Getting her first dose of the coronavirus vaccine meant a lot to Lelia Clark, 77. She is one of the 55,916 Black people who have been vaccinated in Florida as of Wednesday, compared to 710, 885 white people.
Lelia Clark, 77, sat smiling in her car on a recent morning at the Strawberry Festival Fairgrounds in Plant City.
Clark, a resident of the nearby historic African-American neighborhood Bealsville, had just received her first dose of a coronavirus vaccine at the drive-through site run by Hillsborough County.
She had arrived an hour ahead of her appointment to try to get farther up in the line of hundreds of people eagerly waiting for their shots, and was parked in the monitoring area where people linger to make sure they respond to the vaccine smoothly.