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Coco Gauff grandmother first Black student at Florida school
Editor’s notice: This story initially revealed in 2023.
As Coco Gauff wows the tennis world and stirs delight in her Delray Seashore hometown, it is truthful to say she stands on the shoulders of her grandmother, who had a big function within the city and the nation’s historical past a long time in the past.
On the similar age Gauff turned professional, Yvonne Lee was breaking down the limitations of segregation. It was 1961. Lee was well-liked and sensible, had been named to the upcoming homecoming court docket and appeared ahead to being captain of the basketball crew at her all-Black Carver Excessive. However then the 15-year-old was given a frightening project.
Headed into the subsequent fall, she was to be the primary Black scholar to attend Delray Seashore’s all-white Seacrest Excessive Faculty.
Gauff has talked about her grandmother, Yvonne Lee Odom, and her expertise because the tennis star spoke out on points reminiscent of Black Lives Matter.
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How did U.S. Open, Wimbledon tennis star Coco Gauff’s grandmother develop into the primary Black scholar at Delray Seashore’s Seacrest Excessive?
That first day Lee went to Seacrest — Sept. 25, 1961 — safety was tight, for good purpose.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket had dominated in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Schooling that segregated faculties have been unconstitutional. Within the wake of the ruling, the NAACP started looking for Black college students who could be good candidates to attend all-white faculties.
By November of that 12 months, the primary, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, and her mom have been met with crowds yelling viscious slurs as they have been escorted by 4 federal marshals right into a New Orleans elementary college. New Orleans required Black college students to go an examination. Ruby did. Norman Rockwell in 1964 would have fun her braveness with a portray titled “The Drawback We All Stay With.”
Lee’s father, the late Rev. R.M. Lee, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Seashore, thought his daughter was a fantastic candidate — she was gifted in teachers in addition to sports activities.
“We have been attempting to get the highest children so they may not say we have been dumb,” he stated.
Lee had attended all-Black Carver Highschool her freshman 12 months. (Carver and Seacrest would later merge to develop into Atlantic Excessive Faculty for the 1970-71 college 12 months.) Lee was the primary scholar to combine a college in southern Palm Seashore County. When her Carver classmates discovered the place she could be going, they inspired her.
“We want you to do that,” they informed her.
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What occurred to Coco Grauff’s grandmother on the primary day at Seacrest Excessive?
Whereas college integration was prime information of the day, Lee downplayed the potential drama.
“I used to be simply going to high school,” she later informed The Palm Seashore Publish. “I wasn’t afraid. In the event that they informed me to combine, I used to be going to combine.”
She arrived at 10 a.m. when the opposite 1,000 college students have been already in school. Site visitors had been blocked outdoors. She met her scholar “buddy,” Paula Adams, who walked her to class hand-in-hand. Lee additionally spoke with principal Robert Fulton within the school lounge. He was a “good man,” she informed the Boca Information in 2002.
Right this moment, Fulton’s title adorns the college district headquarters, the Fulton-Holland Instructional Providers Middle. Sharing that billing with Fulton is Black legal professional Invoice Holland, who filed a lawsuit in 1956 when a West Palm Seashore elementary college refused to let his son attend.
Lee stated apart from college students gawking, her first day was uneventful. “They have been well mannered however apprehensive. This was the unknown.”
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At Carver, Lee had been chosen to guide the basketball crew, by coach C. Spencer Pompey. However at Seacrest, she agreed to not play any sports activities or trip the college bus resulting from security considerations — although her absence from sports activities did not final.
When Seacrest officers additionally directed her to make use of the lavatory within the school lounge, she refused.
After college that day, she stated, one scholar referred to as her the n-word.
Yvonne Lee Odom’s profitable profession in schooling, which she would go on to her kids
By the point Lee graduated in 1964, she had 4 Black classmates. She would go on to earn a level in elementary schooling from Florida Atlantic College and a grasp’s in studying from Nova College. She taught math at Carver Center Faculty and married her high-school sweetheart from Carver Excessive, Eddie Odom Jr. A number of of her kids additionally turned academics, together with Coco Gauff’s mother, Candi.
Her son, Eddie Odom III, turned down a draft decide from the Seattle Mariners to pursue a university schooling.
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Yvonne Odom and her husband based the Delray Seashore American Little League to increase the game to children in principally Black neighborhoods not lined by the opposite league.
“I discovered so much about her tales,” Gauff informed the Miami Herald in 2020.
Yvonne Lee Odom says she, too, discovered from her personal expertise.
“By attending Seacrest for 3 years, I discovered that persons are individuals, it doesn’t matter what. You’ve got obtained the nice, unhealthy and ugly, whatever the race.”
Editor’s notice: A earlier model of this story had the inaccurate 12 months of the Brown v. Board of Schooling determination.
Holly Baltz is the investigations editor at The Palm Seashore Publish. You possibly can attain her at [email protected].
