TAMPA, Fla. — Former State Senator Arthenia Joyner has spent the last sixty-plus years as a civil rights trailblazer who has fought for many of the freedoms we enjoy today.
History will describe her as a pioneer, civil rights activist, teacher, lawyer, and leader who happens to be black.
“I've lived through all the shades of blackness, you know, from Negro to colored to black and now African American. But I am a black woman, and that's how I best describe myself,” said Joyner.
She blazed a trail as the “first” in so many arenas. She was the first black woman lawyer in Hillsborough and Polk County, the first black woman elected as Florida’s Senate Minority Leader, and the longest practicing black female attorney in Florida history.
“We've made significant progress since my childhood, but at this point, it's obvious that there is a move. Well, there's been movement to take us back, and here we are again, fighting for the right to be able to tell our history in schools, to boys and girls. So, we have a different kind of fight, but it's still a fight,” said Joyner.
Joyner has never been one to back down from a fight. In 2000, she was the first woman elected to the Florida Legislature and spent 16 years as a Democratic state legislator fighting for equality and justice for all.
“When you take that leap for public service, people think it's easy, but it's not because you're giving up a lot of time. You're taking time away from your family, and it takes an incredible amount of time to do the job right, and that to me, you know, after my 16 years in the legislature, I came home and sat down and said, Oh my god, I'm exhausted. But I didn't get exhausted until it ended, but I felt a responsibility to give my best every single day that I was there,” explained Joyner.
She would go on to create more history in 1991 when then-Governor Lawton Chiles appointed Joyner to the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority Board. She became the first black person on the five-member board.
This paved the way for yet another historic first as she watched Michael Stephens become Tampa International Airport’s first black CEO.
“He did call me, and he said, thank you for paving the way for this. Which made me feel really good because, you know, sitting there on the authority, I had an opportunity to speak up and speak out and ask the question. Where are the groups that are not at the top here? And that included women. There were women who were not in the position that they should have been in, as well as blacks and Latinos. And I spoke for everybody, and change did happen,” explained Joyner.
“How do you want people to remember you when they speak of you and all the work that you've done?” asked ABC Action News anchor Deiah Riley.
“That I stood up for what I believed in, and I never backed down when, even in the face of all of the adversity, even if I was the only one. I always stood up and spoke out for what I believed in. Joyner never backed away from a fight when it involved her values and her people,” said Joyner.
Senator Joyner’s political activism began when she was just a teenager. As a junior at Middleton High School, she was one of about 40 high school students who stood up against injustice and fought for equality through sit-in protests, which led to the desegregation of Tampa lunch counters in the 1960s.
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