Legacy Of Influential Hillsborough Black Leaders Remembered

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FL — Hillsborough County has a rich history of influential African Americans that dedicated themselves to making the county a better place to live and work.

During Black History Month in February, county commissioners paid tribute to a few of those leaders who helped shape Hillsborough County.

Among them is Queen Miller. For more than six decades, this tireless advocate for those in need has worked to provide social and health services, and to deter crime.

The "Queen Miller Suite" was dedicated in her honor at the Lee Davis Center on North 22nd Street in East Tampa.

Other honorees included:

• Alfred Beal, a successful farmer who provided financial support that enabled freed slaves and their families to keep their properties and sustain a small community in far eastern Hillsborough County. He also donated land for a school, church and cemetery. In 1923, the community was renamed Bealsville.
• Janie Wheeler Bing ran a rooming house in Plant City for African Americans during segregation. It opened in the late 1920s, closed in 1970, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Bing's son, E.L. Bing Jr., helped write the proposal for federal grants to implement Hillsborough County's desegregation plan in the 1960s, and served as a Hillsborough County commissioner in the 1980s.
• George and Doretha Edgecomb were influential in a variety of fields. George, who died of leukemia at age 33 in 1976, was Hillsborough County's first Black prosecutor and judge. His name adorns the George Edgecomb Courthouse, the George Edgecomb Bar Association and the George Edgecomb Society at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center. Doretha, a lifelong educator, has served as a teacher, reading supervisor, drug prevention coordinator, principal and three-term member of the Hillsborough County School Board.

• C. Blythe Andrews Jr. was a community activist and chairman of the Florida Sentinel-Bulletin, exposing issues "in the long shadow cast by Jim Crow," said Tampa's then-Mayor Pam Iorio at the newsman's funeral in January 2010. The family-owned semiweekly newspaper has focused on Black residents and interests for more than 75 years.
• A nurse during segregation, Clara Frye cared for ill African Americans and founded the Clara Fry Negro Hospital. The hospital no longer exists, but a ninth-floor wing of Tampa General Hospital is named in her honor. A bust in her likeness is among those of prominent Hillsborough County residents along the Tampa Riverwalk.

• Sylvia Rodriguez Kimball was the first Black woman elected to a major office in Hillsborough County in 1990. She served two terms on the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, including a stint as chairwoman. Kimball was an inaugural inductee to the Hillsborough County Women's Hall of Fame.
• Isadore "Billy" Reed was the cofounder of Belmont Heights Little League. For decades, Reed was a mentor to thousands of inner-city young people. As coach of Hillsborough High School's baseball team, he helped mold the careers of professional athletes including Dwight Gooden, Gary Sheffield, Carl Everett and others.