Their Reputations Give Them Influence

Bishop Theodore N. Brown, Imani D. Asukil and Hazel Land come from the traditional ranks of black leadership - the clergy, educators and community activitists.

Lorenzo Hamilton and Howard Delanie don't exactly fit in either group, but are among those whose reputations in the community gives them considerable influence.

Some of those still prominent in Hernando's African-American population come from the traditional leadership ranks. Among them is Bishop Brown, overseer of the nine Churches of the Living God in the Florida Gulf Coast Diocese.

Born in the little Pasco town of Greenfield, Bishop Brown grew up in the Brooksville area where his father sawed trees into lumber and Theodore attended Moton, "the only school where I was allowed to go," said the cleric who later spent 20 years teaching at Moton, Parrott Middle School and Hernando High. He had worked for a time in the quarries and groves before attending St. Augustine College in Raleigh, N.C., where he earned a degree in education augmented by studies at the University of South Florida and St. Leo University to be certified in mathematics.

However, an Episcopal priest at St. Augustine had set a spark to an inner calling to the ministry to which Bishop Brown devoted himself part time until he left the school system in 1985 to become pastor of the Josephine Street Church of the Living God in Brooksville's "subs."

Racism that in his view was "blatant" in the days when he took part in civil rights marches today is "painted over, is more subtle. Where they used to beat with a whip they now beat with the pen," declared the bishop who, in addition to being a leader in the NAACP, was one of the founders of such organizations as the Minster-Layman Alliance of Hernando County and the Concerned Citizens' Alliance of Brooksville. He sees "token change with one black city council member, one school board member, one supervisor of elections" but holds some hope for more progress with the leadership of President Obama whose inauguration he attended.
Still, Bishop Brown finds observance of Black History Month depressing. "There's not much black history that is not known by either blacks or whites. It just needs to be put where it belongs - in American history."
He also decries the loss of black schools and the related influence of the religious community. "As children were dispersed throughout the community into integrated schools, it broke down the structure of family life which centered around the church. I believe it's a must to nourish the leadership of the community back to the church."

Imani D. Asukile
Imani D. Asukile (born in Brooksville as Dale Ellison Bennett) comes from another old-line field of leadership - education. He made his mark as the first black quarterback of the Leopards football team at Hernando High School.
Asukile earned a bachelor's degree at Morris Brown College and a master's from Clark Atlanta University before becoming coordinator of multicultural student affairs and equity services for Pasco-Hernando Community College. He authored a photographic history of African-American Hernando County and has written for The Hernando Tribune and The Pasco Tribune.
Taking part in the Million Man March is an important entry in his resume that includes past president of the Kennedy Park Little League, president of the African-American Heritage Society of East Pasco County and the Pasco Historical Society.
A deacon at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Dade City , Asukile is convinced "the church still is the most visible black institution but it is a mistake to say that it has all the answers for the black community's problems." He thinks the next generation of leaders who are beginning to emerge are "not so much clergymen like the civil rights leaders but guys with a different skill set."
That's because of the changes prompted by the change in the economy of Hernando County. "The former agrarian society required little particular training or education for most of the foot soldiers for harvesting and packing who came from the black community," he said. "There is very little agriculture in the county nowadays."
Married and the father of three, his concerns for the African-American community are that "very few of our kids are in banking or some of the businesses across the fabric of Hernando life, the condition of the South Brooksville community and the outlook for creating jobs for that community." And while the election of President Obama is seen as a positive step, "there will have to be a change in both the social and economic structure before there can be a full harvest of racial equality," as Asukile's sees it.
"The person who has financial security always will say that the racial situation is pretty good while those at the bottom will have a different perspective."

Hazel M. Land
Sharing much of that view is the grand lady of the old school, Hazel M. Land, 76, who laid the ground work in 1966 for the local organization as a field director for the NAACP.
Born at home with the assistance of a midwife as nearly all babies, black or white, in Brooksville were in those days, Ms. Land grew up playing with all the poor neighborhood children, black and white. "Our neighborhoods were not so strictly segregated then, even though the schools were," she recalls.
Then she went her separate way to "the black school, we didn't even know that its name was Moton." Her mother was a maid who encouraged all three of her daughters to go to college, which they did. One of Ms. Land's sisters became a nurse and the other a teacher. Ms. Land herself graduated from Tuskegee Institute with a degree in physical education with a minor in social studies and began teaching in Troy, Ala.
She then got a job in recreational therapy at a Trenton, N.J., hospital where she worked for five years. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's challenge, she joined the Peace Corps and wound up in the Philippines as a teaching assistant for English, math and science. Later she went to Nigeria where she taught home economics.
That exposure to less open societies fueled her interest in civil rights. Ms. Land returned to Brooksville and became a recruiter for the NAACP here and in Tennessee. That's where, after participating in the march the day before, she was in a nearby hotel in Memphis when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.
"Whites had the say so about jobs and everything else. Blacks had certain jobs - women in the kitchen of whites and men on farms owned by whites. Blacks got put in jails for little or nothing but it was not the same for whites," she said.
Her experience led her to become the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Florida law school in 1973 and to become a civil rights attorney in Jacksonville, Clearwater and then her hometown where she also became a member of the Hernando County Heritage Museum.
While individual African-Americans have done well, "progress has been pretty slow for blacks as a group, sometimes because of a lack of interest by black individuals," observed Ms. Land, who attended the inauguration of President Obama whose election she characterizes as "Divine intervention" to put an African-American in the office "who would talk about the problems of the country not just the problems of blacks."
She believes he will move the country in the right direction, which means, to her, seeing more African-Americans in Hernando County government.

Lorenzo Hamilton
For now, some of the most influential blacks in Hernando come from the fields of education and sports. One of the best known is Lorenzo Hamilton, 70, who earned his reputation as the coach, athletic director "and disciplinarian," he laughs, during his years at Moton.
Born and raised in the Ocala area, he went to Bethune Cookman College on a scholarship as a football lineman and earned a master's degree at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU. He began teaching in Lake Wales before coming to Brooksville where "the whole black community was an extension of the school and the community was a real community where 90 percent of the parents lived around the school area. Grocery stores, hamburger shops, ice cream parlors, barber shops, barbeque places, the Elks Club, the Blue Flame nightclub were all there."
In addition to building championship football, basketball and track programs at Moton despite a lack of facilities, Hamilton reached into that community. He instituted Wednesday night community recreation at the school for entire families with games, music and other activities. "We didn't have a gym so we played outside and built a fire in an oil drum to keep warm," he recalls.
Later, the county school system's white athletic director and the administration at Hernando High let Hamilton's teams use the gym at the white school after the white teams finished practice. "We started practice at 10 p.m. and would finish about 1 a.m.," Hamilton said.
In the summertime the coach also started the Little League baseball program that led to the development of Kennedy Park. He also organized a community-based girls' softball team that won a championship in the 1970s. Because of such efforts, his name was given to the community center at the park.
"There have been good people on both sides of the aisle of race relations," according to Hamilton, "and there were blacks who were successful in all walks of life." And to this day, many of them credit him with being one of those who inspired and encouraged them.

Howard Delaine
Another credited with giving "growing up" advice is Howard Delaine, 81, perhaps the most unlikely of those whose reputations still hold influence in Hernando's African-American community even though he had only a fifth-grade education and occupies no office in government or organization.
Delaine grew up with 10 brothers and sisters and nine half-brothers and sisters on a farm where his dad raised a few hogs, cows, corn and peanuts. He attended Mobley's School until Moton was opened and it was "too far for me to go because I had to work on the farm."
When he was 20 years old, Delaine left the farm to work in the citrus groves and on the weekends. Curly Lester and his wife Beatrice asked him to manage their pool hall at the corner of Josephine Street and what is now Martin Luther King Boulevard. The building included a restaurant, run by Beatrice, and was a favorite hangout for teenage boys, young adults and older laborers from the groves and mines "who would come in for grits and eggs and coffee before going to work," Delaine recalled.
Lester died in 1966 and Beatrice asked Delaine to take over the operation which included four pool tables and 14 slot machines. She had just bought a car for which she was paying $90 a month so she agreed to rent the business for that amount and after two years she sold everything to him for $17,000.
"For the first time in my life, I went to the bank and borrowed money to buy the place" that by that time included a barbeque stand in a trailer parked next to the pool hall, a couple of houses in back that he rented to Mexican farm workers and parking for 32 cars, Delaine said. The immediate neighborhood included two grocery stores, a couple of bars and churches.
"Everybody around here had a good time. There was none of these drugs and stuff because everybody knew me. If they were carrying on drinking and cursing, I'd tell them I don't allow that around here. They would leave. Everybody got along. They just sat around and talked 'till one or two at night."
And Delaine, a charter member of the Hernando branch of the NAACP, continued to hand out advice even after the groves froze, the mines stalled and stores closed. The area began to deteriorate and he was forced to raise the price of a game of pool from 10 cents to a quarter.
Then city officials came by and proposed letting them tear down everything and erect a new building as part of rehabilitation project. "I was uneducated and didn't have a lawyer so I agreed," Delaine said. He was given drawings (which he still has) and saw demolition start before he was told there now was no money.
Unable to reopen because buildings no longer were up to code, Delaine fought to get a permit for just the barbeque trailer. Finally, Howard's Barbeque got back in business with 75 percent of his customers white folks, but its still the up-and-coming blacks who ask for his advice.
However, whatever influence his reputation retains in the African-American community, Delaine sees no effect with the white-controlled local government which he feels neglects South Brooksville.
"There are no lights on Josephine and no sidewalks from Main Street to U.S. 41," he noted. "Nothing gets done in this area where it is needed."