C Bette Wimbish

Early life and education

C. Bette Wimbish was born as Carrie Elizabeth Davis in Perry, Florida, to Ola Mae and Tom Davis. Her mother was a housekeeper; her father, Tom, dealt with an issue of alcoholism and left soon after his daughter’s birth. She graduated from Gibbs High school and soon applied for school at University of Pennsylvania. However, Wimbish was turned down as a result of her race. Discouraged but determined, Wimbish began working towards a degree at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, which is now known as Florida A&M. She began college at the age of 16 with the intention of becoming a doctor. While attending school, she met Ralph Wimbish, another aspiring physician. They married on November 12, 1944. In the same year, she received her bachelor's degree from Florida A&M. She began her career as a physical education teacher, while her husband pursued studies in medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

The young couple dealt with issues discrimination and harassment as a result of their civil rights efforts. They attempted to build a house in Tampa in a predominantly white area on 22nd street in 1948. In moving to this area, they hoped to find a suitable place to raise their daughter; however, the house burned to the ground the night before the family moved in. The cause of the fire was never discovered although it is commonly believed to have been the result of an attack by the Ku Klux Klan. Subsequently, the family moved to St. Petersburg, in 1953. Dr. Ralph Wimbish set up a medical office on 16th Street near the current Tropicana Field.

Later in her life, she shifted interests from pursuing a medical career to a new passion in law. She applied to Stetson Law School but was turned down due to the controversies of her early civil rights battles. She then applied to Florida A&M's law school and graduated in just two years. She passed the bar exam in the upper third but still had difficulties finding work due to widespread discrimination in the South.

Political activism

When Ralph Wimbish was elected branch president of the Saint Petersburg NAACP in 1959, the couple became more involved in the desegregation of schools. Six years after the Brown Decision, St. Petersburg students were still attending racially separate schools. Instead of complying to desegregate the schools, the Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction built new segregated schools that were supposed to reinforce the idea of "separate but equal". However, the county rejected black applicants to these new all-white institutions. As a result, the Wimbishes developed a new political approach to school desegregation. Since they could not force the school board the comply with the Brown Decision, they attempted to first integrate the school board.

In 1960, C. Bette Wimbish decided to run for an at-large seat on the Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction. A black candidate had never run for a countywide political office in Pinellas at the time. With her degree from Florida A&M and her experience educating in the Hillsborough County School System, Bette was well-qualified to challenge the white hegemony in politics. Although Wimbish knew she had little chance of winning, she held high hopes of being heard. Her platform centered on school improvements rather than direct references to race. The decision to run was particularly fueled by the district's solution to the overcrowding of black high schools not as integration, but rather the creation of a new black high school in a small area of South Saint Petersburg. Although she did not win the election, she received 10,000 votes in an area with only 3,800 blacks.

C. Bette Wimbish and her husband did not give up. They continued to stay involved in numerous attempts at desegregation of schools and lunch counters. C. Bette was involved in two days of sit-ins in early March 1960. Wimbish and Gibbs Jr. College student Theodore Floyd sat in at the William Henry lunch counter with the hopes of encouraging city leader to form biracial committees. However, the black activists were refused service and the lunch counters immediately closed to avoid potential controversies. In Florida, proprietors operating public accommodations were given the right to serve anyone that they pleased. No local or state laws existed that specifically prevented white establishments from serving blacks.(7) Although there was no direct improvements, boycotts and other protests finally led to the peaceful desegregation of many of Saint Petersburg's lunch counters by early 1961. The Wimbishes continued to fight against overcrowded black facilities and the district's listless solutions to problems facing black students.

Desegregation of the schools did not begin until September 1962, when black children were being integrated in small numbers. Blacks continued to receive little cooperation from the district and did not see any real progress until the NAACP took the issue through the court system. As a result of the case, 6700 black children attended desegregated schools during the 1966-67 term, as opposed to 739 students two years before. Businesses also began to see some desegregation. During the Christmas season of 1960, Bette and her husband boycotted local businesses and encouraged residents to buy from catalogs instead of city's segregated stores. As a result, Governor LeRoy Collins encouraged biracial committees to find solutions. After some time, local business leaders and the St Petersburg Times realized that a massive resistance movement against desegregation would jeopardize Pinellas County's drawing power as a popular tourist destination and end up costing them.

In addition to their political efforts to end discrimination, the Wimbishes opened their home on 15th Avenue S to visiting black athletes and entertainers that could not get hotel rooms due to segregation laws. Over the 1950s and early 1960s, the family housed famous people including musicians such as Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie and athletes Jesse Owens, Elston Howard and Althea Gibson. However, in 1961, her husband told the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals that he would no longer find separate housing for black players. The Yankees moved the team to Fort Lauderdale without a fuss. However, Saint Petersburg locals responded by burning a cross in the Wimbishes yard, in attempts to "send a message" to Bette and her husband. The Wimbish family also housed the Freedom Riders during their visit in 1961. When the student activists began to ride South to fight the segregated interstate bus services, the Riders made several trips to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Wimbish for rest and recreation. They rode on segregated buses of the city of Saint Petersburg without incident unlike their experiences in Alabama and Mississippi.

Life after law school

At the young age of 45, Bette's husband Ralph died from a heart attack during her last two weeks of law school at Florida A&M. She then returned to Saint Petersburg and joined Minnis and Williams Law Firm in 1968 to specialize in family law. Eventually, she turned her husband's medical office into her own law office. She then began to help black sanitation workers fight against unequal pay. Although unsuccessful, her stubbornness and determination inspired many people of the community to take part in the movement. The strike also gave her a platform for a run for City Council in the spring of 1969.

As a result, C. Bette Wimbish was elected to the City Council in 1969. She defeated her incumbent, Martin Murray, by promoting a responsive government enabling equal-opportunity hiring practices for minorities. She then served as vice-mayor from 1971 until 1973. As vice-mayor, was able to restore the cities water system and institute one of the nation's first mandatory seat belt laws. She also fought unsuccessfully to have black real-estate owners compensated for past discrimination. The election served as a historical marker that signified the ever-changing pace of the United State’s continuous battle for human rights.

In 1975, Bette was appointed assistant secretary of commerce by governor Reuben Askew and moved back to Tallahassee, becoming the second-highest-ranking woman in state government. She was then appointed deputy secretary of commerce. After losing state Legislature in a Tallahassee district in 1982, to return to Saint Petersburg to take on Bill Young Bill Young for Congress in 1988.

She campaigned issues of human rights and equality in many areas including: women's rights, social stratification, and educational justice. She ran unsuccessful campaigns for the state Senate and Congress centering her ideas around environmental crisis and drug education. Wimbish stressed the toxic affects of contaminated ground water, acid rain, and the decreasing ozone layer. She also campaigned her efforts to establish day care for working mothers and equal opportunity for students to participate in loan programs. Although she received 65,000 votes, she did not win the election.

Bette's mother died in 1991 and her son died 14 months later at the age of 32. As a result, she settled down and took a job as local counsel for the Florida Department of Social Services while arbitrating labor law cases for the federal government before her retirement in 2003.

Death and legacy

C. Bette Wimbish died on Monday, November 30, 2009, at the age of 85. She was a celebrated member of the community and dearly missed by many. Her son Ralph describes her as a “fearlesss political animal who never really got to fulfill her ambition: simply improve the quality of life for the disadvantaged, senior citizens and people of color.”

She was a member of numerous organizations including: the Florida Bar Association, the Florida Government Bar Association, American Bar Association, and the National Bar Association, National Council of Negro Women, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and National Urban League. She was recognized in Who's Who Among Black Americans, Who's Who in American Politics, Florida Women of Distinction, and Outstanding Women of Florida.