OKEECHOBEE — It was 70 years ago this month, on May 17, 1954, that the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Brown v Board of Education ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This meant that students of color would no longer be forced to attend Black-only schools.
However, despite this ruling, things did not change much in many small towns across the United States and especially in the South, including in the town of Okeechobee, Florida.
Sarah Alexander was a young Black woman, born and raised in Alabama, who earned her teaching credentials at the Alabama State University in Montgomery.
Alexander taught in Alabama for two years before applying for a job in Okeechobee. “I didn’t know where I was going. I applied and had erroneously assumed that all of Florida was like a paradise with orange trees on the side of the road. My mother was a very courageous woman, and she encouraged me, so I wrote letters applying. That’s how it was done in that day.”
In 1961, Principal Daniel Delagall offered her a job at the Douglas Brown School.
“The schools were still segregated when I came,” she said.
She was very impressed by the salary schedule though, because in Alabama, the teachers were paid much less. “I was offered the job over the telephone. I resigned from my job and drove down here sight unseen. Had I not met my husband here that first year, I would have went back home after that school year ended,” she said.
When integration did finally begin in Okeechobee, it started slowly, and they wanted one teacher to go to the high school. Alexander volunteered.
“I knew anything had to be better than the segregated school here at Douglas Brown. The conditions under which we taught were deplorable. We had old textbooks, second hand. We had a room designated as a library but no books in the library except two or three, and they were old. We had a science lab with no science equipment. We had ditto stencils to use for tests. We got one ream of mimeograph paper to use for the year, and we charged the students to run off papers every time we made a test for them.”
She even brought her own personal typewriter into the school so her students could learn to type. She said when she went to the high school, she was shocked to see a room full of typewriters for those students to use.
“We had ditto paper galore! It was just amazing! Like night and day.”
It was not easy being the first Black teacher in the system, she said. There was a lot of discrimination. Many were promoted ahead of her. At one point, she was hospitalized for surgery and made the decision she was going back to school to get her Master’s Degree, and she did. She got a degree in administration, but she found that the only Black people in administration were coaches, so she applied in other counties.
This was the time when computers were being introduced, she explained, and she decided to teach herself as much as she could about Word processing and excel. It turned out she had a gift for this, and excelled in this area. She applied at Palm Beach State College and was hired. She worked there for six years and learned to write grants, wrote surveys and learned everything there was to know about business and computers.
She said Danny Mullins was eager to have her back in Okeechobee and brought her back as a consultant. "He was a good man. He created a position for me." After taking stock of the supplies they had to work with in the school system, she recommended they buy new computers, and they did.
In 1994, she was hired as assistant principal at Yearling Middle School, where she served for two years.
After two years, she was made principal of the alternative school, the Level 10 School and the Level Six School. Realizing she was not going to be offered a position in one of the other schools, and this might be her only opportunity, she took the job. She spent two years travelling back and forth between the three schools.
“I would come home at night and just cry, but I took it like a soldier.”
Finally, she was promoted to head up the GEAR reading program and served over that for one year before retiring in 2001.
Retirement did not slow her down much as she then went on to teach at Indian River State College as an adjunct. “I taught them about Word, Excel, the programs that would give them skills that would help them enter the workforce.” She did this for about six years before retiring for good.
Alexander, who is now 87, said she thanks her faith and her determination for helping her to stand.
“God has blessed me.”
She has three children and two grandchildren.
