‘Red Mabel’
When Mabel Norris Reese began covering Mount Dora news in the late 1940s, her reports reflected an idyllic view of Lake County. She focused on city council votes, Little League scores and profiles of snowbirds who arrived each year to take to the shuffleboard courts and soak up the sunshine.
But that all changed with the case of the Groveland Four — a turning point for Reese. In the 1950s and ‘60s, she courageously opposed segregation and injustice, at peril to her career and her safety, as well as her family’s. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King tells the story in his book “Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found,” which brought renewed attention to Reese’s career and importance.
On March 18, the Orange County Regional History Center will honor the determined journalist, who died in 1995, in an online event titled “Mabel Norris Reese: Fearless Voice for Truth,” a celebration of Women’s History Month presented in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Orange County.
In the Groveland case, Reese initially accepted Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall’s charges against the four young Black men accused of rape (now all exonerated). But after McCall shot two of them while they were in his custody, killing one, Reese resolved to report civil rights violations, especially the injustices McCall inflicted on Lake County’s Black residents.
In May 1954, she wrote an editorial supporting the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, urging tolerance and “a gradual move toward school desegregation,” as King writes. In those days of anti-Communist fearmongering, McCall took
ROBERT W. KELLEY, THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION (FROM GILBERT KING, “BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN”)
to calling her “Red Mabel.” But that was nothing compared with what was to come, as historian Tana Porter writes in the forthcoming issue of the History Center’s magazine, “Reflections from Central Florida.”
When Reese persisted in her investigations and reporting, “she found dead fish dumped on her porch, her house was firebombed twice, and the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in her yard and poisoned her dog,” Porter writes. Reese found “KKK” painted on her vandalized newspaper office.
Even as McCall and his allies tried to destroy her, Reese drew praise and notice for her reporting in the 1950s, Porter notes, receiving “30 national newspaper awards for her stories attacking racial discrimination, including the first Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courage in journalism, presented in 1956 at the National Conference of Weekly Newspaper Editors.”
Later in her life, Reese spent 20 years on the staff of the Daytona Beach News-Journal, “continuing her crusade for justice for people who had no voice,” Porter writes. “Her reporting and editorials led to her appointment to the Florida Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, investigating employment opportunities for Blacks in the 1960s.”
A colleague at the News-Journal called Reese “a very fierce reporter in
the face of physical and mental intimidation,” Porter notes. “If reporters won’t go out and investigate abuses, fight for causes, who will?” Reese herself once said.
Honoring Reese
The Orange County Regional History Center honors Mabel Norris Reese in an online Women’s History Month Celebration at noon on March 18. Presented in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Orange County, the program highlights the significance of women’s contributions to history and also underlines the importance of determined local journalists in defending democracy.
Featured speakers include longtime journalists Lauren Ritchie and Jackie Brockington; Pam Schwartz of the History Center; Gary McKechnie, who has led the effort to honor Reese in Mount Dora; and Orange County League Co-President Gloria Pickar.
Tickets are $25 and benefit the Historical Society of Central Florida. Visit TheHistoryCenter.org/event/ womens-history-month-celebration for details and reservations.