by Marvin Dunn (Author)
I know Florida. I was born in Florida during the reign of Jim Crow and have lived to see black astronauts blasted into the heavens from Cape Canaveral. For three quarters of a century I have lived mostly in Florida. I have seen her flowers and her warts. This book is about both. People of African descent have been in Florida from the arrival of Ponce de Leon in 1513, yet our presence in the state is virtually hidden. A casual glance at most Florida history books depict African Americans primarily as laborers who are shown as backdrops to white history. The history of blacks in Florida has been deliberately distorted, omitted and marginalized. We have been denied our heroes and heroines. Our stories have mainly been left untold. This book lifts the veil from some of these stories and places African Americans in the very marrow of Florida history.
Author Biography
Dr. Marvin Dunn taught in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University for 34 years, retiring as chairman of the department in 2006. He earned his PhD in psychology from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He co-authored The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds (1984), with Bruce Porter, and authored Black Miami in the Twentieth Century (1997), and The Beast In Florida: A History of Anti-Black Violence (2012). He has directed three documentary films: Black Seminoles in the Bahamas: The Red Bays Story; Murder on the Suwannee River: The Willie James Howard Story; and Rosewood Uncovered.