Humphries: An exceptional community

At a new venue Monday, attendees of the community’s annual memorial celebration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. heard a new message - a first-hand account of how the civil rights movement championed by King touched points in the life of one of Apalachicola’s most famous educators.

In a captivating keynote address that blended poignant memories with a powerful call for preserving what he termed “American exceptionality,” Dr. Fredrick S. Humphries, president emeritus of Florida A & M University, told the gathering at the Fort Coombs Armory the county must continue to produce the level of top-notch African-American professionals that it has done for so many decades.

“Black people can’t look to white people to take care of them. Dr. Martin Luther King fought for the opportunity for you to stand up and give accountability,” he said, to the cheering audience. “There’s a responsibility here and it’s fueled most excellently by places like Apalachicola, because we produce in Apalachicola.

“You have to become the engineers, the computer scientists, the teachers and I don’t want to hear anybody say ‘I’m 36 years old and it’s past me.’ That’s the demand of this time. It’s never too late. Life is not over at 36,” said Humphries.

And to the young people, such as Franklin County High School senior Adreenah Wynn, who he singled out of the audience with a promise to help her with a scholarship to FAMU, the 76-year-old former chemistry professor was equally encouraging.

“Study hard in high school and prepare yourself to go wherever your talents will take you,” he said. “And you have to believe you can do it.”

Shifted to the Armory because the traditional location, the Love Center Church, was destroyed last year by fire, the celebration was coordinated by Apostle Shirley White, her first time hosting the event in almost 20 years.

“I’m here to serve you today,” she said, in her welcome following the opening processional of clergy and elected officials, led by youth from the Love Center and the school district’s SWAT anti-tobacco program. On hand were Superintendent Nina Marks, Apalachicola Mayor Van Johnson and Commissioner Brenda Ash, Sheila White-Martin, pastor of the Love Center Church, Barry Hand, pastor of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church; and Apostle Granville Croom, from the Love Center Church. The Rev. John Sink sent word that medical issues prevented him from attending.

Dr. King avoided “elitism, intolerance, class distinction and promotion” in his life, said Marks, in her greeting. “Take time to reflect on his vision. We must take responsibility for ourselves and have faith and trust in the things we can achieve.”

Both Hand and Croom drew the connection between Jesus, and the connection with that King’s actions, and others reactions to him. Hand cited Jesus’ injunction to his apostles. “He only told them to go when they were prepared,” he said. “Are these just rituals to you or are you prepared to go and make a difference? I believe we are ready to take that charge and make a difference.”

Croom, a survivor of heart surgery who thanked God in his opening sentence for sparing his life, remembered that when he lived in Miami, he had witnessed first-hand people’s angry reaction to King’s visit. “There were crowds of people shouting ‘We don’t want you here,’” he said. “We were still shouting at this man who was trying to make a difference.”

Britney Simmons read a letter from greetings from her twin sister Deanna, now on a two-year stint with the Peace Corps working in a small town in Ethiopia. Simmons shared her thoughts as she looked over the Nile, and reflected on the divine direction accorded Moses, and Dr. King.

She described an African landscape “full of wonder and beauty” complete with mountain goats perched on ledges and monkeys in the trees, and told of a “a dream that extends beyond the marching rallies and the speeches (to) her jumble little village.” Her greetings received a standing ovation.

From docks to a doctorate

Allyson Speed, son of the late Willie Speed, introduced the keynote speaker, who sat up front with Chauncey Ford and White. At the adjacent table sat 91-year-old Ella Speed, with daughter Gayle Ringo. The introduction was followed by musical selections “God Has Done Marvelous Things” from the choir of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, directed by Hand on keyboards.

Music was interspersed throughout the program, beginning with the singing of the National Anthem by Angeline Stanley, and “Lift Every Voice,” the Negro national anthem, by Angelita Stanley. White presented awards to both women, as well as Dolores Croom, for their dedication to the annual celebration.

Jhaki Davis sang “We Have Come This Far by Faith.” The city’s youth choir, with Adrian Hendels on the keyboards and Damien Davis directing, performed “Wake Up Everybody.” The Love Center’s Chosen Generation youth group performed a modern dance to “Now I Behold the Lamb.”

Humphries began the first portion of his remarks with reminiscences of his childhood in Apalachicola, where his parents and their five children lived after Humphries’ father came to work at Sheip’s Mill.

“I just wanted to tell the people of Apalachicola how special you are,” he said. “Apalachicola is a special place and you’all shouldn’t forget that. Don’t stop being special.”

Humphries recalled going down to the river, sitting on the docks and dreaming, thinking to himself “What’s out there in the world and what did it hold for me? It was a marvelous moment for me to get lost in.”

Humphries told of how he took heads off shrimp and earned 40 cents for filling a five-gallon tin with them; of unloading mullet boats for George Kirvin, and handling the snappers and the groupers. “The Greeks had that done,” he said.

On Saturday mornings. “I’d get on my knees and waxed their floors, and I listened to the Philadelphia Philharmonic. I learned to appreciate that by listening”” said Humphries, son of a domestic who sent all five of her children to college.

He told of a standoff with Mrs. Drinnan when the minimum wage went from 50 to 75 cents an hour, and she balked. And how grandfather Drinnan, a German native, was stunned when Humphries conversed with him after two years of college German. “It just knocked him off his feet I could speak German,” he said.

Humphries saved his money, bought a bicycle and carried the Panama City News Herald all over Apalachicola. “I delivered to everybody, until I started reading comic books, and I got lazy about delivering,” he said. “They would put comic books on the porch and it messed up my schedule.”

Humphries mentioned the accomplishments of several of his teachers by name, his friend Chauncey Ford, Charles Watson, the Wynn family, Clarence Williams, Skip Hunter, Cephus Rhodes, and several others. And Chester Rhodes, who scored the highest score in the state on his college entrance exams during a time of statewide segregation of testing.

“This was an important feeder county for outstanding students,” said Humphries, before injecting a brief political note.

 “The other remarkable thing about Apalachicola, and I sure hope you don’t change this, Apalachicola always voted Democratic,” he said. “We need Franklin County to always be Democratic.”

Academia during a turbulent time

After graduating from Holy Family and later Quinn High School, Humphries attended FAMU from 1953-57, at a time when King became a leader of the civil rights movement with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. The second boycott in the South was in Tallahassee in the spring of 1956, when Humphries was in his third year of college. Two students refused to sit in the back of a bus, the driver had them both arrested and that night the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in front of their home.

The following day, Humphries said. the president of the FAMU student body called for a boycott of public transportation “that we would walk rather than have these indignities inflicted upon us.”

The school’s football players rocked a city bus back and forth. “They literally shook the passengers off,” he said. “And it was on.”

Humphries met King when he came to Tallahassee that fall, and after spending two years in the Army, went on to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a degree in physical chemistry. The first place up North where King spoke was in Pittsburgh, and Humphries invited his future wife, the former Antoinette McTurner, to go to Forbes Field to hear the civil rights leader.

In 1966, when Humphries was teaching at the University of Minnesota, King visited St. Paul, and spoke for the first time of his opposition to the war in Vietnam, a political stance that Humphries said gave him pause.

“As long as the effort was focused on serving the rights of black people, no problem,” he said. “When you got into the wages of workers, the treatment of workers, and started talking about Vietnam being an unjust war, I knew there was going to be trouble.”

Two years later, King was assassinated, when Humphries was a FAMU chemistry professor. “All I could think of was we needed to do something before the students demanded it,” he said.

He went immediately to the home of the college president, and while he was there, the student body president knocked on the door, demanding a memorial service. “That night all hell broke loose in Tallahassee and it broke loose at FAMU,” he said.

The National Guard was ordered in, classes were cancelled, and a meeting was called on campus for “all leaders and unofficial leaders to talk about what we were going to do on the first day back.”

While not singling out political parties, Humphries took issue with those who decry that “American exceptionalism” is being threatened by President Obama’s policies, and used a favorite phrase of President Reagan’s to make his case. “Every day is morning in America. America is nothing but opportunity and talent that leis ahead,” he said. “We are exceptional in inventiveness, a vibrant, pulsating economy.

“Those who would do harm to Obama pronounce that all of those qualities of this nation are at stake,” said Humphries. “We’re going to live continually in a first-rate nation, and we are going to be the engineer to drive that.”

He urged community leaders, citing the city in particular, to look into allocating resources to train 10 professionals, including doctors, pharmacists and engineers, to ensure they have the funds to attend college and contribute to America’s future.

“You need a physics teacher? Then make one. Make them come out of this county, and then we, the county, will have done it,” he said. “That’s my challenge.”