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Okahumpka Community Club History
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To this day, each Okahumpka Community Club meeting begins with a prayer and scripture reading. Albert Leroy Oliver was the Okahumpka Community Club president, the Sunday School Superintendent, a Deacon, and my father-in-law shared Danny Watson. This is how Danny Watson became involved in the Okahumpka Community Club. Watson now serves as a board member of the Okahumpka Community Club. He remembers the history of three local churches providing funding to buy the old Okahumpka Rosenwald School from the Lake County School District for the Okahumpka Community Club. The Club served the local community with member support from each of the congregations. The three churches that funded the school purchase were Mt. Olive Baptist Church, where Danny Watson currently serves as a Deacon; New Bethel A.M.E. Church, located across the street from the school; and Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. The four men who signed the Articles of Agreement in 1967 were trustee representatives of the churches and Trustees of the Okahumpka Community Club. The four men, all local community members, were Albert Oliver and Willie Hamilton, who attended the Mt. Baptist Church; Frank Little, attending the Mt. Olive Baptist Church; and Tommy Hatcher, a member of the New Bethel A.M.E. Church. Danny knew all four men personally to be involved with the Community Club. He helped repair the old school in the late 1970s, making it an official Community Center, and the Lake County Community Action Agency paid approximately $3,800 for materials and contributed $200., monthly for utilities. The Center was used for Meals on Wheels and senior citizen workshops. The Community Center housed in the old Rosenwald Okahumpka School and surrounding property has always been owned by the Okahumpka Community Club; according to Danny Watson, he has never known anyone else to claim ownership. The churches continue to donate $25., to support lawn maintenance for the school and the local cemetery because the Okahumpka Community Club represents the entire community.
A Civil Rights Pioneer:
Virgil Darnell Hawkins
Committed to Serving the Community
Virgil Darnell Hawkins (1906-1988) was born in Okahumpka. He spent the last several decades of his life fighting to enter the University of Florida School of Law. He was initially denied admission on the basis of his race. In 1956, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Hawkins was "entitled to prompt admission under the rules and regulations applicable to other qualified candidates." After several decades, at the age of sixty-nine, Hawkins opened his law office in Leesburg, Florida. The Florida Supreme Court noted that Hawkins "seldom turned away an indigent client in need."
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