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Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy

Chapter Fifteen: 1950 - 1959

Local people in the 1950s

In the late 1950s, Oliver Bradley, a tinsmith, became the
first black to run for local public office (City Council) since Recon-
struction, but he did not win.

Another prominent local African American, Ernest Cooley
Jr., was the president of the local National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and later helped in the
formation of the Community Fair Action Committee (CFAC).

When Tommy Ives (CHS 1950) was a senior in high school,
he was elected governor of Boys’ State and was captain of the football
team. He went on to become a Gator football player and then a local
DOT engineer.

The county superintendents of public instruction in the 1950s
were Albert H. Rumph (1949 - 1957) and Buford H. Galloway
(1957 - 1968).

The police chiefs that decade were Walter W. Davis (1947
- 1957) and acting chief Claude King (1957 - 1961).
The mayor of Lake City that decade was Murray E. Hagan
(mayor 1947 - 1961).

In 1959 Mayor Murray
Hagan (on the left)
and City Clerk George
Wilson sealed a time
capsule inside City Hall
when the facility was
located in the Montgom-
ery Building.

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