Before the Seminoles: Football at Florida State College, 1902-1904

When Coach W. W. Hughes looked out at his football team in the autumn of 1902, he was under no pressure to improve on the previous year’s season. Recently hired to teach Latin at Florida State College (FSC), Professor Hughes had played football at Vanderbilt University and, when he arrived in Tallahassee, had volunteered to coach FSC’s fledgling team. Practicing on the newly graded gridiron west of campus (a renovated cow pasture), the FSC Eleven prepared for their first game against a city team from nearby Bainbridge, Georgia. Hughes, pleased with the team’s progress, anticipated success

From Camp Hill to Harvard Yard: The Early Years of Claude D. Pepper

Claude D. Pepper was born into economically deprived and socially humble circumstances on September 8, 1900, in Chambers County, Alabama. He grew up acquiring the traditional values of hard work, delayed gratification, Christian moral teachings, and, most importantly, a belief in cooperation and communitarian responsibility. These ethical standards shaped his personal life and propelled him into one of the most longstanding and productive political careers in American history. Together with contemporary liberal politicians from the South, such as Alabama congressman Carl Elliott, Senator and later Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Senator John J. Sparkman, Senator J. William Fulbright, and Lyndon B. Johnson, Pepper’s early life experiences pushed him toward supporting an expansive role for the state in areas such as health care, education, women’s rights, and regulation of the economy to solve the country’s political, social, and economic problems

Everybody Votes for Gilchrist : The Florida Gubernatorial Campaign of 1908

The sun was breaking through in Tallahassee on January 5, 1909, as groups of people filled the streets excitedly awaiting the inauguration of Florida’s new governor. The capitol was adorned with red, white, and blue bunting, and crowds had gathered on the grounds to watch the ceremonial festivities. At 12:00 P.M., Albert W. Gilchrist recited the oath officially accepting the office that he had sought so long and hard. Stepping to the podium, he could see hundreds of people waiting to hear his inaugural address. Many wondered: will Gilchrist be progressive? Will he pursue liberal policies or will his administration be a throw back to the reactionary nineteenth-century Bourbon days