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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
How Coco Gauff's grandmother made history in Palm Beach County
As Coco Gauff wows the tennis world and returns as doubles champ in the French Open and stirs pride in her Delray Beach hometown, it's fair to say she stands on the shoulders of her grandmother, who had a significant role in the town and the nation's history decades ago. At the same age Gauff turned pro, Yvonne Lee was breaking down the barriers of segregation. It was 1961. Lee was popular and smart, had been named to the upcoming homecoming court and looked forward to being captain of the basketball team at her all-Black Carver High. But then the 15-year-old was given a daunting assignment. Headed into the next fall, she was to be the first Black student to attend Delray Beach's all-white Seacrest High School. Gauff has talked about her grandmother, Yvonne Lee Odom, and her experience as the tennis star spoke out on issues such as Black Lives Matter. That first day Lee went to Seacrest — Sept. 25, 1961 — security was tight, for good reason. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. In the wake of the ruling, the NAACP began seeking Black students who would be good candidates to attend all-white schools. By November of that year, the first, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, and her mother were met with crowds yelling viscious slurs as they were escorted by four federal marshals into a New Orleans elementary school. New Orleans required Black students to pass an exam. Ruby did. Norman Rockwell in 1964 would celebrate her courage with a painting titled "The Problem We All Live With." Lee's father, the late Rev. R.M. Lee, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Beach, thought his daughter was a great candidate — she was gifted in academics as well as sports. "We were trying to get the top kids so they could not say we were dumb," he said. Lee had attended all-Black Carver High school her freshman year. (Carver and Seacrest would later merge to become Atlantic High School for the 1970-71 school year.) Lee was the first student to integrate a school in southern Palm Beach County. When her Carver classmates learned where she would be going, they encouraged her. "We need you to do this," they told her. While school integration was top news of the day, Lee downplayed the potential drama. "I was just going to school," she later told The Palm Beach Post. "I wasn't afraid. If they told me to integrate, I was going to integrate." She arrived at 10 a.m. when the other 1,000 students were already in class. Traffic had been blocked outside. She met her student "buddy," Paula Adams, who walked her to class hand-in-hand. Lee also spoke with principal Robert Fulton in the faculty lounge. He was a "nice man," she told the Boca News in 2002. Today, Fulton's name adorns the school district headquarters, the Fulton-Holland Educational Services Center. Sharing that billing with Fulton is Black attorney Bill Holland, who filed a lawsuit in 1956 when a West Palm Beach elementary school refused to let his son attend. Lee said aside from students gawking, her first day was uneventful. "They were polite but apprehensive. This was the unknown." At Carver, Lee had been chosen to lead the basketball team, by coach C. Spencer Pompey. But at Seacrest, she agreed not to play any sports or ride the school bus due to safety concerns — though her absence from sports didn't last. When Seacrest officials also directed her to use the bathroom in the faculty lounge, she refused. After school that day, she said, one student called her the n-word. By the time Lee graduated in 1964, she had four Black classmates. She would go on to earn a degree in elementary education from Florida Atlantic University and a master's in reading from Nova University. She taught math at Carver Middle School and married her high-school sweetheart from Carver High, Eddie Odom Jr. Several of her children also became teachers, including Coco Gauff's mom, Candi. Her son, Eddie Odom III, turned down a draft pick from the Seattle Mariners to pursue a college education. Yvonne Odom and her husband founded the Delray Beach American Little League to extend the sport to kids in mostly Black neighborhoods not covered by the other league. "I learned a lot about her stories," Gauff told the Miami Herald in 2020. Yvonne Lee Odom says she, too, learned from her own experience. "By attending Seacrest for three years, I found that people are people, no matter what. You've got the good, bad and ugly, regardless of the race." Holly Baltz is an editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Coco Gauff's grandmother stepped into history in Delray Beach
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Civil rights figure Ruby Bridges will headline this year's Frederick Speaker Series
Over the course of 12 seasons, the Frederick Speaker Series has featured a number of trailblazing Black Americans. During the 2016 season, there was Bryan Stevenson, who began his education at a "colored school" in rural Delaware and went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization based in Alabama. In 2023, there was Vernice "FlyGirl" Armour, the first Black female aviator in the U.S. Marine Corps and the first Black woman to serve as a combat pilot in any branch of the U.S. military. And on March 6, civil rights icon Ruby Bridges is set to join the ranks with her appearance at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in downtown Frederick. Born in Mississippi in 1954, Bridges and her family moved to New Orleans when she was 4 years old. By 1960, she would become the first and only Black student at the city's William Frantz Elementary School. The backlash to Bridges' enrollment at the school was severe. Many white families withdrew their children from classes, and crowds of protesters greeted the 6-year-old by hurling objects and racial epithets at her. For her safety, Bridges was escorted into the building each day by U.S. Marshals. This scene served as the inspiration for Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With," published in 1964. As an adult, Bridges established a foundation dedicated to educating young people about racism and other forms of bullying. She is also the author of several books, including "Ruby Bridges: A Talk with My Teacher," a children's book published just this year. In 2024, Bridges was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Talent agents, audience members and representatives of various community organizations continuously suggest people to be considered for the annual Speaker Series, according to Weinberg Center executive theater manager Stephanie Chaiken. In an interview with 72 Hours, Chaiken said Bridges had been on the list of possible speakers since 2019, but she stopped making public appearances for several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Weinberg Center was finally able to reach an agreement with Bridges for the 2025 Frederick Speaker Series. The reaction to Bridges' inclusion in the Speaker Series has been overwhelmingly positive, Chaiken said. Local groups, as well as groups from Montgomery County and Baltimore, have expressed interest in attending the event, which was sold out at the time of publication. Chaiken says she and others at the Weinberg hope Bridges' speech will inspire audience members to become active in their own communities as society continues to contend with some of the same issues Bridges faced as a child. The speech could also shed light on Frederick's own history of racial segregation, Chaiken added. Patricia Gaither, 82, is part of that history. In 1958, she was part of a group of students who transferred from Lincoln High School, an all-Black institution, to Frederick High School, which until then had been entirely white. In 1960, Gaither became the first Black woman to graduate from Frederick High School. But it took until 2023 for Frederick County Public Schools to officially award her a Maryland High School Diploma. Gaither told 72 Hours that, until seeing this year's Frederick Speaker Series lineup, she had never heard Bridges' story. After reading about it, Gaither was impressed by how well Bridges kept her composure despite her young age — and the fact that she integrated William Frantz Elementary School all alone. Gaither saw some parallels between Bridges' and her own experience with racism in school. On one occasion, Gaither said some white classmates asked to have a piece of her hair so they could study it for a biology class. Another time, a teacher pulled Gaither aside to warn her that the class would be discussing Black history. Gaither could not recall if she and her fellow Black students, like Bridges, were jeered at on their way into Frederick High School that first day. "All I know is that I was scared," Gaither said. "As old as I am, I've been through it, and it should be gone. But it's still there. It still bothers me."
