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Remembering Thomas De La Saille Tucker's place in Pensacola history |
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Thursday, 21 February 2008 |
Thomas De La Saille Tucker didn't sail from Africa to America on a slave
ship.
Nearly 300 years after other Africans arrived in Pensacola with the
Spanish led by Don Tristan de Luna in 1559, Tucker came to the United States in
1856 to complete his education.
In 1865, the year the Civil War brought an
end to slavery, Tucker finished college in Ohio and began his teaching career.
Not long afterward, he moved to Kentucky, then to Louisiana, before finding his
way to Pensacola.
It was in Pensacola that Tucker made history.
In 1887,
Gov. Edward Perry named Tucker principal of the Normal School for Colored
Students. When the school was renamed Florida A&M College, Tucker became its
first president.
Largely unmentioned in Pensacola's history, Tucker is
immortalized in Tallahassee with a dormitory building, Tucker Hall, named in his
honor.
If not for the tireless efforts of Georgia Smith, a longtime educator
and local historian, I never would have known about Tucker's Pensacola
connection.
Smith said her study of Tucker's life stems from her interest to
know what plantation he came from.
"But he didn't come from a plantation,"
Smith said. "He was a free black man when he arrived."
Born in Sherbro,
Sierra Leone, in 1844, Tucker left at age 12 to make his mark in
America.
Until the War between the States, almost all black people in the
United States were slaves. From the beginning of slavery, Pensacola, Mobile and
New Orleans were Gulf Coast towns that had a considerable number of free blacks.
In Pensacola and New Orleans, half of the blacks were free 15 years before
Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Not only was there a
large contingent of freed blacks, many were prosperous property owners as
well.
When Tucker arrived in Pensacola in 1869 as an attorney, he immediately
became a part of the black elite.
Smith said Tucker chose to live in
Pensacola because it was one of the few places he could live, work and prosper
as a black man in the United States.
While living in Pensacola, Tucker and
Gov. Perry became friends. They had law offices on Palafox Street.
According
to the 1885 Webb's Pensacola Directory, Perry lived on the corner of Palafox and
Wright streets. His home still stands there today. Tucker lived on Davis and
Belmont streets.
Tucker blended in well among free blacks in Pensacola
because, like them, he was never a slave. And secondly, he had European and
African blood lines like the Spanish-African Pensacola Creoles.
Unlike the
Pensacola Creoles, Tucker's life and family history are recorded and
well-documented in Pensacola and at Florida A&M University.
Even though
his link to Pensacola rarely is mentioned, Tucker is an important figure in
Florida's history who should not be overlooked during Black History Month or
forgotten in the annals of American history.
Remembering
Thomas De La Saille Tucker's place in Pensacola history | Local News |
pnj.com
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