"OUR RICH BLACK HERITAGE" : John Gilmore Riley

For those who didn’t know, the reason why I chose to write my “Our Rich Black Heritage” articles is to highlight other African-Americans besides the ones that we are use to hearing about during Black History Month. Also, I did it to help other Black People to realize that our Black ancestors were more than just slaves for White People, and they had Black-Owned Insurance Companies, Black-Owned Hotels, and Black-Owned Banks! Not only that, but they were able to establish Black Business Districts in just about every major city in America( and many of the small towns). Also, they had their own Black-Owned funeral homes,Movie Theatres, and Grocery Stores[ there was even a Black-Owned Dairy, owned by the “Willis family” in West Monroe, Louisiana ]. Recently, I discovered that there were “8 Black Millionaires” in the state of Florida, between 1870 - 1955! You see, we as Black People need to do as my dad use to say,”Go Back And Check The Record!” When you go back and check the record, you’ll see that our Black ancestors were more than slaves for the White People!Now, back to this week’s Black Hero, John Gilmore Riley. He was born a slave in 1857. John spent almost “50 years” as an Educator and decades as a Civic Leader. He received formal schooling at private and public schools. At the age of 20, he was hired to teach at a school in Wakulla County, in Tennessee. In 1892 he became principal of the Lincoln Academy[ located at 438 West Brevard Street in Tallahassee, Florida ]. He remained principal of the school for 34 years, and retired in 1926. An interesting fact about John Gilmore Riley is that he was one of the few Negroes to have owned land in Tallahassee in 1903. He was able to purchase seven major downtown parcels of land, among them including the property on which he built his home in 1895 { the site of the Department of Natural Resource and Bryant Building and the parking lot of the Florida State University Law School }. The wood-frame home that he built is the last physical evidence of what was once a thriving Negro community in downtown Tallahassee at the turn of the 20th century. A hundred years later, in 1995, his home was converted to a museum. Also, in 1996, the Riley House became the John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture( the museum sits at the bottom of a hill in downtown Tallahassee, at the corner of Meridian and Jefferson Streets). John Gilmore Riley died in 1954, the same year that the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision was rendered.