The second edition of our rolling list of 200 Tallahassee history makers

The TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project is proud to present our rolling list of 200 people who laid the foundation and contributed to the growth of the civil society we find today in Tallahassee.  

As the city commemorates the 200^th anniversary of its founding, the Tallahassee Democrat and Real Talk 93.3 have cast a wide net to find artists, educators, civil rights leaders, politicians, athletes, builders, business titans and neighborhood icons who have earned a spotlight. 

But we need your help. 

You can email your suggestions of candidates to be profiled and other suggestions to history@tallahassee.com. And listen to Greg Tish’s morning show on Real Talk 93.3 where we'll discuss the legacy of these history makers. 

The only condition is that those featured below must be deceased. Ten names will be added twice a month, so be sure to check back for updates.  

Without further ado here is the second list of 10 more people who helped make Tallahassee someplace special ...

Read the full list online or at tallahassee.com/tlh200.

Parwez Alam (1945 - 2018)

Known simply as P-A, Parwez Alam was a straight-talking, no-nonsense engineer from Karachi who had worked for the Nigerian government, and Defuniak Springs when Leon County hired him to be the Public Works Administrator in 1989. 

P-A mostly stood in the background while elected officials and community leaders celebrated the paving of new roads, construction of new facilities, and the opening of parks during his 22 years with the county. 

But he was the one who made county government more transparent with hefty agenda packages for meetings. It was P-A who negotiated with residents, neighborhoods, and contractors, on where and how eight branch libraries would be built.

He partnered with the city to revitalize the Amtrak Train Depot and to build the $60 million Tallahassee Leon County Public Safety Complex.

And former employees tell us, P-A sent them looking for federal and environmental grants to build parks in the northwest and southeast corners of the county, and at Lake Talquin and near Lake Jackson. 

And it was PA’s idea to write the county’s first Master Water and Sewer Plan, which led to a Tallahassee Leon County Water and Sewer Plan and a 17-acre lined garbage transfer station out on U.S. 27. 

“The brilliance of Parwez Alam was a knack for identifying talent, elevating, challenging, and then supporting it to achieve some pretty amazing goals,” said Tom Brantley, who was one of Alam’s directors at the county.  

“Parwez transformed and left Leon County a far better place, and his legacy of excellence remains to this day through the staff he developed,” said the retired Brantley. 

Carolyn H. Brown (1935 - 2018)

Carolyn H. Brown was 18 and without money for school when she left the family farm in Washington County  for Tallahassee. 

Brown would stand in the vanguard of a changing America, with the charm and grace of “a true southern lady.” But it would take five years for her to get her footing in the capital city. 

The young Miss Brown waited tables and cashiered seven days a week at the Quaker House and the Tallahassee Dining Room while taking cosmetology classes at Lively vocational school. 

Five years later she was hired at the salon in the  Duval Hotel. Then she and two coworkers joined together to open their own shop in the Capital Plaza, located in what was then a Tallahassee suburb. Brown took the lead as cofounder of Suburban Salon and until her passing 60 years later established herself as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and advocate for equality and diversity. 

Suburban initiated a group health insurance plan for staff – something unheard of in the industry. It also led a group of salons in offering scholarships/loans to cosmetology students – interest free if paid off in two years or through service. 

Suburban was the first in Tallahassee to hire a Black stylist, Annie Ford, to serve white clients. The decision led to threatening phone calls, but Brown told the Tallahassee Democrat for a story in 2007 the calls ended while the stylist remained. 

She passed in 2018 and the staff at the Suburban tells us Brown’s legacy is seen in the loyalty of their clients and the tenure of what they call their “staff family.” 

Three of the six stylists have been on staff for more than 45 years, another two for 20, and one for 12. 

And among their clients are some families that have had six generations of hair done by the salon Carolyn Brown, Gladys Brown (no relation), and Alice Melton opened 65 years ago at the newly built shopping plaza “way out there on Thomasville Road.” 

Jim Fair (1918 - 1991)

James Searcy Farrior, known as Jim Fair, “champion of the little guy,” was a decorated World War II veteran, and former Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections, whose court fights led to confinement in a state mental facility. 

Gov. Claude Kirk removed Fair from office in 1968 for malfeasance, misfeasance, and incompetence – among other things he fired staff and hired people critics said were “Yippees,” who were highly theatrical free speech advocates of the 1960s. 

Fair filed suits seeking reinstatement, was jailed multiple times for contempt of court, and was confined for six months in a a state mental hospital after being charged with trespassing. 

A state hearing officer deemed him sane. 

"Evidently, this man was sent to the hospital for some other reason" than insanity, said hearing officer Jon Caminez, according to a Tampa Bay Times report. 

Released from a Chattahoochee facility, Fair settled in Tallahassee where he continued to fight the establishment. 

• He filed a handwritten brief to save an oak tree slated for removal to build City Hall. 
• He won a court battle to qualify a candidate for office with a petition rather than a filing fee. 
• He fought the city and won the right to walk through a drive-in booth to pay his utility bill. 

In 1991, feeling ill, Fair who won seven combat stars in World War II as a Naval lieutenant commander, asked a friend for a ride to the veterans' hospital in Gainesville.  

He was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia and passed within weeks. 

"The one thing I'd like before I die is the correction that I'm a kook," Fair told the Times in a hospital bed interview.  “Nobody was more serious about the government than me. I was a patriot. My whole life has been one of misunderstandings. I just tried to help people, and everything I did was twisted around by the cynical." 

E.C. Allen (1922 - 2003)

A self-made millionaire, Evans Craig Allen built the nation’s largest mobile home dealer in the 1970s and is remembered as a generous contributor to his church, city, and higher education.   

The fountain at Lake Ella, the Bosendorfer concert grand piano at First Baptist Church, the Southern Scholarship Foundation house at Florida State University, along with a swimming pool for East Hill Baptist Church, and bike lanes around town are all E.C. Allen contributions. 

Parkinson's Disease claimed Allen in 2003.

“He gave to more people than anyone knows because, in many instances, he liked to remain anonymous,” said longtime friend John E. Hunt at the time.  

Allen grew up in a home on North Boulevard Street that lacked indoor plumbing, and heating, except for a fireplace.   

For his 75th birthday he and Matilda, “Tillie” Allen hosted several hundred guests at a Hawaii-themed dinner at The Moon, which this newspaper described as “one of Tallahassee’s most glittering affairs.” 

E. C. Allen played tackle on Leon High 1939 and 1940 football teams while working in the Capital City Bank mailroom. He served in the Pacific during World War II and then earned a business degree at Florida State University. 

Allen then spent 13 years as an accountant before he opened seven Mobile Home Industries sales outlets across North Florida and South Georgia. Ten years later, MHI became the first Tallahassee corporation to go public and in 1972 was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Four years later Allen sold a jet plane to get the money to pay for the license and facilities to sign on WECA Channel 27, now WTXL-TV – the first commercial television station licensed solely to Tallahassee.  

Annie Lavern Jenkins Ash (1925 - 2005)

Forces unleashed by the Tallahassee bus boycott slowly and in stages began to change Florida State University in the 1960s. 

A Tallahassee resident became the first Black undergraduate to enroll in the school in 1962 (Maxwell Courtney). 

Two years later, the baseball team signed its first Black player (Fred Flowers). 

Six years later, the football team got its first Black cheerleader (Gayle Andrews). 

FSU historians write that those students “faced many difficulties” as they “challenged the prevailing racism that existed on campus." 

But in 1972, they could find a welcoming face and care at the then Student Health Center after the school hired Annie Lavern Jenkins Ash as the first African American registered nurse. 

A Chipley native, Ash studied at Meharry Medical College in Nashville before being hired by Florida A&M University Hospital in 1947. 

She worked there for 24 years. When the hospital closed in 1971, FSU hired Ash to treat students at the now Thagard Health Center. 

“Her love of people and public health was shown daily in her profession as an R.N. for over 43 years,” said Helen Patrice Ash Ible, a daughter. 

Ash retired from FSU in 1994. She was married to Joseph Ash for 54 years. The couple had three children. 

Dr. Curtis King (1921 - 2008)

Chickasha, Oklahoma vocalist Curtis Rance King Sr., Ph.D., arrived in Tallahassee via Knoxville in 1952 and made lasting impressions on his students and colleagues that are heard and seen to this day.  

Before taking on the role of a vocal professor at Florida A&M University, King was a member of the De Paur Infantry Chorus, at the time Columbia Records top selling group, sang in Porgy and Bess, and hung out with Harry Belafonte and Ray Charles. 

King embraced a group of young FAMU staffers and his students once he arrived in Tallahassee.

“Dad was a forward thinker, especially when it came to health,” recalled his son, Curtis Jr. 

King organized a group of teachers and staff into the Early Riser Exercisers. They would meet and run laps around Bragg Stadium. Among the group was economics professor and future university president B. L. Perry, future FAMU athletics director Hansel Tookes, and Sam Washington who after a military career returned to FAMU as dean of admissions. 

King, Jr., writes his dad was a Renaissance man, respected, admired, and beloved by his students. One of those students in the 1970s was Ronald C. McCurdy, who on the first day of class told King his class was a waste of time. 

McCurdy the trumpeter would “never need to know” what King the singer could teach. 

King was writing assignments on a blackboard while McCurdy ranted.

“Professor King paused for a few seconds, turned in my direction, and uttered three words, “Never say never,” recalls McCurdy.  

Three years later McCurdy is in graduate school in Kansas and doing a terrible job directing a vocal ensemble group. He called King to apologize for being such “a knucklehead” as an undergraduate. 

“His kindness, warmth, and vast knowledge were unparalleled as an educator and mentor,” said McCurdy, now an assistant dean and jazz professor at the USC Thornton School of Music. 

“More than 40 years later, I find myself telling students ‘Never say never,’” said McCurdy. 

Gov. William Pope DuVal (1784 - 1854)

Appointed territorial Governor in 1822, DuVal sought to end the rivalry that existed between East and West Florida with the placement of the Capital between the Suwannee and Ochlocknee rivers. 

Duval selected present-day Tallahassee as the site after being told about a “beautiful cascade” being there. 

About three miles away from the cascade was a Miccosukee/Seminole village. A year later, with white settlers moving in, the local chief Neamathla threatened to make the streets of Tallahassee “run red with blood” unless the settlers left. 

DuVal, backed by a regiment of U.S. Army soldiers, met with Neamathla and his 600 warriors. He then would illegally depose Neamathla as head of the Seminoles, and order the native Americans to a reservation near Tampa, according to historian Gerald Ensley.

The confrontation was retold by famous author Washington Irving, a friend and chronicler of DuVal, in the story “The Conspiracy of Neamathla.”

DuVal presided over the first 12 sessions of the Florida Legislature, during which middle Florida developed into one of the South’s most prosperous slave-based economies.  

He created a court system for the nascent state and built the first official residence for a Florida governor, a log cabin overlooking present day Cascade Park. 

DuVal continued to live in Tallahassee after his term as governor ended in 1834, before eventually moving to Texas. His former mansion burned in 1905, and the site now houses the Carnegie Library at FAMU. 

Aunt Memory Adams (? - 1898)

"Aunt Memory" Adams was born into slavery and brought to Tallahassee when in her 20s and sold to a man named Mr. John Winston Argyle for $800. After the Civil War she is said to have been one of the more colorful members of Trinity United Methodist Church – using a hearth broom to sweep street corners to repel evil spirits.

In 1893, determined to visit the World's Fair in Chicago, "Aunt Memory" sold picture postcards of herself to pay her expenses. Her motivation to attend the fair she said was, "to see how man have used the wisdom God have given him."

Her postcards and mission captured the nation's imagination, followed by several newspapers. Once she raised the money to pay her expenses, the St. Joseph Weekly Gazette in Missouri reported, "When the set date came around she baked two chickens, prepared several bottles of coffee, sandwhiches galore and many other toothsome dainties, packed her lunchbasket and hand-bag, bade her household adieu, and boarded the train alone for her long journey..."

Aunt Memory passed five years after her trip to the Chicago World's Fair.

Red Barber (1908 - 1992)

Walter Lanier Barber made his name as a pioneering broadcaster in the 1930s and in retirement entertained a national public radio audience with a weekly talk show from his Tallahassee home. 

Barber had never attended a Major League baseball game when he was hired as the Cincinnati Reds play-by-play announcer in 1934. It was the start of a 30-year career in which he reported some of the sport's most momentous moments and created its most enduring clichés. 

Generations of announcers have mimicked his "back, back, back," to describe a long flyball with the potential to be a home run. 

He was the announcer when Cairo’s Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. The announcer when Bobby Thompson launched the shot heard around the world. And the announcer for the first televised baseball game in 1949.

TV Guide named Red Barber The Sportscaster of the 1950s.  

In 1979, after three decades as the voice of the Reds, Brooklyn Dodger, and New York Yankees and CBS Sports, Barber retired to Tallahassee.  A chance encounter with a NPR reporter led to a line being installed from WFSU to Red’s study in his Killearn home for a weekly sports segment with Morning Edition host Bob Edwards. 

The segment was supposed to be about sports but topics ran from world events to the camellias and azalea bushes in his backyard – and his attempts to keep squirrels away from the bird feeder.  

Barber made more than 600 consecutive Friday Morning Edition appearances. 

When he passed in 1992, former Florida State University President Stanley Marshall eulogized his friend as “that voice with lyrical, transportational qualities,” that took listeners to Ebbett Field, Ohio Stadium or to a Tallahassee backyard full of mischievous squirrels.

Marshall recalled how Barber’s meticulous preparation provided a sense of direction to what was a new branch of journalism, broadcasting, when CBS hired him.

“In this, Red’s effect on his craft has been profound and lasting,” said Marshall. 

James R. Ford (1925 - 2017)

James R. Ford was already a history maker before he became the first Black mayor of a U.S. state capital city in 1972. 

Ford had broken through racial barriers as a driver's education teacher for the Leon school district, and then as the first Black assistant principal at Leon High School.

But, let's start in 1971 – the year he became the first Black person to win a city commission seat.  

The city’s population had doubled to 72,000 since the bus boycott and was 28% Black, with all elected offices held by whites.

The growing population came with student unrest as a Civil Rights movement boosted by the boycott and a subsequent anti-war movement spread across the country.  

Tallahassee and many other university-oriented cities were disrupted by sit-ins and demonstrations, including the infamous “Night of the Bayonets,” when in 1969 sheriff's deputies confronted FSU protesters inside the Westcott Building with bayonet-tipped M-1 rifles. 

A year later four Kent State University students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen.

Into this political environment stepped James R. Ford. He challenged W.H. Cates, the longest serving commissioner. Cates had opposed a citizen initiative to reopen three city-owned pools commissioners closed seven years earlier to avoid integration. 

The campaign unfolded in a city where racial relations were such that elections expert and historian Matt Isbell said it prevented Ford from campaigning “door-to-door.” 

The Tallahassee Democrat’s campaign coverage boosted Ford, who held a master’s degree, had been a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and served in World War II and Korea.

Furthermore, editor Malcolm Johnson declared, “We’ve been saying we’d elect a ‘good Negro’ if one ever ran. Now here’s our chance to prove we aren’t hypocrites.” 

Isbell called the editorial “passive racism” while Ford said it helped him win. 

Ford forced Cates into a runoff. In the general election, Ford's ties to Leon High helped him carry 40% of the vote on the east side – which was 98% white at the time, and he won the election with 53% of the vote.

Ford would serve on the city commission through 1985, with subsequent terms as mayor in 1976 and 1982.  

He championed creation of a Minority Business Department, the Frenchtown Area Development Authority, and the city’s Affirmative Action Office. 

Ford also was president of the Tallahassee Urban League and the Tallahassee chapter of 100 Black Men, and commander of the Tallahassee Sail and Power Squadron. 

The Walker-Ford Community Center on Pasco Street is named in his honor.

This article is part of TLH 200: the Gerald Ensley Bicentennial Memorial Project. Throughout our city's 200th birthday, we'll be drawing on the Tallahassee Democrat columnist and historian's research as we re-examine Tallahassee history. Read more at tallahassee.com/tlh200. Email us topic suggestions at history@tallahassee.com