C. Bette Wimbish (March 24, 1924 – November 30, 2009) was one of the leading African-American woman activists in Florida promoting the desegregation of schools and civil equality.
As well as being the first African-American to hold elected office in the Tampa Bay area in the 20th-century,[2] Wimbish was also the first black female lawyer in Pinellas County, Florida.
[5] She began her career as a physical education teacher, while her husband pursued studies in medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville.
She applied to Stetson Law School but was turned down due to the controversies arising from her early civil rights battles.
[4] When Ralph Wimbish was elected branch president of the Saint Petersburg NAACP in 1959, the couple became involved in the desegregation of schools.
With her degree from Florida A&M and her experience educating in the Hillsborough County School System, Wimbish was well-qualified to challenge the white hegemony in politics.
Wimbish and Gibbs Jr. College student Theodore Floyd sat in at the William Henry lunch counter with the hopes of encouraging city leader to form biracial committees.
(7) Although there were no direct improvements, boycotts and other protests finally led to the peaceful desegregation of many of Saint Petersburg's lunch counters by early 1961.
During the Christmas season of 1960, Bette and her husband boycotted local businesses and encouraged residents to buy from catalogs instead of city's segregated stores.
[1] In addition to their political efforts to end discrimination, the Wimbishes opened their home on 15th Avenue S to visiting black athletes and entertainers who could not get hotel rooms due to segregation laws.
[2] Over the 1950s and early 1960s, the family housed famous people including musicians such as Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie and athletes Jesse Owens, Elston Howard and Althea Gibson.
[2] However, in 1961, her husband told the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals that he would no longer find separate housing for black players.
Saint Petersburg locals responded by burning a cross in the Wimbishes yard, in attempts to "send a message" to Bette and her husband.
When the student activists began to ride South to fight the segregated interstate bus services,[9] the Riders made several trips to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Wimbish for rest and recreation.
[3] In 1975, Bette was appointed assistant secretary of commerce by governor Reuben Askew and moved back to Tallahassee, becoming the second-highest-ranking woman in state government.
[11] She ran unsuccessful campaigns for the state Senate and Congress centering her ideas around environmental crisis and drug education.
As a result, she took a job as local counsel for the Florida Department of Social Services while arbitrating labor law cases for the federal government before her retirement in 2003.