In 1925, five years after women were granted the right to vote, the Florida Legislature ruled to allow women of a “mature age” to attend the state’s land grant college in “Hog Town”—but only for classes that were unavailable at Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee. The first “Gator Girl” to enroll at the University of Florida in Gainesville was Lassie Goodbread-Black. Black was from a pioneering Lake City family who managed to sustain the family’s plantation from 1868 through the civil war, and into the twentieth century. Most assuredly not your typical plantation owner’s daughter, she enrolled in UF’s College of Agriculture in 1925 and went on to do important civic and community projects in Lake City throughout her life. I got to know her daughter, Nettie Black Ozaki, when I was living in rural North Florida, and maybe that’s why I see today’s “Gator Girls” a little differently than most people do. In less than a century you can’t help but marvel about how the female students experience the university today.
Small: 12” x 16” – $160.00 | Medium: 24” x 32” – $215.00 | Large: 36” x 48” – $480.00