Tallahassee, FAMU honors local civil rights activists with street renaming

Tallahassee, FAMU honors local civil rights activists with street renaming

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (WTXL) – The City of Tallahassee and Florida A&M University commemorate a Tallahassee couple who were instrumental in the local civil rights movement, the late Robert and Trudie Perkins, by naming a street in their honor.

Robert and Trudie Perkins Way, formerly Gamble Street, will be officially unveiled at a ceremony on Friday, September 10th at 8:30 am in the parking lot of the FAMU Welcome Center, 1420 Wahnish Way. Work on renaming the street in honor of the Perkins began in November 2020.

The time of the event coincides with the couple’s 75th wedding anniversary.

Robert and Trudie Perkins graduated from FAMU in the 1940s. They owned a local business and worked in noble professions; Robert Perkins in higher education and Trudie Perkins in nursing.

Both fought for equal opportunities and treatment for African Americans. Robert Perkins began his activism by working to create recreational facilities for local children.

Trudie Perkins led workplace reform calling for equal pay for African American nurses.

“Robert and Trudie Perkins wanted to make Tallahassee a more inclusive community, a place where everyone can work and play with dignity,” said Mayor John Dailey. “Their legacy lives on, and I hope their names will inspire the next generation of leaders on the FAMU campus and in their former neighborhood.”

The idea of ​​honoring the Perkins by giving them a street in their former neighborhood came from local residents. FAMU President Larry Robinson, Ph.D., sent a letter to the city commission to support the name change.

“Adorning our campus with the new Robert and Trudie Perkins Way is an honor for us to recognize a couple who have contributed so much to positive change in this community,” said Robinson. “They have been tireless in their advocacy and relentless in their struggle for social justice and economic equality.”

The city and FAMU will broadcast the ceremony live on YouTube.com/user/WCOT.

The post Tallahassee, FAMU honors local civil rights activists with street renaming first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Committee week in Florida’s Capitol: Welcome to the festival of ignorance

Image
Legislators came to town for the autumn ritual of political harlotry they call “committee week.” Tallahassee’s collective IQ dropped by a good 60 points. That’s bad, but what they propose doing to Florida is worse. Seems Sen. Joe Gruters, R-$ara$ota, who also is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was intimately involved with a plot to quash the Democratic vote. Remember that “ voting reform ” bill the governor signed on “Fox and Friends” last May? The one that restricts access to ballot drop-boxes, limits vote-by-mail applications, forbids giving people standing in long lines a bottle of water, and lets partisan poll watchers police canvassing boards? Even though Florida ran an immaculate election in 2020, Republicans goose-stepped in time with the Madman of Mar-a-Lago and claimed with straight faces they merely wanted to prevent election “fraud” — which is about as common as polar bears in Miami. (What fraud there was, was courtesy of the GOP .) Joe Gruters ...
Read more

U.S. House GOP would make it easier for feds to give public lands away to states

Image
U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands. The provision is a fairly technical piece of the 55-page  rules package . It affects internal House accounting and requires that anytime Congress were to give any federal lands to a state, municipality or tribe, it would not be counted as a loss to the federal budget. House Republicans had an identical rule when they controlled the chamber from 2017 to 2019. Advocates and critics agree the measure would be helpful to any effort by the House to transfer federal lands to states. But they disagree about the wisdom of such giveaways. Republicans and conservative groups see states as preferable stewards of most public lands. Those closest to the land are in a better position to make decisions on how to manage them than those in Washington bureaucracies, they say. Environmental groups and Democrats see federal divest...
Read more

Democratic governors press U.S. Senate to act on voting rights legislation

Image
WASHINGTON — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and 16 other Democratic governors are urging the U.S. Senate to pass two bills that aim to protect voting rights. Both measures need 60 votes to advance under Senate rules but have been stalled by Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate. “Without decisive action by the federal government this year to protect voters’ access to the ballot and ensure the integrity and transparency of our elections, the voices of Americans across the country, especially Americans of color, will be suppressed,” the governors wrote in a Monday  letter  to U.S. Senate leadership. Governors who signed the letter include Jared Polis of Colorado, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Kate Brown of Oregon, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, among others. One bill, known as the  John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2...
Read more