Eckerd College celebrates its diversity

It was gratifying to see the recent video posting from Eckerd College for the annual Festival of Cultures, a celebration of the diversity that is our wonderful institution of higher learning in South St. Petersburg. The video, which you can watch above, begins with the flags of various nations represented by the student body, faculty, and staff at Eckerd. The school goes out of its way to promote multiculturalism, and, indeed, is a role model for us all. "Our differences enrich us all," proclaims a headline on the college's Office of Multicultural Affairs page. It is a philosophy that permeates all healthy communities.

South St. Petersburg's got talent! Oh, yeah!

We noted with considerable community pride the write-ups not long ago about the students in Pinellas County schools who received $60,000 in prizes and awards in the 13th annual Walker's Rising Stars Scholarship Competition. Some 24 students all over the county were recognized but we were particularly drawn to the students in our South St. Petersburg community, like Germaine Robinson, Jr., a senior at Gibbs who won a $5,000 scholarship in theater. He's in Dirk Shadd's picture  (above) in the Tampa Bay Times. There were other write-ups, too. The Weekly Challenger had a complete list of the winners and more pictures. We couldn't help but notice that four of the five first place winners were from Gibbs and, and all together Gibbs had 10 winners in the categories that included dance, instrumental, theater, visual art, and vocal. It comes down to this: South St. Petersburg's got talent! So proud of you!

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.