles to K.C. and the Sunshine Band"
When recalling the roots of soul music, most people are likely to name Memphis, Detroit, or New Orleans, but Florida also has a rich soul music history that has often gone unrecognized. John Capouya celebrates great artists of the Sunshine State who produced some of the most electric, emotive soul music America has ever heard. Drawing on extensive interviews with surviving musicians to re-create the excitement of soul’s golden age, Capouya outlines Florida’s contributions, including singers James and Bobby Purify, Sam Moore of the legendary duo Sam and Dave, and how Hank Ballard created his international hit song “The Twist” after seeing the dance in Tampa. Born in the era of segregation, with origins in gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz, soul music is still very much a part of our collective culture, and Florida is one of its capitals. John Capouya is associate professor of journalism and writing at the University of Tampa. As a journalist, he worked for publications including Newsweek and The New York Times. His previous book, Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture, is being adapted into a feature film. |
James Clark
Professor of History, University of Central Florida | “Red Pepper & Gorgeous George: The Pepper-Smathers Senate Race of 1950”
Claude Pepper, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1936, was an ally of Franklin Roosevelt and encouraged cooperation with the Soviet Union. In 1950, George Smathers challenged Pepper in a vicious, bare-knuckled race, attacking Pepper’s Communist sympathies—a tactic that would soon be known as McCarthyism and won by an astonishing 60,000 votes. Author James Clark investigates this contentious campaign and explores how Smathers’ resounding victory inspired others, including Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, and helped set the stage for the complete reversal of the political power structure that had ruled the South for nearly a century. After a distinguished career in journalism, James Clark earned his doctorate in history from the University of Florida. He is the author of seven books, including Faded Glory: Presidents Out of Power, and his essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington Monthly, The Nation, and The Miami Herald. |
David J. Coles
Assistant Professor of History,
Longwood College | "The Smallest Tadpole: Florida in the American Civil War"
David Coles is a native of Long Island, New York, who grew up in Ft. Myers, Florida. After service in the U. S Army, he attended Florida State University, earning a bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree in history. Dr. Coles was formerly supervisor of the Florida State Archives and is currently a Assistant Professor of history at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia. One of Florida’s leading Civil War historians, Dr. Coles dissertation was a study of the war in Florida. A leading authority on the Battle of Olustee and other military operations in Florida, Coles’ articles and reviews have appeared in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Civil War History, Civil War Times Illustrated, and numerous other journals. His seminal article on Black troops in Florida appeared in Florida’s Heritage of Diversity (available at this program). He was co-compiler of the six volume Biographical Rosters of Florida’s Confederate and Union Soldiers in the Civil War, 1861-1865 and associate editor of the new Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. He is currently co-authoring a biography of the Confederate cavalry commander John J. Dickison. |
Tom Corcoran
Mystery Writer, Photographer, and Song Writer | “The Trials and Tribulations of Alex Rutledge”
Tom Corcoran first moved to Florida in 1970. He has been a disc jockey, bartender, AAA travel counselor, U. S. Navy officer, screenwriter, freelance photographer, automotive magazine editor, computer graphic artist, and journalist. Corcoran’s photographs have appeared on seven Jimmy Buffett album covers. He co-wrote the Buffett hits “Cuban Crime of Passion” and “Fins.” His photos also have appeared on numerous book jackets, including those of Thomas McGuane’s An Outside Chance and Winston Groom’s Forest Gump, and William McKeen’s Mile Marker Zero. In 1998 Corcoran introduced readers to Alex Rutledge a Florida Keys freelance photographer in his first novel Mango Opera. Six Rutledge adventures followed including Corcoran’s most recent The Quick Adios (Times Six). Corcoran also runs a small publishing company and spent the last couple of years marketing books of his photographs, Jimmy Buffett: The Key West Years, and Key West in Black and White, a collection of stunning photos we can now imagine as the work of Alex Rutledge. |
Jim Cusick
P. K. Yonge Library,
University of Florida | "East Florida's Other War of 1812"
James Gregory Cusick, a specialist in the study of the Spanish colonial period in Florida, holds degrees in journalism (B.S.) and anthropology (M.A., Ph.D.). He has lived in Florida since high school and is a long-time resident of both St. Johns County and Alachua County. For the past eight years, Cusick has been a curator and archivist for the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History in the department of special collections at the University of Florida's George Smathers Library. He serves on the board of directors for the Gulf South History and Humanities Conference, the St. Augustine Archaeological Association and the Florida Historical Society. Cusick also serves as president of the Seminole Wars Historic Foundation and is a research associate at the St. Augustine Historical Society. His first book, The Other War of 1812 (2003), was published by the University Press of Florida and is being reissued in paperback by the University of Georgia Press. |
Rick Dantzler
Attorney, Frost, Tamayo, Sessums and Aranda | "Under the Panther Moon" book talk and signing
Rick Dantzler is a third-generation Floridian from Winter Haven. He graduated from the University of Florida with a B. S. and his law degree. In 1982, at the age of 26, Dantzler was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and then elected to the Florida Senate in 1990. His colleagues in the Senate knew him as "the conscience of the Senate." He resigned in 1998 to run for governor and later that year became the lieutenant governor candidate on the ticket with Buddy MacKay. It was his campaign for governor and then lieutenant governor that provided much of the motivation for writing the book Under the Panther Moon, a collection of fictional stories about life in Florida. Dantzler is an avid hunter and angler who loves fly-fishing. His love for the natural beauty and wonder of Florida is the backdrop for the stories in Under the Panther Moon, and shapes an agenda for our state that is subtly articulated in the book. He is married to Julie Pope and they have two children. In addition to being an attorney, he is a certified circuit court civil and family law mediator. He is currently associated with Frost, Tamayo, Sessums, and Aranda law firm in Bartow. |
William C. Davis
Professor of History,
Virginia Tech University | "An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government"
Born in Missouri but raised in California, William C. Davis is one of America's most well-known Civil War historians. The co-director of the Virginia Center of Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech University, Davis has authored over thirty books, including full-length or dual biographies of Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge, Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Robert Barnwell Rhett. He has also authored full-length studies of several Civil War battles, including Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and New Market. One of his latest books, and subject of his program, is The Honorable Defeat, a narrative history of the Confederate Cabinet's flight through Florida in the final days of the Civil War. His other books have covered such varied topics as the Natchez Trace, the Alamo, and various aspects of America's frontier heritage. Mr. Davis is a frequent commentator on the History Channel and has appeared on numerous documentaries. He was formerly editor of the Civil War Times Illustrated. |
Allison DeFoor II
Lawyer, Politician, Judge, Sheriff, Historian, and most recently Jeb Bush’s "Everglades Czar" | "Lessons from the Conch Republic: Florida’s Environment and Where It’s Going: A Conversation with J. Allison DeFoor II"
Not yet fifty years old, Allison DeFoor has already enjoyed a long and productive career in law, law enforcement, politics, environmental affairs, and private industry. DeFoor holds a B.A. in Geography and an M.A. in Criminology from USF. After earning a law degree from Stetson University in 1978, DeFoor began a long and productive legal career in the Florida Keys, serving as Assistant Public Defender and Assistant State’s Attorney and Director of the Narcotics Task Force. In 1982 at the age of 28 he was elected Judge of the Monroe County Court, serving until 1987. In 1988 DeFoor was elected Sheriff of Monroe County, serving until 1990 when he resigned to accept Gov. Bob Martinez’s offer to run as lieutenant governor. In the 1990s De Foor practiced law, was active in state and national Republican affairs, and served on numerous profit and non-profit boards of directors. DeFoor has written and lectured on environmental, historical, legal, and governmental subjects. He as taught at many universities including Yale University, University of Miami Law School, and Florida A & M University. Active in the Florida Episcopal Church, DeFoor earned a doctorate in Sacred Theology from South Florida Center for Theological Studies in 1999. That same year he became Gov. Jeb Bush’s Everglades Policy Coordinator. That work was successfully concluded this past legislative session with the passage of the Everglades Restoration Bill. DeFoor resides with his wife and three children in Wakulla, Florida. |
James M. Denham
Professor of History,
Florida Southern College
Canter Brown, Jr.
Historian in Residence,
Florida Supreme Court Historical Society | "Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: Florida Reminiscences of George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams" (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000) book talk and signing.
James M. Denham is Professor of History at Florida Southern College. A specialist in Southern and Florida history Denham joined the FSC faculty in 1991 after teaching at Limestone College, Georgia Southern University, and Florida State University where earned his Ph.D. in 1988. His articles and reviews appeared in many popular and scholarly journals. In addition to Cracker Times, he is the author of "A Rogue’s Paradise": Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida, 1821-1861, which will also be available at the program. |
Martin Dyckman
St. Petersburg Times, Retired | “Leroy Collins: Floridian of His Century
Long considered the dean of Florida political journalists, Martin Dyckman reported on Florida government and politics for the St. Petersburg Times for more than forty years. Joining the Times staff soon after graduating from Florida State University, he served as the newspaper’s Tallahassee news bureau chief from 1969-76. Admired for his investigative journalism and hard-hitting commentaries, Dyckman’s reporting uncovered numerous scandals and ethical lapses in state government. In the early 1970s Dyckman’s investigative journalism exposed a corruption and ethics scandal on the Florida Supreme Court. After a brief stint in the Times’ Washington bureau, he returned to Florida in 1979 to join the paper’s editorial board. Dyckman has won numerous awards for his work, including the distinguished service award of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the Silver Gavel of the American Bar Association, the Associated Press Managing Editors Association public service award, and the Medal of Honor Award of the Florida Bar Foundation. Since retirement Dyckman has put his journalism skills to work in writing history and biography. His first effort is the award-winning “Floridian of His Century: Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins.” Currently he is at work on a biography of former Florida governor Reubin Askew. His forthcoming work, “A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary,” will be released in 2008. Dykeman and his wife, Ivy, reside in Waynesville North Carolina. |
Steve Engle
Professor of History,
Florida Atlantic University | "Struggle for the Heartland: The Civil War in the West"
A native of West Virginia, Engle holds degrees from Shepard College (B.A.) and Florida State University (Ph.D.), and has been chair of the Florida Atlantic University Department of History since 2001. He specializes in nineteenth century American history with an emphasis in the Civil War and Reconstruction era. More specifically, his research focuses on civil-military relations and ethnic dimensions of the Civil War. He is the author of several books, including Yankee Dutchman: The Life of Franz Sigel (1993), Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising of All (1999), Struggle for the Heartland (2001), and The American Civil War in the West (2001). He co-authored (with Gallagher, Krick and Glatthaar) The American Civil War: This Mighty Scourge of War (2003). Engle has presented several papers at professional conferences in the United States and Germany, and his articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Civil War History, Journal of Southern History, and the AHA Perspectives. The winner of numerous teaching awards, Engle was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year in 2000. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany and in 2003 was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. Engle serves as the executive treasurer for the Society of Civil War Historians. |
J. Michael Francis
Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies and Professor of History, University of South Florida at St. Petersburg | "Before Jamestown: Europeans, Africans, and Indians in La Florida, 1513-1607"
By the time one hundred Englishmen landed on Virginia shores, the Spanish had been exploring vast tracts of North America and by 1565 had founded America’s oldest permanent settlement at St. Augustine. In his lecture, Prof. J. Michael Francis will examine this largely unknown period of colonial America, describing the relations between native peoples and newcomers. Prof. Francis is one of the nation’s leading experts on the Spanish colonial experience in Florida. A native of Canada, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He is a distinguished scholar with more than two dozen state, national and international honors, including a four-year appointment as a research fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a research fellowship at the Library of Congress. |
Drew Fulton
Conservation Photographer and Filmmaker | "Filming Florida: A Journey of Filmmaking and Photography"
Drew Fulton’s program, in with his exhibition in the McKay Archives gallery, will be a visual presentation on his most recent work as a Florida conservation photographer and filmmaker. His three-year project, Filming Florida, seeks to tell the story of the natural landscape and biodiversity of Florida through a narrative of its inherent beauty, interwoven with the photographer’s experiences of discovery and filmmaking. A native Floridian, Mr. Fulton is a graduate of Bowdoin College. He is the recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which he used to travel throughout Australia searching for and photographing Australia’s numerous endemic birds, and a National Geographic Young Explorer grant for an educational, multimedia project based in the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica. He has now turned his artistic attention back to his native State. |
James J. Fyfe
Professor of Criminal Justice,
Temple University | "Police in the Defendant’s Seat: Police Authority and Accountability"
One of America’s leading criminal justice scholars, James J. Fyfe served for sixteen years with the New York City police Department, earning seven citations while serving as a patrolman in Brooklyn, Times Square, and Queens. Receiving a Ph.D. degree in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Albany in 1978, Fyfe’s academic career has taken him to The American University and Temple University, where he serves as professor of criminal justice and senior public policy research fellow. Fyfe also directs the Crime and Justice Research Institute in Philadelphia. The author of seven books and over 75 articles and book chapters, Fyfe has also contributed more than 20 articles to the Atlanta Constitution, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and other newspapers. He has commented on police and criminal justice matters in hundreds of national and local media appearances. Formerly the editor of Justice Quarterly, Fyfe now serves on the editorial boards of Criminal Law Bulletin, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, and Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Fyfe has also been as an expert witness in numerous landmark court cases, including the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings in Milwaukee, the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King, the Philadelphia police MOVE bombing, and the FBI siege in Waco. |
Tom Gallagher
Florida's Chief Financial Officer | "Reflections of the Republican Party in Florida Over the Past 30 Years"
A native of Wilmington, Delaware, and graduate of the University of Miami, Tom Gallagher was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1974. At that time, he served as one of Dade County's few Republican house members. In 1986, he made an unsuccessful bid for governor and then, after two years in the mortgage business, ran successfully to become Florida's 21st insurance commissioner and treasurer. Within his duties as insurance commissioner, Gallagher oversaw rebuilding after Florida's most devastating and costly natural disaster Hurricane Andrew. During the 1990s, Gallagher was re-elected to the Florida cabinet, serving as education commissioner (1998-2000), and again as insurance commissioner and treasurer in 2000. In 2003, he was sworn in as Florida's first Chief Financial Officer. In this newly created cabinet post, his responsibilities include overseeing the state's fiscal health, auditing state programs, and monitoring insurance company operations in the state. Gallagher is married to Laura Wilson, a sixth generation Floridian, and they have one son. |
Michael Gannon
Professor Emeritus of History,
University of Florida | "History of Florida in Forty Minutes"
Dr. Michael Gannon is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Florida. Considered the foremost authority on the Catholic Church in Florida, Dr. Gannon's first two books, Rebel Bishop (1964) and The Cross in the Sand (1965), address that subject. He has also written Florida: A Short History (1993) and is editor and contributor to The New History of Florida (1996). In the area of naval history, Gannon is the author of bestseller Operation Drumbeat (1990), a history of Germany's first U-boat operations along the American Coast in World War II, and Black May (1998), about the Allies' defeat of the German U-boat fleet in May 1943. His Pearl Harbor Betrayed, released in 2001, has been called the most "authoritatively researched and documented book yet written" on the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941. A frequent commentator on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Explorer, and public television, Dr. Gannon is widely recognized as one of America's foremost historians. |
Dale Gyure
Associate Professor of Architecture,
Lawrence Technological University | “Frank Lloyd Wright and Florida Southern College”
Florida Southern College is one of the most interesting and autobiographical designs ever produced by America’s most renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. In creating this remarkable ensemble of buildings – the world’s largest singlesite collection of his work – Mr. Wright drew upon his interest in nature, his progressive education, and his passionate belief in democracy. The result is a unique and unified vision of modern, Floridian architecture. Dale Allen Gyure, an architectural historian, has written the first in-depth study of Mr. Wright’s only campus, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Florida Southern College, due out in October 2010. Gyure teaches architectural history at Lawrence Technological University and historic preservation at Goucher College. His research focuses on American architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the intersections of architecture, education, and society, and his work has been widely published. Before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, Gyure practiced law in Tampa. In 2000, he received the Carter Manny Award for the year’s best dissertation in architectural history. His second book, The Chicago Schoolhouse, 1856-2006: High School Architecture and Educational Reform, will be published in 2011. * P r e s e n t e d b y H i s t o r i c L a k e l a n d , I n c . Promoting awareness, understanding and an appreciation of Lakeland’s history and assuring the preservation of those things which represent the character of our city and are significant to its history. F e b r u a r y 1 0 Canter Brown, Jr. executive vice president and chief legal officer Fort Valley (Ga.) State University “I Can’t Believe All That Happened in Polk County! Are You Sure?” On the occasion of Polk County’s 150th anniversary, native son Canter Brown, Jr., will tell tales of some of the extraordinary people and events in the County’s history. He promises to name some of the more colorful saints and scoundrels while underscoring the diversity of Polk’s experience. Without a doubt, his hometown of Fort Meade will come into play, too. One of Florida’s leading historians, Brown holds a B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. from The Florida State University. He has written extensively on Florida and Southern history, including 10 books. Two titles were widely praised: Florida’s Peace River Frontier earned him the Florida Historical Society’s Rembert W. Patrick Award, and Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida’s Loyalist Reconstruction Governor was given a Certificate of Commendation by the American Association of State and Local History. He has written a two-volume history of Polk County: In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County to 1940 and None Could Have Richer Memories: Polk County Since 1940. |
Gov. Bob Graham | "Conversation with Gov. Bob Graham"
Bob Graham, one of Florida's most important political figures of the twentieth century, is the fourth child of south Florida pioneer, mining engineer, cattleman and legislator Ernest "Cap" Graham. Graham excelled at the University of Florida and Harvard Law School, and began his celebrated career in public service with ten years in the Florida Legislature. Graham's next eight years as Florida governor (1978-1986) were among the most important in the state's history, and Florida's impressive strides in higher education and environmental protection were largely attributable to Graham's leadership. During his subsequent three terms in the United States Senate, Graham was admired as one of the Senate's most thoughtful and respected voices. Perhaps his finest hour in that body came in October 2002 when, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he sounded the alarm against al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas as the greatest threats to American security. These sentiments were expressed in his book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America's War on Terror (2004, with Jeff Nussbaum). Since his 2004 retirement from the Senate and unsuccessful bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, Graham has served as an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Miami with his wife of 47 years, Adele. They have four daughters and many grandchildren. |
Ben Green
Writer, Journalist | "Florida’s Harry T. Moore: America’s First Civil Rights Martyr."
A Florida native, Green holds degrees from Brandeis University and Florida State University. A freelance writer and journalist on the FSU faculty, Green’s first book was the Finest Kind, the story of the Florida Gulf Coast fishing village of Cortez, and its struggle to preserve its way of life in the face of on-rushing development and drug smuggling. Green’s next book was the Soldier of Fortune Murders, which sold over 100,000 copies and served as the basis for the 1994 CBS miniseries, "When Love Kills." Green’s latest work, and the subject of his program, is the highly acclaimed book, Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America’s Fist Civil Rights Martyr (New York, 1999). The book chronicles the life of Harry T. Moore, Florida field secretary of the NAACP in the 1940s, who was blown up in his house on Christmas Day 1951. Moore and his wife Harriet’s death sparked unprecedented national and international protests, even becoming fodder for Cold War propaganda. Before His Time has generated significant national attention, with front page stories in the Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, and Palm Beach Post; reviews in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and numerous other papers. Moore’s story will also be the subject of an upcoming PBS documentary, narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Green was the primary consultant for the program. Before his Time Green’s other works with be available at his program. |
Michael Grunwald
TIME Magazine | "The Swamp: The Everglades"
A native of Greenvale, N.Y. and graduate of Harvard College in 1992, Michael Grunwald is an award-winning reporter and writer. Grunwald worked for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, and is now a senior correspondent for Time magazine. He has won the George Polk Award for national reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, and the Society of Environmental Journalists award for in-depth reporting. In 2006, Simon & Schuster published his first book, “The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise,” which won the Florida Book Award’s Gold Medal for Non-Fiction. Mike lives in Miami Beach with his wife, Cristina Dominguez, a former attorney who now runs a Marimekko boutique, and their Boston terriers, Shamu and Candy. |
Gordon Harvey
Professor of History, Jacksonville State University | "Politics of Trust: Reubin Askew and Florida in the 1970s"
Gov. Reubin Askew rose to power on a wave of “New South” leadership that hoped to advance the Democratic Party beyond the intransigence of southern politics since the Civil War. He aimed to replace appeals to white supremacy with a vision of a more diverse and inclusive party. Following his election in Florida, other New South leaders such as Georgia’s Jimmy Carter came to power. Prof. Gordon Harvey describes how Askew came from humble beginnings and inaugurated a series of reforms using audacity and candor. Dr. Harvey has written or edited four books, including The Politics of Trust: Reubin Askew and Florida in the 1970s. |
David Head
Author and Lecturer, University of Central Florida | "Privateers of the Americas"
In the early 1800s, seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish-American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston, and on Amelia Island. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people-not only ships’ crews but investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations. Dr. David Head explores how Spanish-American privateering worked and who engaged in it, how the U.S. government responded, and how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations. Dr. David Head teaches history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is the author of the award winning book Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States. He received his Ph.D. in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo. |
Jeanne & David Heidler
Professor of History, U. S. Air Force Academy | "Old Hickory's War: Andrew Jackson and the First Seminole War" Old Hickory's War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002) Book talk and signing.
David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler received their Ph.D's at Auburn University where they met and married as graduate students. After a decade of teaching in the Maryland university system, they relocated to Colorado where Jeanne is Professor of History at the United States Air Force Academy. For several years, David was scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern Colorado, and currently conducts distance-learning classes for the school's history department. The Heidlers have collaborated on numerous projects, including editing The War of 1812, An Encyclopedia (1997), Encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War (1999), and Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Social, Political, and Military History, which recently received the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book award for 2003. Along with Old Hickory's War, the Heidler's have also co-authored The War of 1812 (2002) and Manifest Destiny (2003). They are currently completing a study of Andrew Jackson's role in shaping American identity as well as a social history of the early republic. |
Kathryn Holland
Professor of History,
Auburn University | "Living off the Land: William Bartram's Description of Late Eighteenth-Century Florida Foodways"
Alabama native Kathryn Holland-Braund, a specialist in southern colonial history, holds degrees from Auburn University (M.A.) and Florida State University (Ph.D.). A professor of history at Auburn University, her primary research focuses on the ethno-history of the Creek and Seminole Indians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. She is the author or editor of four books including Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815 (1993) and William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians (1995, with Gregory A. Waselkov). Her articles and reviews have appeared in many journals including the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, the Journal of Southern History, the American Indian Quarterly and the Alabama Review. Braund serves as president of the Bartram Trail Conference, an organization dedicated to celebrating the travels of William Bartram. She lives in Dadeville, Ala., with her husband Kyle. |
Rosalyn Howard
Assistant Professor of Anthropology,
University of Central Florida | "From Tampa Bay to Red Bays: Florida's Black Seminole Diaspora"
Dr. Howard is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida, specializing in cultural anthropology. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1999. Much of Howard's current research focuses on how the interrelationships of African and indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean relate to cultural identity. Her book, Black Seminoles in the Bahamas (2002) explores both the historical relationships of Seminole Indians and Black Seminoles, and their present-day descendants in Florida. Her latest research involves an interdisciplinary project, "Looking for Angola," about a maroon community formerly located near Sarasota, Fla., that could have direct connections to the Bahamian Black Seminole descendants on Andros Island. Her research about the existence of the Black Seminoles' pathway to freedom in the Bahamas will become part of "The Slave Route," a project mapping the African Diaspora that is being conducted by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in Paris. |
Andrew T. Huse
Librarian at the University of South Florida | “Florida Foodways”
Born in Chicago and raised in Clearwater, Andy Huse is a librarian with the University of South Florida Special Collections Department who researches, writes, and lectures about Florida food and foodways. As a food historian Huse understands that the way people eat, prepare, preserve, and present food are important markers of folk traditions and cultural identity. Thus Huse has traveled from the Keys to the Panhandle investigating, studying, and savoring Florida’s unique dishes and the cultural circumstances of their creation. Among the unique Florida delicacies he has sung the praises of are smoked mullet, Cuban sandwiches, Minorcan clam chowder with datil chili peppers, Greek salads, deviled crabs, oyster stew, Spanish bean soup and Key Lime pie. A frequent contributor to Tampa Creative Loafing and other publications, Huse is also the author of the widely acclaimed The Columbia Restaurant: Celebrating a Century of History, Culture, and Cuisine, (2009), a social history of Florida’s oldest and most honored restaurant. |
David Jackson
Florida A&M University | "Booker T. Washington Comes to Florida"
A highly sought-after public speaker, Atlanta native David Jackson holds degrees from Florida A & M (B.S. and M.S.) and from the University of Memphis (Ph.D.). Before joining the FAMU faculty Jackson worked in private industry and as a high school teacher, earning accolades as Memphis City School system’s “Most Influential Teacher” for two years. Jackson won the Rattler Pride award for Community Leadership, the FAMU Teacher of the Year Award, and was named Advanced Teacher of the Year in 2006. He has published over a dozen scholarly articles and presented papers at numerous professional conferences. He is the author or co-author of “A Chief Lieutenant of the Tuskegee Machine: Charles Banks of Mississippi” (Gainesville, 2002), “Retrieving the American Past” (2003), and “Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida’s African American History” (Tampa, 2005). He is currently at work on a book-length study of Booker T. Washington’s southern travels from 1908 to 1912. Dr. Jackson has served as an historical consultant to many organizations and agencies, including the Florida National Register Review Board and the Florida Historical Commission. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors for the John G. Riley House Museum and Cultural Center in Tallahassee. Jackson and his wife, Sheila, live in Tallahassee with their two children, David III and Daja. |
Perry D. Jamieson
Historian, U. S. Air Force Support Office | "Death in September: The Battle of Antietam"
Dr. Perry D. Jamieson received his Ph.D. in history in 1979 from Wayne State University. Dr. Jamieson’s mentor there was Grady McWhiney, one of America’s premier Civil War historians, with whom he authored the provocative Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa, 1982)—a book which ranks as one of the most significant works on Civil War military tactics. In 1980 Dr. Jamieson joined the Air Force History Program. A frequent lecturer at the Defense Department’s Joint Military Intelligence College, he also leads staff rides for the college to Antietam, Gettysburg, and other Civil War battlefields. In 1997 Dr. Jamieson was appointed a fellow to the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. His other works include Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics 1865-1899 (Tuscaloosa, 1994) and Death in September: The Antietam Campaign (1995), which will be available when he speaks. Dr. Jamieson and his wife Stephanie reside in Crofton, Maryland, and often spend weekends at their cottage on Antietam Battlefield. |
Rody Johnson
Author,
Vero Beach, Florida | “The Rise and Fall of Dodgertown: 60 Years of Baseball in Vero Beach”
A graduate of the University of Virginia with engineering and MBA degrees, Rody Johnson worked for the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, managing engineering development programs for the Department of Defense. After retirement, Johnson began his writing career when he became publisher of the Sebastian Sun. Johnson’s three books include Different Battles (1999), the story of a World War II U-boat attack on a tanker off the Florida coast; In Their Footsteps (2005), a history of West Virginia; and The Rise and Fall of Dodgertown (2007). Granted special access to the team’s archives and personal interviews with players, management, and staff, Johnson, a resident of Vero Beach, offers a fascinating and remarkable history of the most hallowed spring training site in baseball. The Los Angeles Times review stated that Johnson’s book captures “the symbiotic relationship between the team and its town.” The book was the basis for an ESPN piece on Dodgertown and was featured on Fox and CBS TV affiliates in Florida, nationwide XM Radio, and Japanese national television. |
Maxine D. Jones
Associate Professor of History, Florida State University | "African-American Women in Florida: An Historical Portrait"
Professor Jones is the author of numerous books and articles on African-American, Southern, and Florida history, including African-Americans in Florida: An Illustrated History (Sarasota, 1993), co-authored with Karen McCarthy, winner of the Charlton W. Tebeau Book Prize. She was a contributor to a number of publications, including The African-American Heritage in Florida, (Gainesville, 1996), and The New History of Florida (Gainesville, 1996) Her scholarly articles and book reviews have appeared in such journals as the Journal of American History; Florida Historical Quarterly; Journal of Southern History; Journal of Negro History; Journal of Mississippi History, and the Alabama Review. Recently, Dr. Jones headed the academic team commissioned by the Florida Legislature to investigate the 1923 Rosewood Incident. |
Robert H. Kealing
Journalist, Writer | “Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock”
The well-to-do son of one of Polk County’s most distinguished citrus families, Gram Parsons developed lyrics and rhythms in the 1960s that gave him claim to the title of the father of country rock. From central Florida garage bands, to Harvard, to New York, to Coconut Grove, to Austin, to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, to California, Parsons cut a wide swath, before his untimely death due to a drug overdose in 1973. In Calling Me Home, Bob Kealing traces the entire arc of Parson’s career, emphasizing his Southern roots and his influences on such alt-country icons as Roger McQuinn, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris—and in the process sheds light on Parsons’ timeless and transformative musical legacy. A three-time Emmy award-winning reporter for NBC’s WESH-TV in Orlando, Kealing has written two other books, Tupperware Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers and Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends. He is currently working on a book on Elvis Presley in Florida. |
Gilbert King
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author | "Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found"
In December 1957, a small Florida town concealed a big secret. The wife of a wealthy citrus grove owner was sexually assaulted in her home while her husband was away. On the orders of the notoriously corrupt Lake County sheriff, Willis McCall, a gentle, mentally impaired young man, Jesse Daniels, was arrested and transported to the Florida State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Chattahoochee without trial. Crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese pursued the story for years, making enemies of McCall and the KKK in the process. With Jesse’s freedom hanging in the balance, the truth behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence began to surface. An Award winning author and photographer, Gilbert King is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning book Devil in the Grove, a work that also achieved New York Times bestseller status. |
Gilbert King
Journalist, Writer | “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America”
A gripping true story about murder, rape, racism, and the law—all set in Florida, Gilbert King’ Devil in the Grove follows one of America’s most heated court cases, and paints a rare, unparalleled portrait of Thurgood Marshall. Just as he was about to bring the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education to the Supreme Court, Marshall risked his life to save a young black man slated for the electric chair. Gilbert King has written about Supreme Court history and the death penalty for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and he is a featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine’s history blog, Past Imperfect. King’s book Devil in the Grove won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2013. He lives in New York City with his wife, two daughters, and a French Bulldog named Louis. |
Claude R. Kirk, Jr.
Governor of Florida, 1967-1971 | "The Kirk Era: Florida Must Confront the 'Environments' of the 21st Century"
Ever colorful, controversial, confrontational, and provocative, Claude Kirk served as Florida's first Republican governor in the twentieth century. One of the youngest Marine officers at the time he was commissioned, Kirk served in both World War II and the Korean War. In the 1950s Kirk moved to Florida from his native Alabama and at age 30 founded the American Heritage Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, becoming its first president. In the Election of 1960 Kirk led the "Floridians for Nixon" campaign as a Democrat. Joining the Republican Party soon thereafter, he was elected governor in 1966. Kirk's four years as Governor were (for some) tumultuous. For Kirk, they were years of a genesis for addressing Florida's most pressing needs. As an example, Kirk's leadership resulted in the creation of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Bureau of Law Enforcement. He also challenged Florida's K-12 educators at every turn. Known as a problem solver, Kirk is famous for identifying problems, providing solutions, and promoting open debate on Florida's still unanswered issues of growth and taxes. But since leaving office, Kirk's main passion has been the environment. He has continued to attack "without portfolio" those he calls the "sugar boys" or the "sugar barons" and their subsidized pollution of the Everglades. Gov. Kirk's program will engage his listeners with a provocative discussion of what he and his audience think are the most pressing problems confronting YOU and YOUR Florida in the upcoming century. |
Jeff Klinkenberg
Journalist and Columnist for The Tampa Bay Times | “Improbable Tales from the Real Florida”
Jeff Klinkenberg grew up in Miami and began exploring the Florida Keys and the Everglades as a small boy. He started working at The Miami News when he was 16 and has worked at The Tampa Bay Times since 1977, where he now writes the Real Florida column. Throughout his life and career in Florida, Klinkenberg has collected a motley assortment of tales as quirky and enigmatic as the state itself, now gathered in his latest collection of essays, Alligators in B-Flat. Delight as this enthralling storyteller narrates some of his most treasured anecdotes of a life spent exploring the weird, wacky, and wild of Florida. A graduate of the University of Florida and member of the College of Journalism and Communications’ Hall of Fame, Klinkenberg has won numerous awards for his work, including the Green Eyeshade for best feature writing in any Southern newspaper and Best Features from the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors. He is a two-time winner of the Paul Hansell Distinguished Journalism Award, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors’ highest award. Esquire, Outside, Travel and Leisure, and Audubon are among the magazines that have published his stories and his books include Pilgrim in the Land of Alligator, Seasons of Real Florida, and Dispatches from the Land of Flowers, all best sellers. |
Jane Landers
Associate Professor of History,
Vanderbilt University | "Filling in the Missing Pieces: The Extraordinary Life of Captain Francisco Menéndez, Leader of the Free Black Town of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose"
Born of a Spanish father and an African mother, Francisco Menéndez escaped colonial South Carolina and like hundreds of others in similar condition found his way to Spanish Florida, where he received his freedom in exchange for converting to Catholicism and joining the militia in defense of the beleaguered colony. As a loyal subject of the Spanish crown, Menéndez served his king as a soldier and was appointed head of black militia based at Fort Mose, approximately one mile north of St. Augustine. In her latest work, author and historian Jane Landers chronicles this remarkable human saga, told through primary documents discovered in Spain and Cuba. Menéndez’s story is one of perseverance and resourcefulness under extreme hardships. Jane Landers is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She is an historian of Colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World, specializing in the history of Africans and their descendants. She is the author of Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions, which was awarded the Rembert Patrick Book Award. Her first book, Black Society in Spanish Florida, won the Frances B. Simkins Prize for Distinguished First Book in Southern History and was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. She is the author or co-author of five other books, and she has published essays in The American Historical Review, Slavery and Abolition, The New West Indian Guide, The Americas, and Colonial Latin American Historical Review. Landers is also the director of the Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies Digital Archive hosted by the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt, which is preserving endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to slavery in the Americas. With grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the British Library Endangered Archives Programme, and the Diocese of St. Augustine, Landers and her international teams have preserved records in Cuba, Brazil, Colombia and Florida, the oldest dating from the 16th century. |
Frank Laumer
Author
Dade City, Florida | “Soldiers, Seminoles, and Slavery: Florida and the Second Seminole War”
Frank Laumer knows Florida’s history down to the bone – literally. He personally exhumed and examined the bones of Ransom Clark, one of only two survivors of the first battle of the Second Seminole War. Laumer studied the bones to confirm Clark’s tale of heroic courage wherein he was shot five times before crawling 50 miles over three days to report the dreadful news. For nearly 50 years, Laumer has devoted himself to conducting this kind of in-depth analysis of the battle, which sparked the longest Indian war in U.S. history. In 1968, amateur historian Frank Laumer published Massacre! – the first full-length account of Maj. Francis Langhorne Dade’s fateful battle with the Seminoles, which occurred on December 28, 1835. But nearly thirty more years of research and sifting of evidence convinced Laumer that the full story had not yet been told. Finally, in 1995 Laumer published Dade’s Last Command, a work commended as definitive by leading authorities in the field. Laumer’s most recent book is Nobody’s Hero (2008), a novelized account of Ransom Clark’s experience. |
Bob H. Lee,
Writer, Stahl Lecture | “Backcountry Lawman: True Stories from a Florida Game Warden”
Bob Lee’s 30-plus years as a game warden on Florida’s St. Johns River were filled with excitement, mayhem, and sometimes danger. He has lived through incidents of legend, including one of the biggest environmental busts in Florida history. His fascinating program will reveal the danger and the humor in the unsung exploits of game wardens in one of the nation’s most environmentally diverse states. Bob Lee is the author of the widely acclaimed Backcountry Lawman: True Stories from a Game Warden published by the University Press of Florida. The work available at the program won the Florida Outdoor Writers Association’s 2014 Excellence-In-Craft Award for best outdoor book. Currently retired in Welaka, Florida, Lee enjoys bowfishing and serves as instructor in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s man-tracking program. |
Hon. Justice R. Fred Lewis
Supreme Court of Florida | “In Search of Visions of Justice and Democracy Florida Style”
A native of West Virginia, Justice R. Fred Lewis attended Florida Southern College, where he excelled in academics and athletics. In 1969 he was selected the college’s Honor Walk Student, which is awarded annually for the outstanding senior student for scholastic and service achievements. Lewis then attended the University of Miami School of Law, graduating cum laude in 1972. Upon completion of his law studies, Lewis entered a long and successful career in private practice in Miami, specializing in civil trial and appellate litigation. While in private practice, Lewis provided counseling and pro bono services to families with children having impairments and to cancer patients seeking proper treatment for multiple conditions. Lewis’ involvement in children’s issues, public health and education continued after his appointment to the Florida Supreme Court in December 1998, by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles. Lewis served on Florida’s Commission on the Legal Needs of Children and is active in the Justice Teaching Institute, a program designed to enhance public education. Justice Lewis’ public service has been recognized through numerous awards. Justice Lewis and his wife Judith attended Florida Southern College together and were married in 1969. They have two children, Elle and Lindsay. |
Peggy MacDonald
Writer | "Marjorie Harris Carr: Defender of Florida’s Environment"
A self-described “housewife from Micanopy,” Marjorie Harris Carr in reality struggled to balance career and family with her husband, Archie Carr, a pioneering conservation biologist. For 35 years, Carr tirelessly led a coalition of citizen activists in the continuing battle to protect and restore the Ocklawaha River. To this day, this little-known river in the heart of Central Florida remains blocked by the remnants of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project that Carr and her fellow Florida Defenders of the Environment activists stopped before its construction was completed. In her new book Marjorie Harris Carr: Defender of Florida’s Environment, author Peggy Macdonald brings Carr’s heroic conservation story to vivid life. Explore this dramatic tale as MacDonald shares her insight into the life of this extraordinary Floridian. Peggy Macdonald earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2010. In addition to teaching history, she is a freelance writer, editor and photographer. |
Kenneth H. "Buddy" MacKay
Governor | "A Conversation with "Buddy" MacKay"
A native of Marion County, Florida, Buddy MacKay holds B.S. and J.D. degrees from the University of Florida. A farmer and citrus grower, MacKay's credits include a distinguished career in public service. After serving in the Florida legislature and the United States Congress, MacKay ran with U. S. Senator Lawton Chiles for the state's top post. He and Chiles were elected in 1990. After serving nearly eight years as lieutenant governor, MacKay became Florida's 42nd governor upon the death of Governor Lawton Chiles, only three weeks before the end of his term. The Chiles/MacKay administration grappled with many important challenges including the state including education funding, children's issues, environmental degradation and restoration issues, over development, population issues and, of course, the $11.3 billion tobacco litigation. MacKay's common-sense leadership earned him the reputation of the most influential lieutenant governor in Florida's history. After leaving the governor's office, MacKay was selected by President Bill Clinton to serve as Special Presidential Envoy to the Americas. Buddy MacKay remains active in farming, public affairs and teaching. He and his wife, Anne, live in Oklawaha and enjoy hiking, gardening and spending time with their family. |
Susan MacManus
Distinguished Professor of Public Administration and Political Science, University of South Florida | "Florida 2016!"
Has there ever been a stranger, more topsy-turvy political season than this one? Could Florida play a pivotal role in this free-for-all? On the eve of the 2016 election, well-known political observer Dr. Susan McManus will address those and other questions in what is sure to be a lively lecture about an even livelier election. Dr. McManus is a familiar figure on TV and radio, offering insightful commentary about the state of politics in Florida and the nation. She earned B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Florida State University and has been a member of the faculty at the University of South Florida since 1987. |
Walter W. Manley II
Professor of Business Administration,
Florida State University Canter Brown, Jr.
(Historian in Residence, Tampa Bay History Center) | "The Florida Supreme Court, 1821-1917"
Walter W. Manley II is a native of Lakeland and a graduate of Florida Southern College (BA., 1969), Duke University (JD., 1972), and Harvard University (M.B.A., 1975). Currently Manley teaches at FSU, and from 1995-1997 he was president of its high technology incubator. Manley has also held visiting professorships at England's Oxford and Cambridge universities where he established an ethics center. He is the author of four books including, Critical Issues in Business Conduct: Legal, Ethical and Social Challenges for the 1990s; The Executive's Handbook of Model Business Conduct Codes; the Handbook of Good Business Practice, and most recently, he is the editor and co-author, with Canter Brown, Jr., and Eric Rise of The Supreme Court of Florida and Its Predecessor Courts, 1821-1917 (nominated for the 1998 Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law & Society). Formerly a partner with MacFarlane Ferguson, Manley has served as president or chairman of over 20 philanthropic organizations, including the Lakeland Bar Association and the Polk County Legal Aid Society. Canter Brown, Jr. is an award winning author and leading authority on the history of nineteenth century Florida. He is the author of Florida's Peace River Frontier (Gainesville, 1991); Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida's Loyalist Reconstruction Governor (Baton Rouge, 1997); Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924 (Tuscaloosa, 1998), and two other books. |
John F. Marszalek
Giles Distinguished Professor of History,
Mississippi State University, Retired | “The Petticoat Affair: Manners and Sex in Andrew Jackson’s White House”
A graduate of Canisius College and the University of Notre Dame, John F. Marszalek taught at Gannon University, before coming to Mississippi State University in 1973. A specialist in the U. S. Civil War, the Jacksonian Period, and race relations, he is the author or editor of thirteen books and over 250 articles and book reviews. His most well-known books are “Sherman, A Soldier’s Passion for Order” (1993), “The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson’s White House” (1998), and "Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies, A Life of General Henry W. Halleck” (2004), all History Book Club selections. His publications have been the subject of major news stories in national newspapers including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today. He is a popular lecturer and has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC Television, the Arts and Entertainment Television Network, C-SPAN, C-SPAN 2, Showtime Television, the History Channel, the Voice of America and Mississippi Public Radio. He is the recipient of numerous teaching and literary awards, including the Richard Wright Literary Award and the B.L.C. Wailes Award for national distinction in history. Marszalek is married to the former Jeanne Kozmer, and they have three sons and three grandchildren. |
Bob Martinez
Consultant, Carlton Fields | "A Conversation with former Gov. Bob Martinez"
Bob Martinez served from 1987 until 1991 as Florida's fortieth governor. The second Republican governor elected since Reconstruction and the first in Florida of Hispanic descent, Martinez was born and raised in the Hispanic neighborhood of West Tampa. He graduated from the University of Tampa and earned a masters degree from the University of Illinois. Governor Martinez started his professional career as a teacher and was the advocate and lobbyist for Hillsborough County teachers from 1966 to 1975. He became mayor of Tampa in 1979 and served until his run for Governor in 1986. President George Bush appointed Martinez the nation's "Drug Czar" after his term in office. Upon returning to Florida, he founded a business consulting firm serving the U.S. and Latin America. He is currently associated with the Carlton Fields law firm in Tampa. |
Stuart McIver
Author,
Lighthouse Point, Florida | “Death in the Everglades—the Slaying of Guy Bradley”
A graduate of the University of North Carolina and native of the Tar Heel state, Stuart McIver is the author of 14 books and nearly 500 magazine articles. Before moving to Florida in 1962, McIver worked at the Greensboro Daily News, the Charlotte News, and the Baltimore Sun. Mclver’s latest book is “Death in the Everglades,” the story of the murder of Audubon warden Guy Bradley in1905. His fascination with the Everglades dates back to the 1960s when he was active in writing and producing documentary films, one of which, “Alligator,” won a Silver Medal at the Venice (Italy) Film Festival. His other books include “Hemingway’s Key West” and the “Florida Chronicles Series: Dreamers, Schemers, and Scalawags;” “Murder in the Tropics;” and “Touched by the Sun.” McIver edited the South Florida Historical Magazine for 22 years and is a former president of the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and the Writers Network of South Florida. McIver and his wife, Joan, are the parents of five children and live in Lighthouse Point, just north of Fort Lauderdale. |
William McKeen, Department Chair and Professor at Boston University | “Mile Marker Zero—The Moveable Feast of Key West”
William McKeen teaches at Boston University where he chairs the department of journalism. Douglas Brinkley has called him “perhaps the most lucid and imaginative professor of journalism history in modern-day America.” He is the author or editor of nine books, including works on Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Before pursuing graduate studies, McKeen worked on numerous newspapers including the The American Spectator, the Palm Beach Post, St Petersburg Times, and the Saturday Evening Post. McKeen taught at the University of Florida from 1990 to 2010 until joining the faculty at Boston University. McKeen’s recent book on the Key West literary and musical scene of the 1970s won the gold medal for nonfiction in the Florida Book Awards. Again, according to Brinkley, “Mile Marker Zero “is a wonderful zinger of a book. Never before have the literary traditions of the Conch Republic been mined for such gold nugget anecdotes . . . Every page sings a story worth a Jimmy Buffett song.” McKeen and his wife Nicole are the parents of seven children and live in Cohasset, Massachusetts. |
Nathaniel Millett
Professor of History, Saint Louis University | "The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World"
During the War of 1812, Edward Nicolls of the Royal Marines armed ex-slaves, Red Sticks, and Seminoles to fight alongside the British from a fort erected at Prospect Bluff in the Florida Panhandle. This fort became the largest maroon community ever to emerge in North America and existed until its destruction by American forces in 1815. Prof. Nathaniel Millett examines how the Prospect Bluff maroons constructed their freedom, shedding light on the extent and limits of their fight to claim their rights and emphasizing the opportunity offered by Prospect Bluff to examine black consciousness during the era of slavery. Prof. Millett holds B.A. and MA degrees from the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He is a historian of the Atlantic World and Borderlands of colonial and revolutionary Anglo and Spanish North America. His book, The Maroons of Prospect Bluff (2013), is the winner of four awards, including Florida Book Award for Nonfiction (Bronze) and the Florida Historical Society’s Rembert Patrick Book Award. |
Vivien Miller
Principal Lecturer in American Studies,
Middlesex University, London, England | "From Martin Tabert to Cool Hand Luke: Race, Masculinity, and Prisoner Life in Florida in the First Half of the 20th Century"
Dr. Vivien Miller is Principal Lecturer in American Studies at Middlesex University in London. She completed her B.A. at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, her M.A. at Florida State University, and after a year at the University of Kansas, she went on to complete her Ph.D. in history at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Her book Crime, Sexual Violence, and Clemency: Florida's Pardon Board and Penal System in the Progressive Era was published by the University Press of Florida in 2000. Her current research focuses on race, gender, and class issues in southern punishment and penal practices in the first half of the 20th century, as well as gender and the politics of capital punishment. A second book, The Prison Farm and the Chain Gang: Race, Gender and Punishment in Twentieth-Century Florida, is also to be published by the University Press of Florida in 2005. Dr. Miller resides in London with her husband and daughter and makes frequent research trips to Florida. |
John & Mary Lou Missall
Writers | "Voices from the Seminole Wars"
Spanning 40 years, the Seminole Indian Wars were the longest, costliest, and deadliest of all the Indian wars fought by the United States. Along with the War of 1812 and the Civil War, the Seminole Indian Wars drew nationwide attention as they were intimately associated with the spread of slavery and presented the United States with its first opportunity for aggressive territorial expansion. Through the poetry, journals, and letters of the participants—both Seminole and white—authors John and Mary Lou Missall share the experience of this early period of Florida history and examine its place in the national landscape. Exploring these conflicts from both a military and moral perspective, the Missalls paint a broader portrait of the Seminole Indian Wars against a backdrop of inflexible government policy and prevailing national attitudes toward Native Americans, slavery, and aggressive expansion. John and Mary Lou Missall live in Fort Myers, Florida, and are writers whose primary work focuses on the Seminole Indian Wars. They are authors and editors of several books, including The Seminole Wars: America’s Longest Indian Conflict and Hollow Victory, a novel of the Second Seminole War. |
Gary R. Mormino
Professor of History,
University of South Florida | "War Clouds Over the Sunshine State: World War II and Florida"
Paul Ortiz, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at University of Florida, examines the struggle of Black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow in America. Ortiz vividly illustrates how Black Floridians created new social movements, successfully challenging the white power structure in Florida from Reconstruction to 1920. An award-winning author and oral historian, Ortíz holds degrees from Evergreen State College and Duke University, where he earned his Ph.D. Before joining the UF faculty in August 2008, Ortiz taught at the University of California-Santa Cruz. His book Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2005) received the Florida Historical Society’s Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Book Prize. While at Duke, Ortiz was research coordinator for “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored project that received the Oral History Association’s Outstanding Award in 1996. He was co-editor with William H. Chafe, of Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South (2001), which received the Southern Regional Council’s 2002 Lillian Smith Book Prize. |
Gary Noesner
Retired FBI negotiator | “Calm, Creative Communications in Crisis: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator”
Gary Noesner’s world is hard to imagine for most of us. In 30 years with the FBI, the last 10 as chief of its Crisis Negotiation Unit of the Critical Incident Response Group, he led law enforcement’s response to prison riots, militia standoffs, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and overseas kidnappings involving American citizens. His September 2010 memoir, Stalling for Time, records his involvement in some of the nation’s most high-profile FBI cases from the last three decades, including the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship; the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas; and the Washington, D.C., sniper case. Noesner grew up in Florida and graduated from Florida Southern College before attending the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. He retired from the FBI in 2003 and since has served as a senior vice president with Control Risks, an international risk consultant firm. He has appeared on television documentaries produced by A&E, the History Channel, Discovery, TLC, and National Geographic. He is the founder of the National Council of Negotiation Associations. * ROB ERT & ROSE STAHL C RIMINAL J USTIC E L E C TURE The Robert and Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture honors the memory of Robert and Rose Stahl. Mr. Stahl served more than 30 years as a police officer, including his years as Chief of Police in North Miami Beach, Florida. The family of Robert and Rose Stahl has generously made these lectures available to Florida Southern College. |
Steven Noll
Senior Lecturer in History,
University of Florida
David Tegeder
Associate Professor of History,
Santa Fe College | “Ditch of Dreams: The Cross Florida Barge Canal and the Struggle for Florida’s Future”
For centuries, men dreamed of cutting a canal across the Florida peninsula. Intended to reduce shipping times, this dream was championed in the early 20th century as a way to make the mostly rural state a center of national commerce and trade. With federal funding, work on the Cross Florida Barge Canal began in the 1930s, but the canal quickly became a lightning rod for controversy, and pressure from environmental citizen activists forced it to a halt in 1971. Steven Noll and David Tegeder tell the complex story of competing interests amid the changing political landscape of modern Florida in their book, The Ditch of Dreams, which received the Florida Historical Society’s 2010 Rembert Patrick Award for a scholarly book on a Florida history topic. Noll holds a Ph.D. in American history, an M.A., and an M.Ed. from the University of Florida, and a B.A. from the College of William and Mary. Prior to The Ditch of Dreams, he published two other books, Mental Retardation in America and Feeble Minded in our Midst. Tegeder holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Southern history and an M.A. in U.S. history from the University of Florida and a B.A. from the University of Central Florida. He has published widely on the history of Southern race and labor relations and environmental history, and he has published and presented widely on these topics. |
Paul Ortiz
Associate Professor of History and Director, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program,
University of Florida | "Emancipation Betrayed"
Paul Ortiz, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at University of Florida, examines the struggle of Black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow in America. Ortiz vividly illustrates how Black Floridians created new social movements, successfully challenging the white power structure in Florida from Reconstruction to 1920. An award-winning author and oral historian, Ortíz holds degrees from Evergreen State College and Duke University, where he earned his Ph.D. Before joining the UF faculty in August 2008, Ortiz taught at the University of California-Santa Cruz. His book Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2005) received the Florida Historical Society’s Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Book Prize. While at Duke, Ortiz was research coordinator for “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored project that received the Oral History Association’s Outstanding Award in 1996. He was co-editor with William H. Chafe, of Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South (2001), which received the Southern Regional Council’s 2002 Lillian Smith Book Prize. |
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan
Kenneth Curry Professor of English, Rollins College | "A Southerner's Civil War" Gentleman and Officer: James B. Griffin's Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) Book talk and signing.
Dr. Maurice O'Sullivan holds a B. A. degree from Fairfield University and earned his M. A. and Ph. D. from Case Western Reserve University. He taught at Ohio State University before joining the Rollins faculty in 1975. He is the author or editor of many books including The Florida Reader, edited with Jack Lane, for which they received the Florida Historical Society's Charlton Tebeau Award in 1992. His other books include Florida Poetry, Crime Fiction and Film in the Sunshine State: Florida Noir and Shakespeare's Other Lives. O'Sullivan is co-editor of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, co-director of the Florida Center for Shakespeare Studies and co-director of the Drey Summer Shakespeare Institute. His articles have appeared in journals on four continents including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Black American Literature Forum, Philological Quarterly, International Review of History and Political Science (India), Dutch Quarterly Review and Sydney Studies in English (Australia. He lectures widely on topics ranging from Shakespeare, British Art and Irish Culture to Florida Studies, mystery novels and film. O'Sullivan lives in Orlando with his wife, Susan, and enjoys occasional visits to his son Quinn's pub in Nashville. |
Arva Moore Parks
Historian and Writer | "George Merrick, Son of the South Wind: Visionary Creator of Coral Gables"
George Merrick helped create the Florida land boom of the 1920s, but he sought to distinguish himself from developers who sought only profit and created one of the first progressive planned communities, the “master suburb” of Coral Gables. A New Urbanist before the movement existed, Merrick built stylish homes with native materials while investing in public infrastructure by designing and building parks and pools, trolley lines and waterways. South Florida historian Arva Moore Parks describes Merrick’s successes and his eventual losses. She is the former chief curator, interim director, and chair of the Coral Gables Museum and the author of numerous books on Florida history, including a biography of George Merrick. |
Sandra Parks
Educator and Writer | "Stetson Kennedy: Folklorist, Journalist, Activist"
Sandra Parks, the widow of crusading journalist, human rights activist, and folklorist Stetson Kennedy (1916-2011) will focus on her late husband’s life and work. Kennedy is most known for compiling folklore in the 1930s and his infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s. Throughout his life, Kennedy crossed paths with notable figures such as Zora Hurston, Woody Guthrie, Studs Terkel, and Erskine Caldwell, among others. Ms. Parks will discuss these subjects but also shed light on some of the lesser known exploits of this remarkable Floridian. Ms. Parks earned her master’s degree in curriculum at the University of South Florida and completed advanced studies in education at Harvard. She serves as a curriculum and professional development consultant on teaching critical thinking, traveling annually to present workshops at universities and school districts across the country. She also is the owner of Anastasia Books and a former city commissioner in St. Augustine. |
Gordon M. Patterson
Associate Professor of History, Florida Institute of Tech. | "Zora Neale Hurston: 'Jumpin' at the Sun"
Professor Patterson received his Ph.D in intellectual history from UCLA in 1973. His articles on intellectual, European, and Florida history have appeared in such journals as the Florida Historical Quarterly, Florida Scientist, Journal of Mind and Behavior, and the German Studies Review. He was a Fullbright fellow in 1974-1975, and has attended NEH Summer Seminars at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois, and Yale University. Since his arrival at FIT, Professor Patterson has written and lectured on numerous aspects of Florida history. |
Leslie Kemp Poole
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Rollins College | "Saving Florida: Women’s Fight for the Environment in the Twentieth Century"
Even before they had the right to vote, women were at the forefront of the fight to save Florida’s unique environment. Most likely the fight began in 1900 when a group of Miami women organized the first meeting of the Florida Audubon Society. In Saving Florida, Leslie Kemp Poole, tells the exciting story of these women, the ones who prompted legislation to establish Florida’s first state park (which later became the core of Everglades National Park), and many other women including the towering environmental legacies of the three “Marjories”: author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, scientist/activist Marjorie Harris Carr, and journalist/activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. A fourth-generation Floridian, Leslie Kemp Poole is an award-winning writer and historian. After a distinguished career in journalism Poole pursued doctoral work in history, earning her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2012. She teaches at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. |
Leslie Kemp Poole
Rollins College | “Marjorie Rawlings and the ‘The Year of The Yearling’”
Seventy five years ago Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings published The Yearling. A number one best seller in 1938, Rawlings won the Pulitzer Prize for literature for the book the next year. Rawlings’ heart-felt story of a boy and his pet fawn on the late nineteenth Florida frontier, eventually made into a major motion picture starring Gregory Peck, became the most famous novel associated with Florida, and catapulted Rawlings’ literary career. Rollins College professor Leslie Kemp Poole will explore these subjects in words and visuals. Poole earned her Ph. D from the University of Florida and is a specialist in American Environmental, Women’s, and Science history. A member of the Rawlings Society, she has written widely on Rawlings, won numerous awards, and co-produced the acclaimed documentary “Marjorie’s Wake,” in 2008. |
Michael L. Radelet
Professor and Chair Department of Sociology, University of Florida | "The Death Penalty in Florida: Some Problems and Surprises"
A native of South Bend, Indiana, Michael L. Radelet received his Ph.D. degree from Purdue University in 1977. After postdoctoral studies at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Wisconsin, Radelet joined the Sociology faculty at the University of Florida in 1979. An internationally recognized scholar of various aspects of the death penalty, Professor Radelet has written many books and dozens of articles on the subject. Radelet’s most important work has examined miscarriages of justice in capital cases and the ongoing problems of racial bias in the administration of the death penalty in Florida. He has also studied such issues as public opinion, mental health questions surrounding capital punishment, and families of both homicide victims and of death row inmates. Professor Radelet has testified in some 60 death penalty cases around the U. S., and he has worked with most the last 46 men and women executed in Florida. Of Professor Radelet’s six books, he is perhaps best known for his work, In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases (Boston, 1992), written with Hugo Adam Bedau, which will be available at his program. |
Janet Reno
Attorney, Public Servant, Floridian | "Conversation with Janet Reno"
The daughter of eclectic, journalist parents, Janet Reno was born in Miami in 1938. Growing up in a remote, 21 acre family homestead not far from the Florida Everglades, Reno attended Coral Gables High School where she starred as a state high school debating champion. After earning a degree in Chemistry from Cornell University in 1960, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1963. In 1971 Reno was named staff director of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida court system. In 1978 she was elected Dade County District Attorney. Gaining the reputation as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor, Reno was reelected to four consecutive terms. The Miami Herald wrote of her in 1988, "Of the qualities most important I the prosecutor of a community awash in drug profits, none ranks higher that integrity. Reno is…beyond suspicion." In 1993 Janet Reno made history when President Bill Clinton appointed her the first woman U.S. Attorney General. Retiring from that post in 2001, Reno returned to South Florida and continues to take an active part in the affairs of her native state. She enjoys canoeing and other outdoor activities. |
Robert V. Remini
Historian,
United States House of Representatives | “Andrew Jackson's Triumphs in Florida as General and Governor”
Hailed by the New York Times as the nation’s “foremost Jacksonian scholar,” Robert Remini has been teaching and writing about American history for more than half a century. Remini joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1965, where he still resides as University Historian. In 2005, in recognition of his many scholarly accomplishments, Remini was appointed Historian of the House of Representatives, and in that capacity he wrote his latest book, The House: The History of the House of Representatives (2006), which earned him his second National Book award. Remini has written over twenty books on American history, including the definitive three-volume biography, The Life of Andrew Jackson, completed in 1984. Among his numerous books are biographies of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, and Joseph Smith. Other recent works include The Battle of New Orleans (1999) and Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (2001). Remini’s program will focus on the First Seminole War and Old Hickory’s brief governorship of Florida, the seventh president’s most controversial step in his path to the White House. |
Tracy Jean Revels
Professor of History, Wofford College | "Florida’s Civil War: A Family Story"
Though it was the third state to secede, Florida was ignored and unprotected by the Confederacy during the Civil War. The home front was contested, especially in port cities, and many Floridians became refugees. Raids and guerilla activity inflicted misery on civilians. While Confederate patriotism ruled in Middle Florida, in other areas apathy or a growing Unionism led to deprivations and desertion. Slaves fled to freedom and neighbor turned against neighbor. The one notable battle fought in Florida, the Battle of Olustee, was disproportionately bloody. A frontier at the start of the war, the conflict left Florida even more of a wilderness. Professor Tracy Revels’ program will highlight the multi-faceted experiences of Floridians during America’s most destructive war. Dr. Tracy Revels is associate professor of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. She earned a Ph.D. in history from Florida State University and specializes in 19th-century American history. She is the author of three books, including Florida’s Civil War: Terrible Sacrifices. |
Tracy Jean Revels
Associate Professor of History,
Wofford College | “Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism”
Walt Disney’s entertainment empire looms in the minds of many when they think of Florida, along with other tourism magnets such as beachside resorts, extensive nature preserves, and numerous theme parks. This intricate and inextricable relationship between tourism and the Sunshine State has been thoroughly explored by Tracy Revels, author of Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism (2010). Revels argues that Florida’s tourism industry has immeasurably shaped the state’s identity, economy, and residents. Incorporating 200 years of historical perspectives from tourists, politicians, and Floridians, Revels paints a vivid picture of the continual evolution of the state’s tourism industry as it works to create the ultimate tourist haven. A native of Madison, Florida, Tracy Revels is professor and chair of the history department at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in history from Florida State University. Revels has written numerous essays and four books covering subjects ranging from the impact of the Civil War on Florida women to a humorous collection of stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. |
Larry E. Rivers
Professor of History,
Florida A&M University | "The Peculiar Institution in Florida: 1821-1865"
Larry E. Rivers holds degrees from Fort Valley State University (B.S.), Villanova (M.A.), and Carnegie-Mellon University (Ph.D.). Dr. Rivers is the author of numerous articles of African-American, Southern, and Florida history. He has received over thirty-five awards for his research, publications, and services to the community, including the Florida Historical Society's Arthur W. Thompson award (1984), and the Association for the study of African American Life and History's Carter G. Woodson Award (1994). In 1994, he served as co-director of the research team commissioned by the Florida legislature to investigate the 1923 Rosewood Incident. He has also contributed thematic chapters to a number of publications, the latest two being, The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995) and Florida's Heritage of Diversity (Tallahassee, 1997). His articles and reviews have appeared in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Journal of Negro History, Social Education, Social Studies Journal, Georgia Historical Quarterly, and Tequesta. |
Diane Roberts
Professor of English,
University of Alabama | “Pioneer Mothers, Confederate Daughters, Citrus Princesses, and Other Florida Wild Women”
An 8th generation Floridian, born and raised in Tallahassee, Diane Roberts holds B. A. and M. A. degrees in English from Florida State University. From 1980-1989 Roberts attended Oxford University where she earned a second B. A. in English and a D. Phil. in literature. Currently Professor of English at the University of Alabama, Roberts is the author of several books including her most recent highly acclaimed, Dream State: Eight Generations of Swamp Lawyers, Conquistadores, Confederate Daughters, Banana Republicans, and other Florida Wildlife (New York, 2004). She is also the author of Faulkner and Southern Womanhood (Athens, 1993) and The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representations of Race and Region (New York, 1995). She is also a frequent contributor to scholarly and popular magazines and newspapers. She has written on Southern culture and literature for Southern Living, The New York Times, The London Times, The New Republic and is a political columnist for The St. Petersburg Times. She is a frequent commentator on NPR and the BBC. Awards she has received include the Gustavus Meyer Center for the Study of Human Rights Awards, two Associated Press awards for radio, and two Society of Newspaper Editors prizes for editorial writing and sports commentary. She divides her time between Tuscaloosa, London, and Tallahassee. |
William W. Rogers
Professor of History Emeritus,
Florida State University | Florida Sheriffs: A History, 1821-1945
William Rogers is a distinguished teaching professor of History, Emeritus, at Florida Sate University. A native Alabamian, Dr. Rogers holds degrees form Auburn University (M.A.) and the University of North Carolina (Ph.D.). A specialist in southern history, he is the author of numerous books and articles. He is the co-author of Alabama: A History of A Deep South State and the recently reprinted The One-Gallused Rebellion: Agrarianism in Alabama, 1865-1896 (Tuscaloosa, 2000). Dr. Rogers resides in Tallahassee and is the proprietor of the Sentry Press. |
Anne Rosen and Claudia Slate
Writers | "Reflections from a Civil Rights Journalist: St. Augustine and Beyond"
Former New York Times correspondent John Herbers (1923-2017) covered the civil rights movement for more than a decade, witnessing a succession of landmark events that rocked the nation, the world, and his own conscience. Among the many stories Herbers covered were the 1955 murder of Emmett Till; the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four little girls; the Freedom Summer murders in Philadelphia, Miss.; and marches and riots in St. Augustine and Selma, Ala. Herbers was the author of four books, including two on civil rights. In his memoir, Deep South Dispatch, written with his daughter, Anne Farris Rosen, he recounted with immediacy and detail the struggle of African Americans for civil rights, as well as his own journey as a Southerner who came to reject the prejudices of his native land. In this presentation, Anne Farris Rosen and her sister, Claudia Slate, share their memories of their father and his work. Rosen is an award-winning freelance journalist and adjunct professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Slate is professor emeritus of English at Florida Southern College. |
Anne E. Rowe
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences,
Florida State University | "Florida in the Literary Imagination of America"
Anne E. Rowe received her B.A. from Florida State University in 1967. She is a recipient of an M.A. (1969) and a Ph.D in literature (1973) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the English faculty at Florida State University in 1972 and was chair of the department from 1994-1997. Specializing in southern literature, she is the author of two books, The Enchanted Country: Northern Writers in the South, 1865-1910 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978) and The Idea of Florida in the American Literary Imagination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986). She is presently at work on a book treating the use of domestic imagery by southern women writers. She is also the author of numerous articles on southern literature and was a contributor to The History of Southern Literature, the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Fifty Southern Writers before 1900 and Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South. |
Robert W. Saunders
Retired Civil Rights Leader | "A Conversation with Robert W. Saunders"
A native of Tampa, Robert W. Saunders attended Bethune-Cookman College, the Detroit Institute of Technology, and the University of Detroit Law School. After a brief career in journalism and the auto industry, Mr. Saunders became NAACP Field Secretary for Florida in 1952, following the murder of Harry T. Moore. In 1966 he became chief of the office of civil rights for the Office of Economic Opportunity in Atlanta. Finally, in 1976 he returned to his native Tampa to establish and head Hillsborough County's Office of Economic Opportunity. Throughout his long career in public service Mr. Saunders worked with many of America's most prominent civil rights leaders, including Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Medger Evers, Gloster B. Current, Vernon Jordan, Jackie Robinson, Sargent Shriver, and a number of others. He is also the author of a forthcoming memoir entitled, Bridging the Gap: Continuing the Florida NAACP Legacy of Harry T. Moore, 1952-1966. |
Emiliano Jose "E. J." Salcines
Judge, District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District | "José Marti, Tampa, and the Spanish-American War in Florida"
Hailed by Gov. Lawton Chiles as the "People’s Lawyer," E. J. Salcines has had a long and productive career as an attorney, prosecutor, assistant U. S. attorney, and judge. A native of Tampa, Judge Salcines holds degrees from Florida Southern College (B.A.) and the South Texas College of Law (JD). In 1964 he became the first Spanish-speaking assistant U. S. Attorney, rising to chief of the criminal division, then special assistant U. S. District Attorney for Organized Crime in the Southern and Midwestern states. He was elected four times as State Attorney for Florida’s Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, serving from 1968 to 1985. He is the author of Trial Manual on Predicate Questions, published by the National District Attorneys Association (a work derived from his summer lectures at the Northwestern University’s Law School). In 1979 Judge Salcines was knighted by King Juan Carlos of Spain, who inducted him into the Royal Order of Queen Isabella. In 1993 the University of South Florida awarded him its President’s Distinguished Citizen Award. One of Judge Salcines’ many avocations is his study of Cuba’s revolutionary figure José Marti and the Spanish-American War, subjects about which he has become a recognized authority. |
Daniel L. Schafer
Professor of History,
University of North Florida | "From Enslaved Wolof to Free African-American: Anna Kingsley in Senegal, Florida, and Haiti"
Dr. Daniel L. Schafer holds degrees from the University of North Dakota (B.S) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D). In 1972 Dr. Schafer joined the faculty of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville and since 1995 has served as chair of the history department. Dr. Schafer has won numerous teaching and scholarship awards, including his own university’s Distinguished Professor Award (1996), the Florida State University System’s Professional Excellence Award (1997), and the Florida Historical Society’s Arthur Thompson Memorial Prize for the best article published in the Florida Historical Quarterly, 1984-1985. His articles and reviews have appeared in many other journals, including the Journal of Social History, Slavery and Abolition, and Florida Anthropologist. He is the author of Anna Kingsley (St. Augustine, 1994) and Jacksonville’s Ordeal By Fire: A Civil War History (Jacksonville, 1984), with Richard A. Martin. He has also contributed chapters to many other works, including East Florida’s Colonial Plantations and Economy (Gainesville, 1999), edited by Jane Landers; The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995), edited by David Colburn and Jane Landers; The New Florida History (Gainesville, 1995), edited by Michael Gannon; and Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, edited by Jane Landers. Dr. Schafer has been an advisor and contributor to several educational films and documentaries, including the forthcoming six-hour Florida Public Broadcasting program entitled "The Struggle for Paradise: Five Hundred Years in Florida." |
Paul Schneider
Author, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts and Bradenton, Florida | "Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America"
Paul Schneider attended Brown University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. After working with refugees in Thailand, students in Switzerland, and a brief career as a wire-service stringer in Kenya, Schneider settled into magazine journalism in New York City. He has written about environmental issues for Esquire, Vanity Fair, and the National Audubon Magazine. That work led to two books: The Adirondacks: A History of America’s First Wilderness (1998) and The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket (2001). The subject of Schneider’s third book, Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America, is the incredible story of Cabeza de Vaca’s 1528 journey across the southeastern portion of what is now the United States. A tale of adventure and survival filled with gripping scenes of battle, disease, starvation, and abject poverty, Schneider has weaved together a story the New York Times called “hard to believe, and impossible to forget.” |
Frank N. Schubert
Historian, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington D. C. | "Seeking David Fagen: the Search for a Black Rebel's Florida Roots"
Dr. Frank "Mickey" Schubert was born in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Howard University then went on to get his master's degree from the University of Wyoming and Ph.D. from the University of Toledo. He served in the United States Army from 1965 to 1968, including one year in Vietnam, where he rose to the rank of captain. He has been a historian in the Department of Defense since 1977, and has been chief of the Joint Operational History Branch, in the Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, since October 1993. Schubert has written extensively on military subjects, including frontier exploration, black soldiers, and military construction, and has lectured at universities in Hungary and Romania. A specialist on buffalo soldiers, he has written several books including On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier: Biographies of African-Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917; Black Valor: Buffalo Soldiers and the Medal of Honor, 1870-1898; and Voices of the Buffalo Soldier: Records, Reports, and Recollections of Military Service in the West, due out in Spring 2003. |
Jonathon Sheppard
Lecturer at Florida State University | “Florida Soldiers in the Civil War”
Jonathon Sheppard is a native of Cross City, Florida, and a lecturer in the History Department at Florida State University. A specialist in the Civil War, Sheppard is the author of By the Noble Daring of Her Sons: The Florida Brigade of the Army of Tennessee (2012), a book that explores the human side of Floridians’ Civil War service on faraway battlefronts and at home. A popular teacher and budding young scholar, Sheppard has lectured frequently to such organizations as the Florida Conference of Historians and the Florida Historical Society. |
Chesterfield H. Smith
Attorney at Law | "Reflections on a Life in the Law"
Featured in a chapter of Tom Brokaw’s best-selling book The Greatest Generation, Chesterfield Smith is one of Florida’s and America’s most renowned lawyers, business leaders, and public servants. After serving in Germany during World War II, Smith attended the University of Florida Law School, moved to Bartow, and within a decade he was well on his way to helping build Holland & Knight into one of the premier law firms in the United States. Mr. Smith’s life has been marked by a strong sense of public service. He was president of The Florida Bar in 1964-1965. In 1965-1968 he served as Chairman of the Constitution Revision Commission, which revised and redrafted the present Florida Constitution. In 1973, as President of the American Bar Association, Smith and the ABA were among the first to call for an appointment of an independent council to investigate President Richard Nixon. "No man is above the law," announced Smith, after Nixon’s firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the subsequent "Saturday Night Massacre." Smith’s many honors include the Distinguished Floridian Award (1981), the American Bar Association Medal (1981), the Learned Hand Award (1984), and the Tree of Life Award (1984). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and the American Bar Foundation. Mr. Smith lives in Coral Gables and is still active in the Holland & Knight firm. One of his many current pursuits is his chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Citrus and Chemical Bancorporation. |
Gene Smith
Professor of History, Texas Christian University | "The Slave's Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812"
Though largely forgotten, the War of 1812 had profound consequences for the United States. The conflict confirmed U. S. independence, secured its borders—all the while ushering in a significant, if brief, period of national unity. The war also dislodged Native Americans triggering American expansion to the Mississippi River. Historian Gene Smith studies the war and its afternoon from the perspective of enslaved Africans, concluding that the conflict resulted in “the greatest nineteenth century diaspora of blacks from the United States” ever. A native of Alabama, Smith earned his Ph. D. in history from Auburn University in 1991. An expert on early national America and naval history, Smith is the author of seven books and many articles. Recently he was appointed Class of 1957 Distinguished Lecturer in Naval Heritage at the United States Naval Academy during 2013-14. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife Tracy and their son. |
Patrick D. Smith
Writer,
Merritt Island, Florida | "Florida: A Land Remembered"
A native of Mississippi, Patrick Smith is considered one of Florida's greatest writers of fiction. An author of international acclaim, Smith has written seven novels including, The River is Home, The Beginning, Forever Island, Angel City, Allapattah, and perhaps his most well-known book, A Land Remembered. Smith's novels have been translated into many languages and have been produced into movies and screen plays. During his long literary career Smith has earned many awards and commendations, including nominations for Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. He has won the Gold Medal of the International Mark Twain Society, the Canadian Fiction Award, and the Southern Academy of Letters, Arts, and Sciences Literary Award. In 2002 the Florida Historical Society named Smith the "Greatest Living Floridian." Smith lives in Merritt Island, Florida. He enjoys boating, gardening, and exploring wildlife. |
Robert & Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture
Randolph Roth,
Professor of History,
Ohio State University
James M. Denham,
Professor of History,
Florida Southern College | “Homicide on Florida’s antebellum frontier”
Florida’s antebellum frontier was one of the most violent places on earth. Nearly every man, it seemed, was ready to violently defend his honor, protect his property, or exact revenge. Dr. Randolph Roth and Dr. James M. Denham explore some of the motives behind Florida’s extraordinary murder rate in the decades before the Civil War: the government’s lack of credibility and its inability to enforce the law; the Southern penchant for honor; slavery and race; and the way of life on the open frontier. They also seek connections between the state’s bloody past and its present. Roth, professor of history at Ohio State University, recently published American Homicide, an interregional study of homicide from colonial times to the present in an effort to understand how and why the United States has become the world’s most homicidal industrial democracy. He is co-founder of the Historical Violence Database, a collaborative international project to gather data on the history of violent crime and violent death. A popular public speaker and award-winning teacher, Roth received the Ohio Academy of History Distinguished Teaching Award (2007) and the university wide OSU Alumni Award for teaching (2009). Denham, professor of history at Florida Southern and director of the Center for Florida History, has published dozens of articles on Southern and Florida history and four books, including A Rogue’s Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida and Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives. He has won the Florida Historical Society’s Arthur W. Thompson Prize and its James J. Hogan Book Prize for Florida Sheriffs: A History, 1821-1945. The Robert and Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture honor the memory of Robert and Rose Stahl. Mr. Stahl served more than 30 years as a police officer, including his years as Chief of Police in North Miami Beach, Florida. The family of Robert and Rose Stahl has generously made these lectures available to Florida Southern College. The Robert and Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture The Robert and Rose Stahl Criminal Justice Lecture honors the memory of Robert and Rose Stahl. Mr. Stahl served more than thirty years as a police officer, including his years as Chief of Police in North Miami Beach, Florida. The family of Robert and Rose Stahl has generously made these lectures available to Florida Southern College. |
Les Standiford
Professor of English,
Florida International University | "Henry Flagler: Last Train to Paradise"
Les Standiford is the best-selling author of 14 books, including the novels “Bone Key” and “Havana Run.” He has also authored critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, “Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean” and “Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America.” He has received the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and the Frank O’Conner Award for Short Fiction, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Last Train to Paradise” was read coast to coast on NPR by Dick Estell, the Radio Reader, and was one of the History Channel’s “top ten” picks. “Meet you in Hell” was Crown publisher’s 2005 nominee for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A native Ohioan, he is a graduate of Muskingum College and earned M. A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Utah. He is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, where he lives with his wife, Kimberly, a psychotherapist, and their three children, Jeremy, Hannah, and Alexander. |
Catherine Stewart
Richard and Norma Small Distinguished Professor of History, Cornell College | "Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in Florida’s Federal Writers
Project"
From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. In an examination of the project and its legacy, Prof. Catherine Stewart shows it was the product of competing visions of the past, as ex-slaves’ memories of bondage, emancipation, and life as freed people were used to craft arguments for and against full inclusion of African Americans in society. Dr. Stewart analyzes a prominent archive used to construct the history of race relations. She is the author of Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers’ Project. |
Dana St. Claire
Public Historian,
St. Augustine | Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History (Daytona Beach: Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1998), book talk and signing.
Dana Ste. Claire is the Director of Museum Services for HTA, a national corporation specializing in heritage tourism services in markets across the United States. He resides in St. Augustine and consults in the areas of heritage tourism, historic preservation, and cultural resource management. Ste. Claire holds degrees in public anthropology from the University of South Florida, and is a member of the Secretary of State's Heritage Tourism Committee. He also sits on many other historical preservation, governmental and advisory boards and councils, including the Board of Trustees of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. Ste. Claire is the author of three books, including, Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History (Daytona Beach, 1998), Borders of Paradise: A History of Florida Through New World Maps (Gainesville, 1997). He was featured columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and his "Florida Crackerbarrel" episodes continue to run on PBS channels throughout the state. |
Ann and Frank Thomas
Singers and Songwriters
Lake Wales, Florida | "History in Song: Florida Stories"
Frank and Ann Thomas have been writing songs and performing them together since 1979. Their songs reflect the history and natural diversity of their native state. The Thomases have performed their Florida music before enthusiastic audiences at the Florida Folk Festival, other special events, and their music has been featured on a number of NPR broadcasts. In 1994, the Thomases won the Florida Folk Heritage Award. Committed to "informing" as well as "entertaining," the Thomases performances have an intimate and personal quality. Their goal, as they like to say, is, to "slip up on a folk's blind side and educate them a little - about Florida." |
Victor Andres Triay
Assistant Professor of History,
Middlesex Community College | Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506
Born in Miami in 1966, Victor Triay's parents and grandparents left Cuba for the United States in 1960. Raised in the heart of South Florida's Cuban exile community, Dr. Triay attended Catholic Schools and Miami-Dade Community College before earning degrees at the University of Florida (B.A.) and Florida State University (M.A. and Ph. D.). Triay joined the faculty of Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut. Dr. Triay is the author of Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program (Gainesville, 1999), a book which explores the complete spectrum of the refugee/ immigration experience: persecution at home, flight into exile, family separation and estrangement, alienation, cultural assimilation, and family reunion. Triay's most recent work is Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506 (Gainesville, 2001), the winner of the Florida Historical Society's Samuel Proctor Oral History Award. Both books will be available at his program. |
Lu Vickers
Professor,
Tallahassee Community College | “Cypress Gardens: America’s Tropical Wonderland”
Dick Pope, the founder of one of Florida’s first theme parks, Cypress Gardens, was once called “The Man Who Invented Florida.” Creating a paradise where tourists could wander through lavish botanical gardens, gaze at southern belles lounging under tropical trees, and gasp at over-the-top water-ski shows, Pope garnered international media attention and drew countless visitors to the state. Lu Vickers will share her research on Pope’s creation, along with the rich history of the landmark attraction and the dynamic people involved in its development. Lu Vickers earned a doctorate in creative writing from Florida State University and currently teaches English at Tallahassee Community College. In addition to her book on Cypress Gardens, Vickers is the author of Weeki Wachee: City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida’s Oldest Roadside Attractions, (2007), and her acclaimed novel, Breathing Underwater, (2007). |
Dr. Phyllis Vine
Author | "Bartow, Florida's Ossian Sweet Story" **Stahl Lecture in Criminal Justice
Book Talk and Signing "One Man's Castle:" Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream (New York: Amistad, 2004) A native of Los Angeles, California, Dr. Phyllis Vine holds degrees in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her Ph. D. at the University of Michigan. An American historian, Dr. Vine has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Michigan, Union College and Barnard College. During her tenure at Sarah Lawrence College, she received recognition for excellence in teaching for three of her courses. Also a graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, Dr. Vine has written for The Nation, Progressive, Extra!, and City Limits magazines. Her first book, Families in Pain, broke new ground in addressing the problems facing families of the mentally ill. While researching her family history, she was drawn to the story of Ossian Sweet and wanted to know more. "I found myself drawn to the tragic qualities of this exceptional human being who lost so much," Vine says. Dr. Vine lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York with her husband and two children. |
Jackson Walker
Artist | “Florida History in the Art of Jackson Walker”
For almost a generation Jackson Walker’s paintings have graced the halls of courthouses and statehouses, and have been exhibited in countless public and private venues throughout the state and nation. His lifetime of portraying visually arresting historical scenes of Florida’s past has earned him the reputation as one of Florida’s most distinguished artists, and he has won numerous awards for his work. Walker’s program will feature a discussion of his most well-known paintings along with his thoughts and methods of re-creating the historical scenes. Also exhibited that evening will be Walker’s latest painting depicting the landing of Ponce De Leon in Florida, executed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the conquistador’s landing. The painting is on loan from the Florida House in Washington D. C., and will be on display both at the Polk County Museum of Art and the McKay Archives gallery. |
Carlton Ward, Jr.
Photographer and Writer | “The Florida Wildlife Corridor: Journey through the Heart of Florida”
In 2012, photographer Carlton Ward, Jr., led a small team of explorers on a 100-day, 1,000-mile trek from Everglades National Park to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Georgia. Traveling by kayak, mountain bike, horse, and foot, this intrepid group discovered that there is still a chance to build a viable natural corridor through Florida. Join us as Ward recounts his adventure through the heart of Florida’s wilderness and presents a preview of the 2014 expedition, which will take the team from the Central Florida Gulf Coast to Alabama. Carlton Ward, Jr., is an internationally acclaimed environmental photojournalist. An eighthgeneration Floridian from a pioneering ranching family, Ward has built a career out of capturing images of natural Florida to call attention to conservation issues in the state. Ward regularly produces stories for newspapers and magazines, including Smithsonian, GEO, National Wildlife, Africa Geographic, Nature Conservancy, and Outdoor Photographer. He is the author of three books, including Florida Cowboys: Keepers of the Last Frontier and Florida Wildlife Corridor, both of which won Florida Book Award medals. |
Dan Warren,
Attorney at Law,
Daytona Beach | “If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and State’s Rights in St. Augustine, 1964”
In the summer of 1964, Dan Warren took on the Ku Klux Klan and won. As special counsel to Gov. Farris Bryant, Warren was charged with quelling racial tensions in St. Augustine. Working diligently with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and local officials, Warren cracked down on Klan violence and pushed integration on reluctant public officials. Ignoring threats from the Klan and political repercussions, Warren proceeded to afford protection for civil rights demonstrators. In 2007, he published If it Takes all Summer, an insider’s view to one of America’s most important civil rights struggles, which won the Florida Historical Society’s Harry T. Moore Award. Warren, a lawyer in Daytona Beach, entered public life in 1961 when Gov. Bryant appointed him the State Attorney. After he resigned from office in 1968, Warren returned to his law practice and spent much of the remainder of his career defending the rights of others, especially minorities. He has written extensively on constitutional rights, especially the First Amendment (free speech and free press), Fourth Amendment (unlawful search and seizure) and Fifth Amendment (self-incrimination). He has received the NAACP Trail Blazer Award and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Award. |
Doris Weatherford
Women's Studies Professor,
University of South Florida) | "The Women's Suffrage Movement in Florida"
Doris Weatherford did graduate work in American History at Brandeis University. She is a recognized expert and acclaimed author in the field of women's history. She is a member of the Florida Commission on the Status of Women and is chair of the Florida Women's Hall of Fame. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the National Order of Women Legislators Hall of Fame Award. She is the author of several books, including American Women's History (New York, 1994), Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1920 (New York, 1995), and Milestones: a Chronology of American Women's History (New York, 1997). Her latest book, The History of the American Suffrage Movement (New York, 1998), and several others, will be available at the program. |
Isabel Wilkerson
Professor of Journalism
and Director, Narrative Nonfiction,
Boston University | “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration and the Odyssey of George Swanson Starling”
In 1945, George Swanson Starling was in fear for his life after hearing of his boss’ plan to lynch him. As a result, he fled to Harlem, leaving behind his life of picking citrus fruit in a Florida grove. In doing so, Starling joined the estimated six million African Americans who left the South to seek out new opportunities in the country’s northern cities. This phenomenon became known as the Great Migration. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson highlights Starling’s story, as well as many others, in her acclaimed book, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010). Isabel Wilkerson became the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism when she was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer for feature writing. A celebrated journalist and former Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times, Wilkerson has lectured in Canada and Denmark and at Harvard, Emory, Princeton, and Northwestern Universities. |
Ginger Lerner-Wren
County Court Judge, 17th Judicial Circuit, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida | "Florida, a Bellwether for the Nation?: Mental Health, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and America's First Mental Health Court."
Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren began her service on the Broward County Criminal Court in 1997. That same year she was appointed to administrate and preside over the nation's first Mental Health Court. The innovative specialized Court was established to address the complexities of mentally ill offenders arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors and to impose the administration of justice for those with serious mental and psychiatric disorders. The Mental Health Court is dedicated to the safe diversion, decriminalization, and treatment of mentally ill persons in the community. Judge Lerner-Wren has recently been appointed by President George W. Bush to the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. The Commission will conduct a comprehensive study of the nation's mental health delivery system and advise the President on methods of improving the system. |
Patsy West
Ethnohistorian,
Fort Lauderdale | “From Hard Times to Hard Rock: Cultural and Economic Overview of the Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes from 1900 to the Present”
A 1930s photograph pictures a Seminole woman in traditional dress poling a canoe through the Tamiami Canal alongside a sign that reads, “Lands To Be Drained.” The sign foreshadows an economic boom that would change everything for Florida’s native tribes, who until then had lived off the land or made a meager living on “display” in tourist attractions where they could sell their crafts. The photograph is part of the collection of Patsy West, a fourth-generation Florida native and director of the Seminole/Miccosukee Photographic Archive in Fort Lauderdale. The award-winning author of three books and active preservationist is a leading authority on the cultural history of the Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples. Her 1998 book, The Enduring Seminoles: From Alligator Wrestling to Ecotourism received awards for best social and ethnographic history from the Florida Historical Society and a certificate of commendation from the American Association of State and Local Historians. The book recently was revised, updated, and republished as From Alligator Wrestling to Casino Gaming. She also is the author of The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida, a visual history that features more than 200 images from the photographic archive. *Photographs courtesy of Patsy West |
