Bartow Youth Football wins diversity award
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
On hand to enjoy the annual Diversity Awards luncheon are (from left) Charlene Richardson-Brinson, Wylinda Johnson, Bobbie McKennie and Gussie Pearsall.
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
Sharing the emcee honors were S.L. Frisbie (left) and Warner Squire. "Isolation makes you less tolerant," said Squire, who called for continued support from people who really believe in diversity. "Those who choose to opt out, miss out."
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
Mayor Leo Long reads the proclamation declaring Bartow a community that supports diversity. Looking on is Gloria Washington, chairwoman of the Community Relations Committee.
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
Gloria Washington (left) and Jerome Corbett (second from left) present members of Bartow Youth Football with the Diversity Award to an organization.
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
Bartow City Manager George Long is the recipient of the Individual Diversity Award by Jerome Corbett and Gloria Washington.
PHOTO BY STEVE STEINER
"Diversity is leadership driven, not a set of laws," declares keynote speaker Ernest L. Joe Jr., Senior Director of Divesity Managment for Polk County Public Schools.
This year’s annual Bartow Community Relations Committee Diversity Luncheon, held Wednesday, Sept. 19, at the Bartow Civic Center was an occasion to share thoughts how far both the community and the nation as a whole has progressed in race relations. It was also the opportunity to remember and reflect upon the past, beginning with the recounting by emcee S.L. Frisbie of the 1954 unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court put to rest the notion of “separate yet equal,” declaring that was not the situation at all in segregated public schools.
Frisbie related several anecdotes, from younger years in which he had been verbally attacked by his peers for declaring blacks (called colored people then) should not be treated differently because of their race, as well as an incident years later when he took a stance opposite that of a “largely black organization.” In that incident, a member of the organization publicly denounced Frisbie at a city commission meeting, calling him a racist. To this day, Frisbie resents having been called that.
