Description
In 1960, while an 11th grade student at Tampa’s Middleton High, she participated in her first civil rights demonstration, the sit-ins at F.W. Woolworth, an event that would shape her entire life. As a college student at Florida A & M University, she was arrested twice in 1963 for civil disobedience and spent 14 days in jail. In 1964, she graduated with a B.S. in Political Science from Florida A & M University, and, in 1968, earned her J.D. from Florida A & M University, College of Law. After graduation, she worked as a legislative aide to State Representative Joe Lang Kershaw, the first Black person to serve in Tallahassee since Reconstruction, making her the first Black aide. Later, when no law firm would hire her, she took out a $1,000 bank loan and opened her solo practice of law. In 1991, she was a founder in the law firm of Stewart Joyner Jordan-Holmes Holmes. She became the first Black woman to practice law in Hillsborough County and the first Black lawyer in Polk County, FL.