Tribute to Federal Judge Stephan P. Mickle - March 28, 2008
Good evening and welcome!
A half century after the first black students walked through the doors at the University of Florida, we are a much more diverse institution – and much richer for it. We owe a great debt to these students, including Stephan P. Mickle.
Any member of the judiciary who rises from lawyer to federal judge has achieved a lot. But to appreciate U.S. District Court Judge Mickle's career and influence on our campus and state, we need to consider what times were like when he arrived at this university in September 1962, joining 13,826 students – nearly all of them white.
Judge Mickle recalled his experience in an oral history recorded some years ago. It is a rich document. Let me share a couple of details with you.
All new students are nervous and self-conscious about the impression they make on their peers. Appreciate, for a moment, Stephan Mickle's predicament. As he recalled in the oral history, when he waited in line to register for classes, no one spoke to him. When he sat down in class, it was almost a sure thing no one would sit in the desk next to him. Walking across campus, he worried constantly about insults or provocations.
In his words, and I quote, "I did not intend for them to see me sweat, as the saying goes. You wanted someone to speak to you and be friendly and talk, and that just did not happen."
UF did not experience the level of racial violence seen at the University of Mississippi and other universities, but everyone here knew the "proper order of things." Certain fraternity members still dressed in confederate uniforms during homecoming. The Alachua County courthouse had separate water fountains.
But with the civil rights struggle in full bloom elsewhere, there was also change in the air here. Progressive students and faculty, though by no means the majority, were a presence on campus, and they found Stephan Mickle, or vice versa. He majored in political science and, in 1965, became the first black person to earn an undergraduate degree from UF.
He went on to earn his master's degree in a single year. After a year teaching high school in Brevard County, he returned to UF, entering the law school in fall of 1967. Only two other black students, George Starke and George Allen, had attended the law school before him. In his oral history, Stephan Mickle recalls that he had never met a single black lawyer in his life! And, yet here he was with all white students, many of whom had fathers or grandfathers who were lawyers or judges.
Stephan Mickle's parents, Andrew and Catherine, were both career educators, and they had done a terrific job. Because, despite the obvious hardships, their son did fine.
As occurs to this day, a lot of law professors demanded that students speak publicly in class. In that environment, Stephan Mickle's abilities became clear quickly enough, and that helped to win him acceptance among his peers.
Grades were posted, and his solid performance also helped. And, while the old guard persisted, the "liberal" students and professors accepted and encouraged the budding young attorney.
One of the young faculty members Stephan Mickle became close to was Fletcher Baldwin. Together, Judge Mickle and Professor Baldwin began an effort to bring other black students to the law school, visiting Bethune-Cookman and other black colleges on informal recruiting trips. It was thanks to those trips and a 1971 summer program in Fort Lauderdale that the first sizable group of black students – eight or ten students – enrolled in the UF law school.
Such was Stephan Mickle's impression on his fellow students that he was elected vice president of his graduating class of 1970. Later that year, he became the second black student to graduate, beginning a career marked by several impressive "firsts." Ten years ago this year, following a nomination by President Bill Clinton, Stephan Mickle was named U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Florida.
Judge Mickle and his courageous peers left several important legacies.
One, they blazed a trail for others to follow. More than four decades after he and six others broke the color barrier in our undergraduate program, the university has graduated upwards of 12,000 black students. By no means are we as diverse as we should be, but we are working on it. I hope and trust that those black students who are here today experience a much different place than did Judge Mickle.
At least as importantly, Judge Mickle and his fellow pioneers made UF a better university – and this country a better, stronger nation.
I use the word "better" in the most general and expansive sense. It seems obvious today that we cannot block a class or race of people from participating if we expect to grow and prosper. This is true in society and at this university, where diversity and diverse viewpoints greatly enrich our scholarship and our science.
Not only that. As people, we injure our humanity in discriminating against others, and we deny ourselves the richness of experience on this earth. We cannot be the nation we want to be, or the university we want to be, without everyone participating in equal measure.
I am honored to be here this evening to honor Judge Mickle, and I look forward to the rest of this evening's presentation.
Thank you.
Bernie Machen