Sept. 30, 1999

Chesterfield H. Smith
(Attorney at Law)

"Reflections on a Life in the Law"

Featured in a chapter of Tom Brokaw’s best-selling book The Greatest Generation, Chesterfield Smith is one of Florida’s and America’s most renowned lawyers, business leaders, and public servants. After serving in Germany during World War II, Smith attended the University of Florida Law School, moved to Bartow, and within a decade he was well on his way to helping build Holland & Knight into one of the premier law firms in the United States. Mr. Smith’s life has been marked by a strong sense of public service. He was president of The Florida Bar in 1964-1965. In 1965-1968 he served as Chairman of the Constitution Revision Commission, which revised and redrafted the present Florida Constitution.

In 1973, as President of the American Bar Association, Smith and the ABA were among the first to call for an appointment of an independent council to investigate President Richard Nixon. "No man is above the law," announced Smith, after Nixon’s firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the subsequent "Saturday Night Massacre."

Smith’s many honors include the Distinguished Floridian Award (1981), the American Bar Association Medal (1981), the Learned Hand Award (1984), and the Tree of Life Award (1984). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and the American Bar Foundation. Mr. Smith lives in Coral Gables and is still active in the Holland & Knight firm. One of his many current pursuits is his chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Citrus and Chemical Bancorporation.

October 28,1999

Al Burt
(Writer, Journalist)

"‘The Tropic of Cracker’: Understanding Florida’s Native Folk"

Al Burt was born in Georgia but grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. After graduating from the University of Florida in 1949, Mr. Burt became one of Florida’s premier journalists. Joining the Miami Herald in 1955, he served as its city editor, Latin America editor, and editorial writer. In 1965 he was wounded and disabled while covering the civil war in the Dominican Republic. From 1973 to 1995, Mr. Burt served as the Herald’s roving Florida columnist, studying the state with the insight of a native and the detached eye of a foreign correspondent. Mr. Burt has won numerous national and state awards, including the Ernie Pyle Award for stories written about Cuba in 1961. In 1984 he won the Florida Audubon Society’s outstanding journalist award. In 1998 the Florida Historical Society awarded him its Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Book Award for Al Burt’s Florida: Snowbirds, Sandcastles, and Self-Rising Crackers (Gainesville, 1997). Mr. Burt is the author of five other books, including Papa Doc: Haiti and its Dictator (Markus Wiener, 1990) and Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes (Florida Classics, 1983). His latest book, The Tropic of Cracker (Gainesville, 1999), will be available at his program. Mr. Burt and his wife Gloria reside in the north Florida community of Melrose.

November 18, 1999

Perry D. Jamieson
(Historian, U. S. Air Force Support Office)

"Death in September: The Battle of Antietam"

Dr. Perry D. Jamieson received his Ph.D. in history in 1979 from Wayne State University. Dr. Jamieson’s mentor there was Grady McWhiney, one of America’s premier Civil War historians, with whom he authored the provocative Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa, 1982)—a book which ranks as one of the most significant works on Civil War military tactics. In 1980 Dr. Jamieson joined the Air Force History Program. A frequent lecturer at the Defense Department’s Joint Military Intelligence College, he also leads staff rides for the college to Antietam, Gettysburg, and other Civil War battlefields. In 1997 Dr. Jamieson was appointed a fellow to the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. His other works include Crossing the Deadly Ground: United States Army Tactics 1865-1899 (Tuscaloosa, 1994) and Death in September: The Antietam Campaign (1995), which will be available when he speaks. Dr. Jamieson and his wife Stephanie reside in Crofton, Maryland, and often spend weekends at their cottage on Antietam Battlefield.

January 27, 2000

Anne E. Rowe
(Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Florida State University)

"Florida in the Literary Imagination of America"

Anne E. Rowe received her B.A. from Florida State University in 1967. She is a recipient of an M.A. (1969) and a Ph.D in literature (1973) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the English faculty at Florida State University in 1972 and was chair of the department from 1994-1997. Specializing in southern literature, she is the author of two books, The Enchanted Country: Northern Writers in the South, 1865-1910 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978) and The Idea of Florida in the American Literary Imagination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986). She is presently at work on a book treating the use of domestic imagery by southern women writers. She is also the author of numerous articles on southern literature and was a contributor to The History of Southern Literature, the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Fifty Southern Writers before 1900 and Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South.

February 17, 2000

Daniel L. Schafer
(Professor of History, University of North Florida)

"From Enslaved Wolof to Free African-American: Anna Kingsley in Senegal, Florida, and Haiti"

Dr. Daniel L. Schafer holds degrees from the University of North Dakota (B.S) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D). In 1972 Dr. Schafer joined the faculty of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville and since 1995 has served as chair of the history department. Dr. Schafer has won numerous teaching and scholarship awards, including his own university’s Distinguished Professor Award (1996), the Florida State University System’s Professional Excellence Award (1997), and the Florida Historical Society’s Arthur Thompson Memorial Prize for the best article published in the Florida Historical Quarterly, 1984-1985. His articles and reviews have appeared in many other journals, including the Journal of Social History, Slavery and Abolition, and Florida Anthropologist. He is the author of Anna Kingsley (St. Augustine, 1994) and Jacksonville’s Ordeal By Fire: A Civil War History (Jacksonville, 1984), with Richard A. Martin. He has also contributed chapters to many other works, including East Florida’s Colonial Plantations and Economy (Gainesville, 1999), edited by Jane Landers; The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995), edited by David Colburn and Jane Landers; The New Florida History (Gainesville, 1995), edited by Michael Gannon; and Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, edited by Jane Landers. Dr. Schafer has been an advisor and contributor to several educational films and documentaries, including the forthcoming six-hour Florida Public Broadcasting program entitled "The Struggle for Paradise: Five Hundred Years in Florida."

March 16, 2000

 Emiliano Jose "E. J." Salcines
(Judge, District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District)

"José Marti, Tampa, and the Spanish-American War in Florida"

Hailed by Gov. Lawton Chiles as the "People’s Lawyer," E. J. Salcines has had a long and productive career as an attorney, prosecutor, assistant U. S. attorney, and judge. A native of Tampa, Judge Salcines holds degrees from Florida Southern College (B.A.) and the South Texas College of Law (JD). In 1964 he became the first Spanish-speaking assistant U. S. Attorney, rising to chief of the criminal division, then special assistant U. S. District Attorney for Organized Crime in the Southern and Midwestern states. He was elected four times as State Attorney for Florida’s Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, serving from 1968 to 1985. He is the author of Trial Manual on Predicate Questions, published by the National District Attorneys Association (a work derived from his summer lectures at the Northwestern University’s Law School). In 1979 Judge Salcines was knighted by King Juan Carlos of Spain, who inducted him into the Royal Order of Queen Isabella. In 1993 the University of South Florida awarded him its President’s Distinguished Citizen Award. One of Judge Salcines’s many avocations is his study of Cuba’s revolutionary figure José Marti and the Spanish-American War, subjects about which he has become a recognized authority.