Editor’s observe: This story initially printed in 2023.
As Coco Gauff wows the tennis world and stirs pleasure in her Delray Seaside hometown, it is truthful to say she stands on the shoulders of her grandmother, who had a big function within the city and the nation’s historical past a long time in the past.
On the identical age Gauff turned professional, Yvonne Lee was breaking down the obstacles of segregation. It was 1961. Lee was standard and sensible, had been named to the upcoming homecoming courtroom and regarded ahead to being captain of the basketball crew at her all-Black Carver Excessive. However then the 15-year-old was given a frightening task.
Headed into the subsequent fall, she was to be the primary Black scholar to attend Delray Seaside’s all-white Seacrest Excessive College.
Gauff has talked about her grandmother, Yvonne Lee Odom, and her expertise because the tennis star spoke out on points equivalent to Black Lives Matter.
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How did U.S. Open, Wimbledon tennis star Coco Gauff’s grandmother change into the primary Black scholar at Delray Seaside’s Seacrest Excessive?
That first day Lee went to Seacrest — Sept. 25, 1961 — safety was tight, for good purpose.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket had dominated in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Schooling that segregated faculties had been unconstitutional. Within the wake of the ruling, the NAACP started in search of Black college students who could be good candidates to attend all-white faculties.
By November of that yr, the primary, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, and her mom had been met with crowds yelling viscious slurs as they had been escorted by 4 federal marshals right into a New Orleans elementary college. New Orleans required Black college students to cross an examination. Ruby did. Norman Rockwell in 1964 would have fun her braveness with a portray titled “The Downside We All Dwell With.”
Lee’s father, the late Rev. R.M. Lee, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Seaside, thought his daughter was an amazing candidate — she was gifted in teachers in addition to sports activities.
“We had been attempting to get the highest children so they might not say we had been dumb,” he mentioned.
Lee had attended all-Black Carver Highschool her freshman yr. (Carver and Seacrest would later merge to change into Atlantic Excessive College for the 1970-71 college yr.) Lee was the primary scholar to combine a college in southern Palm Seaside County. When her Carver classmates realized the place she could be going, they inspired her.
“We want you to do that,” they instructed her.
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What occurred to Coco Grauff’s grandmother on the primary day at Seacrest Excessive?
Whereas college integration was prime information of the day, Lee downplayed the potential drama.
“I used to be simply going to high school,” she later instructed The Palm Seaside Publish. “I wasn’t afraid. In the event that they instructed me to combine, I used to be going to combine.”
She arrived at 10 a.m. when the opposite 1,000 college students had been already at school. Site visitors had been blocked outdoors. She met her scholar “buddy,” Paula Adams, who walked her to class hand-in-hand. Lee additionally spoke with principal Robert Fulton within the college lounge. He was a “good man,” she instructed the Boca Information in 2002.
At this time, Fulton’s identify adorns the varsity district headquarters, the Fulton-Holland Academic Providers Heart. Sharing that billing with Fulton is Black legal professional Invoice Holland, who filed a lawsuit in 1956 when a West Palm Seaside elementary college refused to let his son attend.
Lee mentioned apart from college students gawking, her first day was uneventful. “They had been well mannered however apprehensive. This was the unknown.”
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At Carver, Lee had been chosen to guide the basketball crew, by coach C. Spencer Pompey. However at Seacrest, she agreed to not play any sports activities or trip the varsity bus because of security issues — although her absence from sports activities did not final.
When Seacrest officers additionally directed her to make use of the toilet within the college lounge, she refused.
After college that day, she mentioned, one scholar known as her the n-word.
Yvonne Lee Odom’s profitable profession in training, which she would cross on to her youngsters
By the point Lee graduated in 1964, she had 4 Black classmates. She would go on to earn a level in elementary training from Florida Atlantic College and a grasp’s in studying from Nova College. She taught math at Carver Center College and married her high-school sweetheart from Carver Excessive, Eddie Odom Jr. A number of of her youngsters additionally turned academics, together with Coco Gauff’s mother, Candi.
Her son, Eddie Odom III, turned down a draft decide from the Seattle Mariners to pursue a school training.
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Yvonne Odom and her husband based the Delray Seaside American Little League to increase the game to children in largely Black neighborhoods not lined by the opposite league.
“I realized rather a lot about her tales,” Gauff instructed the Miami Herald in 2020.
Yvonne Lee Odom says she, too, realized from her personal expertise.
“By attending Seacrest for 3 years, I discovered that persons are individuals, it doesn’t matter what. You’ve got acquired the great, dangerous and ugly, whatever the race.”
Editor’s observe: A earlier model of this story had the inaccurate yr of the Brown v. Board of Schooling determination.
Holly Baltz is the investigations editor at The Palm Seaside Publish. You possibly can attain her at hbaltz@pbpost.com.