FEATURED LEONA COOPER BAKER By Sofia Butnaru Ransom Everglades School
The matriarch of the family, Leona Louise Cooper Baker was born to parents from the Bahamas on December 26, 1939. Ms. Cooper Baker attended George Washington Carver from 1st grade to 12th grade. Looking back at her life at Carver, she remembers a time of hardships and second-class treatment. She later attended Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. After graduating in 1960, she came back to South Florida and began to teach at Rainbow Park in Opa-Locka. Three years later she went to teach at Bunche Park. Due to her mother’s deteriorating health she moved closer to home and taught at her alma mater Carver Elementary. In 1970, full faculty integration took place and Ms. Cooper Baker and her friend Fanny Hall, were sent to work at Shenandoah Elementary. She described the day she was sent to Shenandoah as “the coldest day I’d ever experienced.” Nevertheless, she would remain at
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Shenandoah Elementary for 22 years. During her time as an educator, Ms. Cooper Baker realized the failures of segregation as a result of the inability of some teachers to teach different races. She recalled numerous behavioral problems and difficulties due to integration. Ms. Cooper Baker is retired and living in the same plot of land in which she was born in Coconut Grove. n
ALTANSAS BROWN By Amanda Darlington University of Miami School of Law
Altansas Brown was born in 1952, and raised in Coconut Grove. Ms. Brown attended Saint Albans nursery school, Carver Elementary, Frances S. Tucker Elementary, and Coconut Grove Elementary for different grades of her adolescent education. Her first experience with integration was during her time at Coconut Grove Elementary. Ms. Brown’s parents hoped integration would be advantageous to her development and future opportunities. Not remembering any