Newtown Alive

Vickie Oldham, Newtown Alive
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  • Updated Daily

Newtown Alive is a podcast dedicated to the lives, memories and stories of the people of Newtown, Florida. Honoring the work that our predecessors did, while acknowledging the work left to do. For more information and all episodes visit our site: http://www.newtownalive.org/

  1. 07/29/2022

    Alberta Brown on How Cooking Changed Her Life

    Alberta Brown is known in the Newtown community for her sumptuous southern-style Sunday throw downs – a big roast seasoned to the bone, a large pot of collards, long pans of buttery yams, melt in your mouth mac-n-cheese and moist cornbread with crispy edges.  It is as if a small army of people are dinner guests. Extended family members, church friends and drop-ins are part of the platoon stopping in for a plate. Brown’s family members were sharecroppers from Alachua County. They moved to Palmetto and found work picking tomatoes and green beans. Brown later worked as a live-in on Siesta Key for a physician’s family. She took care of the couple’s little girl. When help was no longer needed, she followed in her sister’s footsteps, training to become a cook. The position at her next job evolved into more. Jane Bancroft Cook, heir to the Dow Jones & Company family enterprise was looking for a cook. Through a recommendation from a previous employer, Cook met a tall, soft-spoken woman and hired her on the spot. Brown recalls the interview that day. “She looked at me and said, ‘oh, you’re beautiful.’” What followed was a friendship with Cook until her death in 2002 and a lifelong kinship with the family that remains today.

    Alberta Brown on How Cooking Changed Her Life

  2. 07/29/2022

    Betty Jean Johnson on How She Helped Newtown Residents Gain Access to The Library

    Betty Jean Johnson is a voracious reader who loves traveling to faraway places through books. Her teacher Prevell Barber stoked an appreciation for the written word. “I always had to read something in her class or around her. The fact of it is when I read, I travel. We didn’t have TV until later.” Johnson thought her college education would lead to a career in social work.   Instead, a high school class in “library procedures” changed her trajectory after graduating from Gibbs Junior College in St. Petersburg. Back then, Manatee Community College, now known as State College of Florida was off limits to African Americans. Mary Emma Jones, a well-respected entrepreneur and community leader orchestrated the hiring of Mary Thomas at the Sarasota Public Library.   Thomas helped Johnson land a job there. The facility was not a welcoming place for African American patrons. Johnson understood what Newtown residents encountered. “For a book report, I had to go to that library for a book because we didn’t have it at the Booker library. There were ‘closed stacks’ closed to Blacks. The lady at the desk had to go to the stacks to get the book. When I started working there, those same people were there.” For years, a perplexing question dogged Johnson. “What can I do to get more Blacks to use the library?” A solution to the conundrum came while preparing to work a split shift. She would ask the boss for use of an old book mobile the library was about to replace. Instead, administrators provided an outreach van that made books accessible to African American children.   From a van to a storefront library operating on a shoestring budget, Johnson and supporters kept pushing, even though for years their efforts seemed fruitless. Finally, the North Sarasota Public Library opened as a result of the seed of an idea that Johnson planted. The facility is named after her.

    Betty Jean Johnson on How She Helped Newtown Residents Gain Access to The Library

  3. 07/29/2022

    Carolyn Mason's Rise as Sarasota's First Black County Commissioner

    School integration caused trauma and fear for Carolyn Mason and rightly so.  She lived in Overtown’s “Black Bottom” located at the corner of 8th Street and Central Avenue in segregated Sarasota. There was a dividing line at 3rd Street or present day Fruitville Road. “I call it the Mason-Dixon line. North of Fruitville was the Black community; and south was downtown for the more affluent community.” The communities did not mix. “My senior year in high school should have been my best year, but it was full of apprehension. I couldn’t think past the fear of being around people I had never been around before. I didn’t know what I was afraid of, but I was afraid. Somebody should have talked to the children – all of the children – about what to expect. Somebody should have said, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about.’” Mason began a career in public service after viewing a theater production in Sarasota that lacked a diverse cast. Frustrated, she became the go between for talented African American artists and arts organizations. “I offered myself as a bridge. I was probably on the board at one time of every arts organization in Sarasota County.” She was elected to the Sarasota City Commission and served from 1999 to 2003. She was Mayor of Sarasota from 2001 to 2003. Mason is the first African American elected to the Sarasota County Commission in 2008 and served as chair in 2013 and 2015. Social issues are the focus of her work.  Carolyn Mason’s oral history was provided by interviewer Hope Black.

    Carolyn Mason's Rise as Sarasota's First Black County Commissioner

  4. 07/29/2022

    Dr. Thomas Clyburn Discusses His Education From Integration to a Post Graduate Degree

    The late Dr. Thomas Clyburn remembered hearing the sound of his patent leather loafers on the floor of a Blue Bird bus while stepping out of his seat and walking down the aisle to the front, then down the steps on the first day of school in 11th grade. The setting was unfamiliar. Earlier that day, Clyburn showed up for class at Booker High School where he was an honors student. He was asked to wait outside, near the main office and didn’t know why. A bus pulled up. “Are you Thomas Clyburn?” driver Robert Graham asked. “Yes, I am,” the teenager replied. “I’m here to take you to school, not here.” The driver and passenger took the route from Myrtle Avenue to North Washington Boulevard to Sarasota High School. Students were everywhere. “Good luck. I’ll come back to pick you up.” The bus driver dropped him off in front of the gothic style building. When he stepped off the bus, the world in front of him froze.   “Everyone was looking at me. My pulse rate in my throat went to the roof.” He  walked to the administration office. “It was really, really, really quiet. The principal [Gene Pilot] introduced himself. He asked a few questions.” Then a teacher escorted him to homeroom. Some students were silent. Some whispered. “That was my first day. It was a challenge. You would think those days would get better over time, but in many ways they got worse.”   Clyburn, no longer in Booker’s cocoon of nurturing teachers and classmates was chosen for a pilot program to integrate Sarasota County schools in 1963. “I was sitting in homeroom looking out of the window. A kid with a big German shepherd walked toward the building. I heard a loud pop. Six men racing toward me said ‘get in the center. Don’t say anything. Follow us.’ We went to the principal’s office. They locked down the school to look for the student.” Willemina Thomas, a BHS classmate was also selected to participate in the SHS pilot program, but their paths never crossed. Clyburn, a behavioral psychologist was university director of learner affairs at Capella University.

    Dr. Thomas Clyburn Discusses His Education From Integration to a Post Graduate Degree

  5. 07/29/2022

    Elder Willie Mayes Talks About Starting a Business and His Sister Rosa Lee Thomas Discusses The Public Health Impact of a Landfill

    The late Elder Willie Mayes was proud of the family church that began in his parent’s home with six members. He began pastoring New Zion Primitive Baptist Church in 1984 and operated a cement finishing business for 45 years.  The company is among the oldest Black owned enterprises in Sarasota. At age 14, he stopped attending school to help his family make ends meet financially. Mayes earned meager wages doing farm work in Fruitville near where the family lived. Children in the settlement of approximately 50 residents attended school in a little church. The people walked a quarter of a mile to pump water for daily use. In 1944, the family moved to Newtown where Mango Avenue is situated between Highway 301 and the railroad tracks near the city dump. “The smoke bothered us for years. We stayed in the house most of the time to escape that smoke.,” Mayes said. His sister Rosa Lee Thomas believes their neighbors on Mango died as a result of the fumes. She keeps a record of their names as a memorial. An unforgettable moment in Thomas’ life was being chosen the 10th grade attendant of Miss Booker High School with another attendant Willie Mae (Blake) Sheffield.

    Elder Willie Mayes Talks About Starting a Business and His Sister Rosa Lee Thomas Discusses The Public Health Impact of a Landfill

  6. 07/29/2022

    Estella Thomas and Her Daughter Harriet Moore On Starting a Grocery Store In Newtown

    Estella Moore-Thomas owned Moore's Grocers when Black residents couldn’t shop at Publix and Winn Dixie. The Newtown business that still bears the family’s name supplied the community with groceries and fresh produce. Before Moore’s, Thomas rented a store in the building once occupied by Eddy’s Fruit Stand. Harriet D. Moore, her daughter, helped operate the store.  “We were one of the few stores that gave credit to people,” Harriet chimed.   Moore grew up in Sidell, Florida located 50 miles east of Sarasota in a turpentine camp. The home remedies used to treat illnesses consisted of turpentine, Epsom salt, castor oil and cobwebs. “When I came here, we didn’t have electricity. I opened the door of the refrigerator and the lamp fell and broke. Right there, just cut it to the bone. They filled it up with cobwebs. No stitches or nothing. No doctors, but I lived through it.”   The elder Moore didn't finish high school because the responsibility of helping at home as a teenager stood in the way, but she made sure her children received the best education. Harriet earned a doctorate degree and was the Sarasota County School district's Director of Innovation and Equity. “The way that it used to be, I miss rallying around people who didn’t have and making sure that nobody went hungry around here.”

    Estella Thomas and Her Daughter Harriet Moore On Starting a Grocery Store In Newtown

  7. 07/29/2022

    Gwendolyn Atkins on Her Career as a Public Health Nurse Devoted to Serving Her Community

    As an African American public health nurse, the late Gwendolyn Atkins spent a lifetime healing bruises in the community. For nearly three decades, retired nurse Gwen Atkins walked door to door in Newtown neighborhoods, public housing areas and in migrant camps teaching young mothers about childcare, treating childhood diseases, monitoring the health of aging residents and making sure seasonal workers received medical services. She set up a makeshift clinic in the garage of Stephens Funeral Home. “We’d treat impetigo and ring worms. She became extended family members of their patients. The line between work and play often blurred. Nursing and being on call, accessible and always available was a way of life. “If I had to do it all over again, I would choose public health nursing and I would choose serving my community. That’s what I love more than anything else,” Atkins said.

    Gwendolyn Atkins on Her Career as a Public Health Nurse Devoted to Serving Her Community

  8. 07/29/2022

    Sheila Sanders Talks About Her Drive From An Early Age to Fight For A Better Tomorrow

    Sheila Sanders has a sweet smile but don’t mistake it for weakness. She organized a boycott of the Sarasota Federal Bank as a third grader at Booker Elementary School. At that time, her class learned money management by filling out savings deposit slips for their pennies, dimes and nickels, but the students could not take tours of the bank as children from other schools did. Sanders persuaded her classmates to send deposits to Palmer Bank where they could tour.  Her actions foreshadowed future activism. The teenager proactively participated in the NAACP accompanying leaders John Rivers and Maxine Mays to local and state meetings. In high school, Sanders learned about the political process by reviewing the agenda of school board meetings and attended the meetings by taking the city bus. “Some things won’t be said just because you’re sitting there.”  Sanders, William “Flick” Jackson and John Rivers joined Dr. Edward E. James II as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the City of Sarasota. They successfully pushed for single member district voting that opened the way for African American representation on the Sarasota City Commission.

    Sheila Sanders Talks About Her Drive From An Early Age to Fight For A Better Tomorrow
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

Newtown Alive is a podcast dedicated to the lives, memories and stories of the people of Newtown, Florida. Honoring the work that our predecessors did, while acknowledging the work left to do. For more information and all episodes visit our site: http://www.newtownalive.org/

Information

  • Creator
    Vickie Oldham, Newtown Alive
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2022
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Vickie Oldham, Newtown Alive
  • Show Website
    Newtown Alive