The Honorable Stephan Mickle's Influence Transcended Campus Boundaries (1944-2021)

Authored by Attorney Jeraldine Williams Smith ('81) for the Black Alumni Network Newsletter

It is not often that a Seminole will give tribute to a Gator, but the Honorable Stephan Mickle is most deserving. His influence on race, education and the judicial bench transcends the universities as his impact is profound. He was among the first seven Blacks admitted to University of Florida in 1962 and second to graduate from UF Law School in 1970. In 1963, I was among the second group of seven to be admitted to UF and I integrated the College of Journalism and Communications. He lived in Gainesville and though African American, he bled the Gator orange and blue, through and through.

Judge Mickle, as most would reference him, was my mentor, friend and contemporary, I called him Stephan. Integration was more than challenging, it was scary. A bond of friendship remained throughout the years. I was genuinely pleased that he, with the first group of Black undergraduates, had tested the waters of integration on the 2,000 acre campus during the year before I arrived. You see, Black students shook the foundation of civility as we dared to integrate all-white undergraduate classes and dormitories throughout the Southeast. White supremacy and exclusivity would be extinguished. Or would it?

In 1949, Virgil Hawkins, a Black man, was scholastically qualified and applied to attend University of Florida Law, but was denied entry based on his race. A 9-year court battle ensued in which then Florida Supreme Court Justice BK Roberts authored the court's 1957 majority opinion to deny law school admission to Hawkins based on race under the “separate but equal” premise as FAMU Law was being established for Blacks. FSU College of Law, formed in 1966, was named after BK Roberts. These were daunting times and Blacks were not welcomed.

In 1962, two people were killed during riots to stop integration at the University of Mississippi. That same year, the Alabama governor stood in the schoolhouse door to disallow integration, in Georgia, federal agents were called in to remove a Black female student before defiant rioters reached her at the dormitory, and in Florida, the governor was an avowed segregationist.

Entering UF at age 17, I tried to hold my composure; however, I was terrified. There were 14 Blacks and about 14,000 white undergraduate students. There were no Black professors, test proctors, clerical workers, coaches, athletes, or counselors. I had never been around so many white people. Frightening.

My knowing that Stephan and six other Black students had survived on the UF campus for an academic year, and seeing him walking on campus, most of the time unaccosted, gave me a sense of security and self-confidence that though a Black female, I could make it too.

Stephan and I were part of a collective introduction to: ourselves, the university, the state, and to the world of a transformative concept of black or and white. In terms of race relations, the first 14 of us Black Gators helped to change those two- and three-letter conjunctions for life.

So, a decade later, when I enrolled at the Florida State College of Law in 1978 and was one of eleven Black students, I carried with me a sense of confidence, possibility, survival, and success that I had learned by coming in second to Stephan’s first in undergraduate school at UF. During his lifetime, Stephan Mickle developed far-reaching tentacles to so many as an integrationist, educator, lawyer, and jurist. Stephan accomplished a lot between the dash of his life and death. He deserves all the honor for paving the way for at least two garnet & gold law 'Noles – me and my daughter Salesia Smith-Gordon.