DeSoto rejected a plan to regulate developers’ tree removal, but activists have started a petition
Mayor Rachel Proctor voted against changing an ordinance because of concerns that it could hinder development in the city.
DeSoto resident Kelly Wittmann provided this photo and others to the city council in 2019 showing what she referred to as a tree cemetery near the intersection of South Cockrell Hill and West Wintergreen roads. Residents spent months advocating for the tree preservation ordinance the council rejected in March 2021.(Kelly Wittmann / Courtesy)
The DeSoto City Council recently voted not to enact an ordinance regulating tree removal, but residents aren’t giving up.
School board may acknowledge unjust firing of two Brevard civil rights martyrs Bailey Gallion, Florida Today
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Decades after their murders, two Black Mims educators and civil rights activists are on the cusp of having a historic injustice undone Tuesday when the school board considers restoring their status as Brevard County teachers.
A resolution up for discussion at Tuesday’s Brevard County School Board meeting would name Harry Moore and his wife Harriette teachers emeritus and declare that they were unjustly fired in 1946. It also provides for an elementary and secondary school curriculum in their name and an annual trip for 8th grade students to the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex, pending funding and the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions.
In 1946, their fight to better the lives of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South cost them their jobs. Six years later, it cost them their lives.
Today, Harry and Harriette Moore a pair of Mims educators sometimes called the first martyrs of the modern civil rights movement are still broadly unknown, even in the county they called home.
Nearly 70 years after their deaths, that may finally change.
The Brevard Federation of Teachers, with help from the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex, are working with Brevard Public Schools to incorporate teaching of the Moores into the school curriculum, ensuring their place among other civil rights heroes in the minds of Brevard students.