Newtown Alive

Sheila Sanders has a sweet smile but

don’t mistake it for weakness. She organized a boycott of the Sarasota Federal

Bank as a third grader at Booker Elementary School. At that time, her class

learned mo…

Alberta Brown is known in the

Newtown community for her sumptuous southern-style Sunday throw downs – a big

roast seasoned to the bone, a large pot of collards, long pans of buttery yams,

melt in your m…

As an African American public health

nurse, the late Gwendolyn Atkins spent a lifetime healing bruises in the

community.

For nearly three decades, retired

nurse Gwen Atkins walked door to door in Newtow…

The late Elder Willie Mayes was

proud of the family church that began in his parent’s home with six members. He

began pastoring New Zion Primitive Baptist Church in 1984 and operated a cement

finishing …

School integration caused trauma and

fear for Carolyn Mason and rightly so.

 She lived in Overtown’s “Black

Bottom” located at the corner of 8th Street and Central Avenue in segregated

Sarasota. There wa…

The late Dr. Thomas Clyburn remembered

hearing the sound of his patent leather loafers on the floor of a Blue Bird bus

while stepping out of his seat and walking down the aisle to the front, then

down t…

Betty Jean Johnson is a voracious

reader who loves traveling to faraway places through books.

Her teacher Prevell Barber stoked an

appreciation for the written word. “I always had to read something in …

The memory of Sarasota Mayor Willie

Charles Shaw is razor sharp.

 He was reared in “Black

Bottom,” a swampy land in Newtown near Maple, Palmadelia and Goodrich Avenues.

There were no streetlights or curb…

At age eight, Mary’s family moved to

unit #10 in a public housing complex in Newtown. The differences between

conditions in Overtown where they lived before, and the new complex were like

night and day.

…

Estella Moore-Thomas owned Moore's Grocers when Black residents couldn’t shop at Publix and Winn Dixie. The Newtown business that still bears the family’s name supplied the community with groceries a…

Fredd Atkins’ story is a testament to the power that teenagers have to shake up institutional systems. He was reared in an Augustine Quarters “shotgun shack” located behind Horn’s Grocery Store on 6t…

“Ms. Vicky” is the founder of Dollar Dynasty, a nonprofit community outreach organization that doubles as a thrift store and a food distribution site for All Faiths Food Bank. She works to empower th…

John Rivers is the former president of the NAACP's Sarasota Branch. He moved to Sarasota from Mobile, Alabama in 1951 in search of work to support his family. Instead, Mr. Rivers found himself in the…

Glossie Atkins laughs easily and sometimes uncontrollably at the thought of fun times in Overtown. The daughter of Jay and Nettie Campbell was born in Ocala on December 3, 1917. With her sister Ruby …

Dr. Edward E. James II has been an active civil rights leader in the Newtown community since he was a college student at Florida A&M University. He was the producer and host of the local television s…

Mr. Harvin was born in Crescent City, Florida and moved to Sarasota in 1940 when he was five years old. He was the one of the first black bankers in Sarasota and he brought Salvation Army bell ringin…

Henrietta Gayles and Gwendolyn Atkins were the first and second African American public health nurse in the Sarasota. Interviewer Vickie Oldham and Mrs. Atkins traveled from Sarasota to Ocala, Florid…

Lymus Dixon Jr. will be missed in and outside of the Newtown community. Before his death, we captured a discussion of his life in Newtown, and the deep ties that his family had to William and Marie S…