Brown, Canter, Jr. 1948- (Edgar Canter Brown, Jr.)

PERSONAL:

Born November 18, 1948, in Fort Meade, FL; married Barbara Gray. Education: Florida State University, B.A., J.D., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Fort Valley State University, 1005 State University Dr., Fort Valley, GA 31030. E-mail—brownc@fvsu.edu.

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA, special assistant and counsel to the president; formerly at Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, professor of history. Also on board of advisors at Florida Southern College, Lakeland.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Rembert W. Patrick Book Award, Florida Historical Society; Certificate of Commendation, American Association for State and Local History.

WRITINGS:

Florida's Peace River Frontier, University of Central Florida Press (Orlando, FL), 1991.

Fort Meade, 1849-1900, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1995.

Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida's Loyalist Reconstruction Governor, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1997.

Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1998.

Tampa before the Civil War, University of Tampa Press (Tampa, FL), 1999.

(Editor, with James M. Denham) Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: The Florida Reminiscences of George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 2000.

Tampa in Civil War and Reconstruction, University of Tampa Press (Tampa, FL), 2000.

(With Larry Eugene Rivers) Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2001.

In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940, Sentry Press (Tallahassee, FL), 2001.

(Editor, with Larry Eugene Rivers and Richard Mathews) John Willis Menard, Lays in Summer Lands, University of Tampa Press (Tampa, FL), 2002.

(With Barbara Gray Brown) Family Records of the African American Pioneers of Tampa and Hillsborough County, University of Tampa Press (Tampa, FL), 2003.

(With Larry Eugene Rivers) For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2004.

(Editor, with David H. Jackson, Jr.) Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African American History, University of Tampa Press for the Florida A&M University Department of History (Tampa, FL), 2005.

None Can Have Richer Memories: Polk County, Florida, 1940-2000, University of Tampa Press (Tampa, FL), 2005.

(With Walter W. Manley II) The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972, Eric W. Rise contributing scholar, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Things Remembered: An Album of African Americans in Tampa, compiled by Rowena Ferrell Brady, University of Tampa Press 1997. Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Southern History, Louisiana History, Florida Historical Quarterly, American Jewish Archives, and Forum.

SIDELIGHTS:

Canter Brown, Jr., is a historian who has written extensively about his home state of Florida. Brown's second book, Fort Meade, 1849-1900, focuses on the early history of the town where the author was born. Fort Meade is believed to be the oldest town in Florida's interior. In his book, Brown takes the reader from the southwestern frontier town's founding through to its eventual decline. The author details such aspects of the town's history as the extreme hardships its citizens suffered during the Civil War and their role in fighting the Third Seminole War. He also chronicles the town's up-and-down economic plight over several decades following the war. "The southeastern frontier, Brown contends, has been relatively neglected, as have studies of communities that failed to prosper after the frontier's close," noted David J. Coles in a review in Civil War History. "In this regard Fort Meade offers a contrasting view to examples of better-known frontier settlements."

In Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: The Florida Reminiscences of George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams, Brown and coeditor James M. Denham present a look at the early days of Florida through two very different people. The first section of the book is dedicated to remembrances of George Gillett Keen, who presents a more "common man" view of the state's early history. Keen's views are presented primarily via a series of letters he wrote to the Lake City Florida Index. The book's second section features the writings of Sarah Pamela Williams, a well-traveled and literate plantation belle who wrote an autobiography. "The editors wisely chose those elements that most clearly highlight the distinctions between the two characters," noted Journal of Southern History contributor George B. Ellenberg, adding in the same review: "Much to their credit, they avoid tampering not only with what their subjects say but how they say it."

Tampa in Civil War and Reconstruction looks at Tampa during the turbulent days of the Civil War and afterward, with a focus on the heroism of the men and women, both black and white, who helped to hold their community together. The author also provides a new look at some historic figures, such as a Civil War Confederate hero who has been lionized in Tampa history but who almost caused Tampa's total destruction. Robert A. Taylor wrote in the Journal of Southern History that the author provides "a tale of survival and renewal that shows once again the value of quality local history to students of the South."

Brown is the author, with Larry Rivers, of Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895. The book examines the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Florida from the time of Reconstruction in the American South to the beginning of Jim Crow segregation. Reconstruction is the period of rebuilding in the South following the Civil War, and Jim Crow segregation is the name of the racial caste system that operated primarily in Southern and border states from around 1877 to the mid-1960s. Various Jim Crow "laws," for example, were designed to keep Southern whites from having to interact with blacks and included such regulations as ordinances for separate bathrooms and other facilities. In their book, Brown and Rivers are concerned primarily with the crucial role that the AME Church played in not only the religious but also the cultural and political lives of black Floridians. The authors provide an overview of the religion during the period of slavery and then follow the church to 1895. They outline the church's strong political clout and profile many of its most notable ministers, who were active in promoting political rights and education for the blacks in their state. The authors also use a variety or records and church newspapers to provide a look at the inner workings of the church.

Brown is also the author of In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940, a comprehensive history of Polk County. Among the people profiled in the book are the legendary Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who led the first European expedition to the United States and what is now Florida, and Seminole Indian leader Osceola, who led a small band of warriors during the Second Seminole Uprising that resulted from the United States government's attempt to remove the Seminoles from their lands.

Brown and Rivers are the authors of For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905. This time the authors tell the story of the American Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church from its time in Key West during the Union occupation in 1864 until 1905. The Florida segment of the AMEZ followed in the tradition of the first AMEZ church, which was established in New York in 1796 and went on to become one of the most well-respected black religious institutions in America, drawing its members primarily from the middle class. According to the authors, the church's concerns outside of the pulpit were less political in nature than the AMEZ Methodist church and focused more on social issues. "This book breaks new ground as the first state study of the Zion church," wrote Walter T. Howard in the Journal of Southern History. "As such, it will be of interest to scholars of African American religious history as well as to specialists of southern and Florida history. Writing in Church History, Charles A. Israel commented: "The authors present straightforward denominational history, organized primarily along a chronology of episcopal supervision with some glances to the larger economic, political, and social history of Florida in the critical forty years following the American Civil War."

Brown and coeditor David H. Jackson, Jr., present thirty-seven essays, historical documents, songs, and poems in Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African American History. The entries focus on African American history in Florida since 1513. The book is divided into six sections: "Spanish Florida, 1513-1821," "Antebellum Era, 1821-1861," "Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877," "Gilded Age through Progressive Age, 1877-1914," "The Era of the World Wars, 1914-45," and "The Post-War World and the Civil Rights Struggle, 1945-2005." In his contribution to the book, Brown looks at the short-lived black community of Angola, which resided along the Manatee River during the second decade of the eighteenth century. Other topics include the obstacles faced by blacks, Booker T. Washington, civil rights protests, and a protest of the 2000 presidential election.

None Can Have Richer Memories: Polk County, Florida, 1940-2000 was published in 2005 and takes up where Brown's earlier book, In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living, left off. "It is no easy task to write a history covering the last six decades of the twentieth century of a county that includes several incorporated cities as well as a considerable number of residents living in unincorporated territory, governed primarily by a Board of County Commissioners," commented Journal of Southern History contributor Robert J. Kerstein. "Canter Brown Jr. has done the job well."

In The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972, Brown and his coauthor, Walter W. Manley II, "provide a thorough account of the state's high court and its growth in size, caseload, and prominence," according to Christine L. Nemacheck writing in the Law and Politics Book Review. In their in-depth analysis of the court, the authors profile individuals who sat on its bench and discuss many of the major subject areas of appeals that the court considered, such as desegregation and growth management. They also examine the various influences that affected the court's evolution during a time crucial to Florida's emergence as a national force in the U.S. judicial system. Their insights into the judicial, political, and governmental processes of the court applicable beyond the state are enhanced by their examination of controversies within the state's supreme court. In addition to providing a look at Florida's court, Nemacheck wrote in the Law and Politics Book Review that the authors also "contribute to the renewed interest in state appellate courts generally, as legal scholars have begun to redirect attention to the important role of state courts in our federal judicial system." Noting that The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972 "also provides a peek into the making of the state of Florida Americans know today," a Florida Bar Journal contributor also wrote in the same review: "Thorough research makes this book stand alone as a compendium of little-known facts on the state's rich history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 2002, William E. Montgomery, review of Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895, p. 554.

Choice, January, 1998, review of Ossian Bingley Hart: Florida's Loyalist Reconstruction Governor, p. 882; December, 1998, review of Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, p. 741; June, 2000, S.C. Hyde, review of Tampa before the Civil War, p. 1873; May, 2001, P.F. Field, review of Tampa in Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 1678; November, 2001, L.H. Mamiya, review of Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord, p. 529; July-August, 2005, R.B. Bademan, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864-1905, p. 2048; July-August, 2006, T.F. Armstrong, review of Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African American History, p. 2060.

Church History, September, 2006, Charles A. Israel, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose, p. 687.

Civil War History, June, 1997, David J. Coles, review of Fort Meade, 1849-1900, p. 159.

Florida Bar Journal, March, 2002, review of In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County, Florida, to 1940, p. 59; February, 2007, review of The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972, p. 49.

Journal of American History, June, 1992, Raymond Arsenault, review of Florida's Peace River Frontier, p. 254; September, 2002, Eddie S. Glaude, review of Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord, p. 642; December, 2005, Dennis C. Dickerson, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose, p. 1000.

Journal of Southern History, February, 1997, Marion B. Lucas, review of Fort Meade, 1849-1900, p. 176; August, 1999, Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, review of Ossian Bingley Hart, p. 651; August, 2000, review of Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924, p. 657; August, 2001, review of Tampa before the Civil War, p. 660; May, 2002, George B. Ellenberg, review of Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives, p. 484; August, 2002, Robert A. Taylor, review of Tampa in Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 719; February, 2006, Walter T. Howard, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose, p. 195; August, 2007, Robert J. Kerstein, review of None Can Have Richer Memories, p. 737.

Journal of the Early Republic, fall, 2001, David J. Libby, review of Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives, p. 551.

Law and Politics Book Review, July, 2007, Christine L. Nemacheck, review of The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972, p. 612.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 1997, review of Ossian Bingley Hart, p. 42; February, 2000, review of Tampa before the Civil War, p. 46; February, 2006, review of Go Sound the Trumpet!

ONLINE

Florida Southern College Web site,http://www.flsouthern.edu/ (March 10, 2005), "Author and History Professor Canter Brown to Speak at FSC's Florida Lecture Series"; (March 28, 2008), brief profile of author.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (March, 2004), Nicholas J. Linville, review of Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: The Florida Reminiscences of George Gillett Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams; (April, 2005), Lee L. Willis, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose; (August, 2005), Neil J. Young, review of For a Great and Grand Purpose; (December, 2005), Dave Nelson, review of None Can Have Richer Memories: Polk County, Florida, 1940-2000.

Looking for Angola,http://www.lookingforangola.com/ (March 28, 2008), "Interview with Canter Brown, Jr., Ph.D."

University Press of Florida,http://www.upf.com/ (March 28, 2008), overview of Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord.