MAKING A DIFFERENCE
For 50 Years…
The Amazing Career of Barbara Harvey
WORDS: Lela Rast Hartsaw
PICTURES: Wendy Dewhurst
There are people who see a problem
and choose to sit by and do nothing.
Then there are people lie Barbara
Harvey, who would never dream of not
doing something and instead stand up
and mae a difference.
Mrs. Harvey has been standing up and
maing a difference in Manatee County
education for 50 years. She started her
career as a young 4th grade teacher at
Memorial Elementary in Palmetto.
“I was born a 4th grade teacher,” Mrs.
Harvey told me one evening at the Anna E.
ayle S.T.E.M. Center in Palmetto. “I used
to set up and teach my dolls. I remember
braiding long blades of grass to mae
bows for their hair…”
I was spellbound listening to Mrs. Harvey’s
answers to each of my questions. I
marveled at the notion that she arrived
to teach in Manatee County in 1961
when schools and many public spaces
were segregated, meaning blacs and
whites did not go to school together lie
they do today. She lived and wored in a
segregated world.
“I had to wor, so I made the best of it,”
she said.
Many in this area recall the overnor of
the State of Florida coming to Bradenton
and standing in the doorway of the school
board building insisting that the schools
remain segregated. It was an emotionally
charged time in our society.
The State Legislature passed the desegregation
law and our schools slowly
became open to both blacs and whites.
Mrs. Harvey and her cousin loria
Mitchell, a second-grade teacher, were
sent to teach at Palma Sola Elementary.
As the rst African-American teachers in
what was originally an all-white school,
the women were uncertain about how
they would be accepted. “Palma Sola,
at the time, was a jewel,” Mrs. Harvey
recalled. “It was THE newest and nicest
school in town. The area of Palma Sola
was once lie Laewood Ranch is today
where all the newest, nicest communities
were being built.” (For those readers
unfamiliar with Manatee County history,
the Laewood Ranch area was nothing
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