Re: Florida S First Black Lawyers 1869 1979 Pdf
Vanina Mazzillo
What was your first job? Assistant State Attorney, Fourth Judicial Circuit, 1979.
When did you know you wanted to practice law? Hard to put a date on it. I did not know any lawyers; I had never been to the courthouse. However, my freshman year I did send for a catalog from the U of F Law School and I worked toward it after that time.
Do you have a unique experience that has influenced your professional life? I have had a lot of experiences in 38 years of practice, however, one automatically comes to mind. In my early private practice, I represented a nephew of a high school friend who was facing the death penalty. He ended up taking a plea to 25 years. He is now out of prison and working as a barber. To have helped a young man that I knew as a baby was a unique experience.
I you could have dinner with a celebrity or public figure, who would it be and why? Sidney Poitier, I would like to talk to him about his career in Hollywood.
One thing most people do not know about you is: Most lawyers do not know that I am an Elder in the Church at Chaffee Road Church of Christ. I spend a lot of my time working with the teens and children.
Do you have a favorite quotation? My favorite quotation is my own "Never be too busy to save time." By that I mean don't be too busy to make or return a phone call that may allow you to settle a case.
Who or what inspires you? I am constantly inspired by the Holy Scriptures.
Do you have a favorite activity, sport, hobby or event? I am a movie buff, I watch Turner Classic Movies and Classic Westerns.
What is one place that you would love to visit? For pure enjoyment Hawaii, however because I was a history major I would like to visit Normandy, France.
Family information: My wife of 37 years, Betty (both of us Florida Gators); two daughters, Sabrina Stewart and Melanie Stewart Lee (both Florida State Seminoles); and son-in-law, Rashaan Lee.
Peoples settled in what is now Texas thousands of years before European explorers arrived in North America. Some American Indian oral histories recount how their ancestors traveled to the area by water or land. A large amount of stone artifacts made at least 16,000 years ago have been found in Central Texas. For many years, scientists believed that the first Americans came from Asia 13,000 years ago. The discovery of these artifacts suggests that humans came to the Americas much earlier.
Pre-Cloves Projectile Point. Courtesy Gault School of Archaeological Research, San Marcos, Texas
More than 5000 years ago in present-day Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, people began to grow corn, beans, and squash. The switch from a nomadic hunter-gatherer life style to horticulture contributed to more reliable food sources and settled lifestyles. Populations grew and cultures flourished.
Varieties of maize found near Cuscu and Machu Pichu at Salineras de Maras on the Inca Sacred Valley in Peru, June 2007. Courtesy Smithsonian Institute, photographer credit Fabio de Oliveira Freitas
The bow and arrow replaced the atlatl around 700 C.E. The new technology spread across much of North America around this time. Its precise origin is unknown, but it may have been brought into the region by new migrants. The bow was lighter and required fewer resources to make. The arrow was much more lethal than a spear because of its speed, silence, and accuracy.
Scallorn Points. Courtesy Texas Beyond History, a public education service of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin
On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed west from Palos, Spain, to explore a new route to Asia. On October 12, he reached the Bahamas. Six months later, he returned to Spain with gold, cotton, American Indian handicrafts, exotic parrots, and other strange beasts. His tales of the native peoples, land, and resources in North America ignited the era of Spanish colonization.
Spanish explorer Alonso lvarez de Pineda is credited with being the first European to explore and map the Gulf of Mexico. He set out with four ships and 270 men to find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. There are few records detailing his exploration, although one Spanish document does indicate that he sailed around the coast of Florida, into the Gulf of Mexico, and up a river dotted with palm trees and the villages of native peoples. Earlier interpretations of his voyage identified this river as the Rio Grande, but later data shows that it was probably the Soto la Marina, located in Mexico.
In 1527, with five ships, 600 men, and a supply of horses, Pnfilo de Narvez set out for Florida to claim gold and glory for the Spanish empire. His trip seemed doomed from the beginning. Many of his men died, deserted, or were killed by the American Indians whose people and villages the expedition attacked and pillaged. In an effort to escape, Narvez and the remaining members of the expedition set sail in flimsy rafts that were eventually washed up on the Texas Gulf Coast near Galveston. Narvrez drowned on the voyage, but one of the few survivors, conquistador Cabeza de Vaca, wrote detailed memoirs that became the earliest European descriptions of Texas and its people.
lvar Nuez Cabeza de Vaca, one of four survivors of the failed Narvez expedition, washed up on the beach of a Texas Gulf Coast island he named "Malhado," which means "misfortune." The name was apt, because for the next several years, Cabeza de Vaca lived one harrowing moment to another as a captive slave of various Texas American Indians. He kept a detailed diary which has become an invaluable primary source describing the life and peoples of early Texas. In 1536, Spanish soldiers returned Cabeza de Vaca to Mexico City. He eventually made his way back to Spain where he published his memoirs, The Narrative of lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca, in 1542.
The Karankawa first encountered Europeans when Spanish explorer lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca washed up on a Galveston beach in 1528. This encounter, which Cabeza de Vaca wrote about in his diary, is the first recorded meeting of Europeans and Texas American Indians. The Karankawa were several bands of coastal people with a shared language and culture who inhabited the Gulf Coast of Texas from Galveston Bay southwestward to Corpus Christi Bay.
Karankawa, From the Manuscript Collection: Jean Louis Berlandier, 1827 - 1830. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa OK
Estevanico was an enslaved African born Mustafa Zemmouri around 1501. He accompanied Spanish explorer lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528 on a multi-year expedition through present-day Texas. On this expedition he gained great knowledge of the languages spoken by American Indians in the area. In 1539, he was ordered by the Spanish Viceroy to be part of a subsequent expedition. On this expedition he was ultimately killed by Zuni Indians at the Hawiku Pueblo in present-day New Mexico.
Painting of Estavanico. Courtesy Granger Historical Images
Bartolom de las Casas was the first priest to be ordained in the Americas. Conscience-stricken by the abuse of American Indians at the hands of Spanish conquistadors, he crusaded on the native peoples' behalf for over five decades. In 1536, de las Casas participated in a debate in Oaxaca, Mexico, where he argued for the American Indians' right to be treated as individuals with dignity and against the Spanish efforts to convert native peoples to both the Catholic faith and the Spanish culture. His blistering work in 1542, A Brief Report on the Destruction of the Indians, convinced King Charles V to outlaw the conversion practices, but riots among land holders in New Spain (Mexico) convinced authorities not to make any changes in their treatment of American Indians.
Finding gold was one objective of Spanish colonization in North America. Following the report of an explorer who claimed to have seen a gold city in the desert, Francisco Vzquez de Coronado organized an expedition that traveled through the Texas Panhandle. Various historical accounts describe the soldiers' astonishment at the Texas landscape, including Palo Duro Canyon, and the huge, hump-backed cows (buffalo) that roamed the grasslands. Coronado never found any gold in the Panhandle, and the expedition returned to Mexico in 1542.
Hernando de Soto led an exploration of the Gulf Coast area from 1539 until his death in present-day Arkansas in 1542. This expedition marked the first European crossing of the Mississippi River. After de Soto's death, Luis de Moscoso led the explorers into East Texas, home of the powerful Caddo Indians, in an attempt to find an overland route back to New Spain (Mexico). Opinions differ as to the exact route the Moscoso expedition took through Texas, but recent scholarship suggests that they traveled south from East Texas toward present-day Nacogdoches and then into the Hill Country before turning back toward the Mississippi River in Arkansas.
Oil springs and tar pits were known to the Texas Indians. They used the oozings to treat rheumatism and skin diseases. Oil was also seen by the Spanish explorers as early as July 1543, when members of the De Soto expedition saw oil floating in the water near Sabine Pass and used it to caulk their boats. Later, settlers used surface oil for axel grease and for lighting and fuel.
Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey
In November, 1552, fifty-four vessels sailed from Spain under the command of Captain-General Bartolom Carreo. The ships, including six armed vessels, carried cargo and were headed to various parts of the world including New Spain (Mexico) and the Indies. On April 29, 1554, three ships were wrecked in a storm on Padre Island, near present-day Port Mansfield. In the 1960s and 1970s, excavation efforts retrieved thousands of artifacts such as cannons, silver coins, gold bullion, astrolabes, and tools from the wreckage of the San Esteban and the Espiritu Santo. The third sunken ship, the Santa Maria de Yclar, was destroyed during ship channel construction in the 1950s.