Word: dora
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lake County (Fla.) school board added a sordid postscript to the saga of the Platt children (of Irish-Indian descent), who were barred from school in Mt. Dora because Sheriff Willis McCall arbitrarily decided that they are Negroes (TIME, Dec. 13, 1954 et seq.). By unanimous vote, the board fired Math Teacher Don Conway for giving his blessings to a high-school student petition urging that the Platt children be allowed to stay. Conway's only comment: "If giving the kids my moral support in what I consider a Christian act is guilt, then I guess...
...Dora, Fla. one day last week, someone drew a chalk line down the school sidewalk for all the pupils to see. One side was labeled "White People," the other "Nigger Lovers." Reason for the line: 65 of the pupils had just signed a special petition to TIME about the plight of the five children of Orange Picker Allan Platt (TIME, Dec. 13). Though the Platts had insisted that they are of Irish-Indian descent-and had documents to prove it-Mt. Dora's Sheriff Willis McCall arbitrarily decided that they are Negroes, and ordered them out of the school...
When five children of Orange Picker Allan Platt first appeared at the white public school in Mount Dora, Fla., Principal D. D. Roseborough suspected that there might be trouble. Skins of some of the children were so brown that pupils and their parents wondered whether the children might be Negroes. Principal Roseborough quickly reassured them: he had checked in Holly Hill, S.C., where the Platts lived last year, found that though they had Indian blood, they were officially listed as white. That seemed to satisfy most everyone-except Mount Dora's beefy, dictatorial Sheriff Willis McCall...
...Parent . . ." Had it not been for Mount Dora's courageous weekly newspaper Topic, the case might have ended right there. But the Topic's editor Mabel Norris Reese had long been in battle with the bullying sheriff, and in spite of all reprisals-a flaming cross on her lawn, the poisoning of her dog and the smearing of "K.K.K." across her office windows-she was ready to wage war again. The Platts, she told her readers, were of Irish-Indian stock, probably descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh's "lost colony" of Roanoke. "If you are a parent...
Last week the FBI said it would investigate for possible violations of civil rights. Otherwise, Mount Dora seemed to be trying to forget the whole affair. The Platts had moved into a cabin out of town, their children were out of school and as far as anyone could tell, no one besides Editor Reese seemed to care...