Day 16📍 Scavenger Hunt
Celebrating Black History Month by exploring hidden Black history in Florida's Capital City.
February 16, 2025
Good morning!
I hope you all are having a nice weekend.
Benji and I are on our way back home, after spending the last few days in Cancún on vacation. We arrived frazzled and in desperate need of uninterrupted sleep. Now we’re leaving feeling refreshed and eager to see our son :)
While on vacation, I finally had some time to think about the scavenger hunt, Black History Month, and the perennial question: what does Black progress look like?
[Sidenote: I love being a mom, but wow, I hardly ever have time to think!!!!]
In the coming days, I want to explore this question and I hope you all will explore it will me, too! Please share thoughts, ideas, book recommendations, etc. as we unpack Black progress in Tallahassee (and Florida) and what direction we should go in to uplift and protect communities fractured by government neglect and disinvestment.
📍Today’s Clue: It was a central gathering place for the Black community, full of music, pages, esquires, and knights.
📍 Day 13: The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
🕵🏽 Clue: A place where two became one, find the building full of people who like to tinker for fun.
The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is the country's only shared engineering college. It was created in 1982 by the Florida Legislature, which required Florida A&M and Florida State to work through its tense history and join hands to produce a successful engineering program.
Unresolved tension grew between the two schools, and some of it bubbled to the surface during the college's 10th anniversary. While faculty celebrated the milestone, 28 FAMU engineering students locked themselves in Dean Chen's office. The group, who called themselves the Black College Defense Force, refused to leave until the school's administrators addressed unfair treatment and implemented policies that increased the Black enrollment, graduation, and hiring rates at the engineering school.
The sit-in lasted three hours and was followed by two hours of negotiations with the school's administrators, who agreed to meet two of the group's demands: hire doctoral student Frederick J. Foreman and guarantee amnesty for the student protestors.
The sit-in demonstrated that "students do have a voice, and they can make a difference." And if the administration "[doesn't] meet the needs of the students, it's up to the students to take some action [to] get results."
See you tomorrow,
Shelby
Hi Shelby. Sounds like, you, Benji and the New Baby are doing well. Great News. I don't take the time to respond very often. I plan to do a better job. Happy New Year by the way.
It's awesome the way you have continued to engage the Tallahassee Community.
The Providence Neighborhood Monthly Meeting is this evening starting at 6 - 7:30pm.
By the way, I'm the new Providence Neighborhood Association President, a little over a year.
1. I'm responding to your question about what does progress look like in our community?
2. What direction, we should go into to Uplift and Protect Communities fractured by government neglect and disinvestment.
I would like to be a part of this discussion. Maybe, some of the solutions we discover can be applied to the Providence Neighborhood. We still want to work with you, to develop an effective Neighborhood Survey. We need to know who's in the neighborhood. So that we will know what services are needed to improve the quality of life for everyone.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Sincerely,
David VanWilliams, PNA