TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A former state lawmaker, an NAACP leader and a prominent civil-rights activist were named Friday by Gov. Rick Scott to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame.
The selections included Arnett Girardeau, a Jacksonville dentist who was elected to the Florida House in 1976 and was elected to the Senate six years later.
Recommended Videos
Also chosen was Willie H. Williams, who served as president of the Orange County NAACP and was the first African-American hired in the engineering department of Martin Marietta Aerospace, now Lockheed Martin, in Orlando, according to Scott's office.
The third new member of the hall of fame is the late Patricia Stephens Due, who as a Florida A&M University student was arrested in 1960 during a sit-in at a whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee and became a prominent civil-rights activist in Florida and other parts of the country.