The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 408

A FEW MOMENTS en. Carrie Meek She lettered in track and field and has been a mover ever since By Jan Florence Godown i nee, before she ever became a barrier-breaking senator, Carrie Pittman got called on the carpet for wearing short dresses to work at Bethune-Cookman College in I 4 "I have been very fortunate in the people I have known," says Meek, settling in to her office chair to consider what has helped shape her world view. "I played basketball, just playing around you understand, at school with Althea Gibson, who went on to become the first black Wimbledon Tennis winner. "And I worked for Mrs. Bethune, in Daytona, who was a very regal woman.

Mrs. Bethune was the first feminist I had a chance to know, only we didn't call it that back then. She brought Madame Nehru and Eleanor Roosevelt you know Eleanor Roosevelt was her friend to campus to speak to us and that made a big impression on me. "I was neighbors with Virgil Hawkins in Daytona. Virgil Hawkins is the one man who opened up higher education for African-Americans in Florida.

He always had this idea he wanted to go to law school at the University of Florida, and they wouldn't let him in because he was black. He got hate mail for wanting to do that, pictures of gorillas pasted on letters, the most awful things. I saw them. "Now we have the Virgil Hawkins Scholarship, and these fine young scholars come through here. And I meet them and it makes me feel good." Miami is one topic today that is not so good.

"Miami is in a sort of quagmire," says the Senator. Her city is under an economic boycott for its snub last year of Nelson Mandella and for brutality incidents against blacks. "African-Americans think the clock is being turned back to the era before the 1960s in Miami, in terms of the treatment of blacks," she says. "There is a lot of Black pride in Miami. We've got to get some respect.

The boycott is hurting Miami, but we figure this is better than throwing rocks or firebombs. It's a peaceful way of thoughtful protest. But we are sitting on a timebomb." She says this while seated before two large framed color portraits. One is of Bethune. The other is of an American bald eagle, and I ask her about it.

"I believe in the American eagle," Meek says. "I'm proud of that. I'm an American patriot and I believe in it. Yes, I do." Jan Florence Godotvn is a Florida writer. Daytona Beach.

"I laughed, because it wasn't the first time I had heard about my short skirts, but I said, 'Mrs. Bethune, I will be sure to lower the Meek has always understood the meaning of compromise. In 1948, the issue was hemlines, arousing the ire of her employer legendary educator Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1991, the issue is an economic boycott of Meek's racially tense community, Miami. Today, I'm the one who compromises.

No photographs please, not today, because the senatorial hair got mussed up in flight from Miami to Tallahassee. Why not use an old photograph anyway, suggests Meek, born April 29, 1926, a vibrant woman who shouldn't worry about photographs she doesn't look to be in her 60s. She acts younger than she is, too a 5-foot-5 dynamo seeming in perpetual motion, fast-stepping through the Capitol and Senate labyrinth to check in with colleagues, check on a scheduled meeting, schmooze here and laugh there, briefly, before moving on. A lettered track-and-field athlete at Florida University, Meek spent 31 years as a teacher and administrator at the college level, marrying and divorcing twice, raising three children, involving herself in volunteer community work with the disadvantaged. "I was from a family of 12 and my mother made all our clothes," she says of her Tallahassee childhood.

"We were poor, but we didn't know it." She was raised during the Depression, the youngest child in the Willie and Carrie Pittman family. Now her Senate office suite holds the trappings of political good times. There are framed photographs of Meek with Lawton Chiles when he was a young U.S. Senator, and of her with Tip O'Neill, the former U.S. House Speaker.

There are small gifts from special interest groups, such as the flowery and ribbony ladies' summer straw hat In 1982, Meek became the first black woman in the Florida Senate, associated press given to all women legislators many sessions ago, and a miniature Seminole Indian doll, and many plaques for distinguished service. When Gwen Cherry, the first black woman to serve in the Florida Legislature, died in 1979, Meek won election to Cherry's seat in the House of Representatives. She was 53, an age when some people begin considering retirement. It was Meek's first time as an elected official. She joined a body that in 1828, meeting in territorial session, passed an act classifying Africans in bondage here as personal property, not human beings.

In 1982, 154 years later, Meek made history as the first black woman serving in the Florida Senate, winning election in a district whose boundaries were drawn up to guarantee minority representation. She ran unopposed, and she has won re-election, unopposed, ever since. 'African-Americans think the clock is being turned back to the era before the 1 960s in Miami, in terms of the treatment of Sen. Carrie Meek 6 FLORIDA MAGAZINE APRIL 7, 1991.