STARKE, Fla — "It was not fair," Carolyn Spooner says.
As a winner of First Coast News 12 Who Care Award, Spooner has a message about the rough, and often ugly times when she helped minorities fight for their voting rights.
Is she bitter? "No," she says in a split second.
Spooner, a minister herself in Bradford County, says, 'My hope is that one day we'll see each other as brother and sister," created, she says, by "one God and one Savior."
Her peaceful spirit, of course, doesn't erase the memories of the racial conflicts in Starke.
She remembers when white students didn't want to go to school with Black students. The Black students had to walk to school three to four miles, even if the rain poured down on their heads. "You'd be drenched and miserable," Spooner says, and "You'd have wet clothes in school."
So she organized a peaceful march to the school board. Then the board members, she says, finally provided "transportation," i.e., a school bus just like the white kids had.
That was in the 1960's. Spooner remembers white students spitting on the heads of Black students and throwing rocks at them.
But she didn't give up on her quest for equality.
In 1986 she was part of a federal lawsuit to give Black citizens of Bradford County an equal chance of being elected to office. Spooner says, "If you were African American, you couldn't get elected in Bradford County." That's because the voting districts were drawn with all white majorities.
Spooner, working with the NAACP, won a federal lawsuit in a courthouse in Jacksonville.
The door opened for Spooner to run for offices. Now, if you walk down the hall of photos in the Bradford County Courthouse, you see a photo of Carolyn Spooner. "It took me a loooooong time, over 150 years," she says.
Years of struggle, "until November 2020, when I was the first African American female elected to the Bradford County Commission," Spooner says. She serves on the board now.
Spooner is also a licensed mental health counselor. She spends time each week just walking neighborhoods and picking up trash. It's actually, she says, part of her service to the community and her way of ministering to people. She also helps give out food to underserved families.
She believes volunteering to help people is part of her faith mission.
She also grants scholarships in honor of her sister, Shirley Ann Brown Livingstone, a nurse, who passed away from breast cancer.
The foundation in her name has granted 22 scholarships so far. One recipient is Sonia Bennett, who now works as a registered nurse in Macclenny. She says she's "very grateful" for her scholarship. "It was a blessing and honor to receive that," she says.
Spooner has a special passion for the fight against breast cancer, in addition to honoring her sister's life. Spooner herself is a breast cancer survivor. She followed the First Coast News Buddy Check program. "Buddy Check saved my life," she says.
Spooner contributes to people's quality of life in many ways. Another is her singing voice. In her daughter's words, it's "very calming."
Calming melodies.
Powerful advocacy.
Congratulations to Carolyn Spooner, one of First Coast News' 12 Who Care 2022 winners.