St. Pete Bar's traveling exhibit showcases history of African-American lawyers in Pinellas County.

• Author: Williams, Toyca
• Position: St. Petersburg Bar Ass'n - Florida

The St. Petersburg Bar Association is on a mission to diversify.

On that journey, members of the bar association's Diversity Committee have assembled a public exhibit that highlights a period in its history that supported exclusion--a period when African-Americans were not accepted as members.

Titled "A Legacy of Courage, Vision & Hope," the exhibit chronicles African-Americans in the legal profession and examines how the profession treated minorities throughout history. The exhibit was launched in August and was initially displayed at the Florida Holocaust Museum.

It will travel around the state to courthouses, law schools, high schools, libraries, and other venues. In May, it will join the national civil rights exhibit in Tallahassee during Law Week.

"One of the goals of the St. Petersburg Bar is to encourage African-American attorneys to practice in Pinellas County," said Eric Ludin, past president of the St. Petersburg Bar Association and creator of the Diversity Committee. "We're hoping that by confronting our past we'll make a difference for the future."

Ludin said he noticed a great disparity in comparing the number of African-American lawyers who are members of the association to the number of African-American lawyers in the county.

The St. Petersburg Bar Association has a little more than 1,000 members. Since addressing this concern, the number of African-Americans members in the bar association has doubled to about 14.

Among those featured in the exhibit are the late Fred Minnis Sr., who opened the city's first full-time African-American law practice, his law partner Isaiah W. Williams, and the late James B. Sanderlin, who filed the federal lawsuit that desegregated Pinellas schools and became the county's first African-American judge in 1972.

"The exhibit planning and creation was definitely a labor of love," said Jeannine Williams, the committee's co-chair and St. Petersburg assistant city attorney. "The triumphs of these truly courageous individuals must be remembered and celebrated."

In addition to organizing the exhibit, the association...