Pioneer honored after 60 years
UF’s first black student, now 87, recalls struggles on campus.
Sixty years ago this fall, Orlando native George Starke paid $75 cash to enroll in the University of Florida’s law school and stepped onto campus, the lone black man among 12,000 white students.
For several days, 50 or 60 news reporters trailed Starke. He was the first person of color to attend UF in its 105-year history. The press watched his every move and later reported bizarre details, including two trips to the infirmary for treatment of his sinuses.
Yeah, seriously. Turns out that black people have allergies, too. Stop the presses.
Perhaps the excessively snoopy coverage was a thorough attempt to document the sea change in society marked by Starke’s enrollment in the state’s premier university. Or maybe it was just the expectation of trouble on the campus from those who would have stopped civil rights for blacks in a Jim Crow state.
There was no trouble, however. Starke was chosen well. A softspoken fellow who sidestepped controversy, Starke was the son of a Sanford physician and the librarian at Jones High School. He already held a business degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta.
An Air Force veteran, Starke was allowed to enroll in UF thanks to Virgil Hawkins, a black educator from rural Okahumpka in Lake County who forced the desegregation of the school. Hawkins wasn’t Starke’s classmate because the university had agreed to integrate — but only if
Hawkins wouldn’t apply to go there. His nine-year fight to gain admission to the UF law school — since his rejection in 1949 — was over.
Desegregation was his gift to other people of color.
Now 87 and semi-retired in Clermont, Starke avoided eating in the school cafeteria, didn’t go to social functions, skipped football games, deliberately didn’t stroll the campus and almost never studied in the library. He became the invisible student.
At Thanksgiving break, university officials told Starke not to drive straight home to Orlando, a route that would have taken him through the remote Ocala National Forest and Lake County, where notorious racist Sheriff Willis McCall was still in his glory. So he took a roundabout way home. Starke lasted a year and a half. “If George H. Starke Jr. proved one thing in his three-semester stay here, he proved that the faith and confidence placed on the maturity of the UF student body was well-deserved,” a news story in the student newspaper, the Alligator, declared when it reported his departure.
As usual, it was all about the white people, not about Starke’s achievement. White people were wonderful because they refrained from beating hell out of him due to his color.
Nobody bothered to ask why Starke, who became a well-to-do Wall Street investment banker and energy consultant, dropped out of school. And he never talked about it until now.
“The pressure was rather substantial,” Starke recalled, in typical calm understatement. “The pressure was so strong, a grating kind of pressure.”
He knew he needed to make high grades. Knew that he couldn’t offend anyone. Knew he must lay low.
Then one day in his third semester at UF, he walked confidently into a classroom to take a test. He had studied and was well prepared for it.
“My mind went total blank,” he said. “When I left, that paper was blank — like my mind was.”
After that, he said “There wasn’t any point in going on.”
Starke said he planned to return to UF but never did. He said he loved the university — even though the school had opened the bookstore on the Sunday before registration to avoid him mixing with whites. Even though the student law society wouldn’t admit him.
Starke, sitting among the objets
d’art in his home, said he stewed for two decades about his failure.
“I didn’t mention it for 20 years. It took me that long to get out of the wilderness,” Starke said. “I was very upset, primarily at myself. It should have worked out.”
Things didn’t work out for Hawkins at UF, either.
After his battle with UF ended, Hawkins, a longtime school teacher and principal, went on to earn a law degree in 1965 from the New England School of Law in Boston. But Florida wouldn’t let him sit for the Florida Bar exam because the school wasn’t accredited. Eleven years later, the Florida Supreme Court decided that Hawkins had been treated unfairly and should be given a license to practice — without taking the test.
But giving a man the right to practice law so long after his graduation and without experience turned out to be ill advised. Nothing like a setup for failure.
Hawkins mishandled a case, pleaded no contest to misappropriating money from a client’s account and in 1985 resigned from the bar in disgrace. He died in 1988 after a stroke and kidney failure, tired and still poor. Heroes don’t come in nice neat little packages, do they? They’re flawed humans, just like the rest of us.
Next week, the contributions of Hawkins and Starke will be recognized in Gainesville.
Starke and some of Hawkins’ family — they, too, are aging now and in poor health — will attend an open forum on desegregation at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Reitz Student Union. The Reitz building is named for Wayne Reitz, who was president of the university from 1955 to 1967. He fought to keep Hawkins from attending, but after his retirement phoned Starke and asked him to become involved with university affairs. Eventually Starke served as director of the alumni organization and was named as the UF Distinguished Alumnus of 2009.
Then from 3-4:30 p.m. Nov. 7, “An Event to Remember: Commemorating 60 Years” will be held at Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom at the law school. It will include reflections from current students and alumni along with a tribute to Starke.
Also, an exhibit titled “The Legacy of Virgil Hawkins: The Struggle for Equality at the University of Florida” is on view through Dec. 18 at the Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center at the Levin College of Law, 309 Village Drive, Gainesville. Center hours are 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Finally, the efforts of both Hawkins and Starke are being acknowledged.
It’s been a long time coming.