Historian Minson Rubin wants people to understand the history of our community

Dr. William Law, president of St. Petersburg College, with historian Minson Rubin, who donated his historical collection.

Decades ago, historian Minson Rubin started collecting photographs and bits of memorabilia about life in the old 22nd Street South community, Gibbs High School, and Jordan Park, where he was born. Now part of the Minson R. Rubin Collection is on display at the St. Petersburg College Midtown Campus. The school and its president, William D. Law, recently honored Minson Rubin for his contribution of his collection to SPC archives.

Minson Rubin speaks wistfully of his days growing up in Jordan Park, a housing project started in 1939 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It replaced dilapidated housing built for black workers on the Orange Belt Railroad that came to St. Petersburg in 1888. The new housing made a difference in people’s lives.

Rubin remembers Jordan Park in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a close-knit community where adults corrected children if they needed it and your mentor might be a neighbor or a friend of the family. He recalled the days when everybody had the radio on listening to the Brooklyn Dodgers and pulling for a great play by Jackie Robinson. You could stand outside and hear the game on in every house in the neighborhood.

If they weren’t listening to baseball, people were tuned in to Goldie Thompson on WIOK, Tampa’s all-black radio station that went on the air in 1955. You could hear spirituals wafting from every open window up and down the street as Thompson hosted his shows The Old Ship of Zion and Peace in the Valley. Thompson was known in the Tampa Bay area as a music concert promoter and ran the Manhattan Casino for years.

Much has changed but Minson Rubin thinks its important that people, especially today’s youth, know how life once was. Gibbs High School was established in 1927,  and Rubin’s collection contains something of a tribute to all the teachers who have imparted knowledge over the years. Rubin graduated from Gibbs and was a basketball star there and at FAMU in Tallahassee. Rubin’s career in the Pinellas County school system as a teacher and coach spanned three decades.

Historian Minson Rubin honored as a South St. Petersburg Pioneer and Trailblazer

Minson Rubin grew up in the Jordan Park Projects, graduated from Gibbs High School during the segregation era, and after earning a degree in education at FAMU, came back to teach in Pinellas County. A few years ago, he retired from Bay Point Middle School after 33-year teaching career. Along the way, Minson Rubin always had a fascination for local history. He collected memorabilia from the early days of Gibbs High School, the Jordan Park projects, and historic 22nd Street, heart of the old African American business district and the home of the famed Manhattan Casino.

So, it was a great pleasure to see this man, who has done some much to contribute to the good of the community, honored as a Pioneer and Trailblazer by the Jordan Park Projects Nostalgic Association. Minson Rubin was cited among a dozen former Jordan Park Projects residents in the organization's annual Black History Month program.

The Minson R. Rubin Collection is on display at the St. Petersburg College Midtown campus as a major part of the St. Petersburg College Foundation's new exhibition, In Black and White: Stories of 22nd Street South. The exhibition gives a glimpse into everyday life in the South St. Petersburg area during the segregation and civil rights eras. Minson Rubin served as a resource for two books about the African American community in St. Petersburg, Black America Series: St. Petersburg, Florida (2003) by Sandra W. Rooks and St. Petersburg's Historic African American Neighborhoods (2008) by Rosalie Peck and Jon Wilson.