Senate Bill sb2968

    Florida Senate - 2003        (NP)                      SR 2968

    By Senator Miller





    18-2477-03

  1                    Senate Resolution No. ____

  2         A resolution honoring the life, career, and

  3         accomplishments of Robert William Saunders, Sr.

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  5         WHEREAS, Robert William Saunders, Sr. referred to as "a

  6  trailblazer who never complained about his task," was born in

  7  Tampa June 9, 1921, seemingly destined for a life of activism

  8  and dedication to the struggle for human and civil rights, and

  9         WHEREAS, a graduate of George S. Middleton High School,

10  Bob Saunders earned an associate of arts degree from

11  Bethune-Cookman College before being drafted into the United

12  States Army, where he served as a sergeant in the Air Corps

13  during World War II before being awarded a bachelor of arts

14  degree at the Detroit Institute of Technology and entering the

15  University of Detroit Law School, and

16         WHEREAS, Bob Saunders had received his introduction to

17  the NAACP as a newsboy during his school years in Tampa, but

18  not until he left the Florida Sentinel as editor of his own

19  column to join the Cleveland Call and Post at its Cincinnati

20  office did he begin his work with the NAACP, and

21         WHEREAS, considering himself honored at the

22  opportunity, Bob Saunders served as the Field Secretary of the

23  Florida Chapter of the NAACP during the era of the nation's

24  greatest civil rights gains, having accepted the assignment

25  following the bombing death of his predecessor, Harry T.

26  Moore, a position in which he worked closely with Thurgood

27  Marshall, later the first black United States Supreme Court

28  Justice, and with Medgar Evers, his Mississippi counterpart,

29  who also was assassinated, and

30         WHEREAS, in 1966, Bob Saunders was appointed by

31  President Lyndon Johnson as Director of Equal Opportunity for

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    Florida Senate - 2003        (NP)                      SR 2968
    18-2477-03




 1  the Southeast Region of the Office of Economic Opportunity,

 2  and 10 years later returned to Tampa to create the

 3  Hillsborough County Office of Equal Opportunity, a program for

 4  which he was responsible until his retirement, in 1988,

 5  launched him into an energetic period of compiling and

 6  cataloging his experiences, an effort crowned by the authoring

 7  of his memoirs, "Bridging the Gap," and

 8         WHEREAS, on March 18, 2003, after a fruitful life of

 9  service, 81-year-old Robert William Saunders, Sr., succumbed

10  to injuries sustained in an automobile accident, NOW,

11  THEREFORE,

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13  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:

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15         That the Florida Senate pauses in its deliberations to

16  recognize and mourn the passing of Robert William Saunders,

17  Sr., and to express its admiration for his many

18  accomplishments as a Civil Rights leader.

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