Page 15 - Florida Sentinel 4-17-20

Local
Tampa Resident Receives ‘Distinguished Alumni Award’
BY GWEN HAYES Sentinel Editor
Mrs. Gloria Newton-Logs- don received the 2020 Distin- guished Alumni Award from the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. The presentation was made on February 21, 2020, during the 39th Annual Arts and Science Banquet.
Mrs. Newton-Logsdon, de- scribed as a Civil Rights Activist, re- ceived a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University in 1963.
According to the information printed in the program, Mrs. New- ton-Logsdon dedicated her early life to changing the racial climate in Kansas City and Columbia, Mis- souri, in the late 1950s and 1960s.
She served as the NAACP Youth Council President in Kansas City and was an active contributor at the
MRS. GLORIA NEWTON-LOGSDON
state and national levels. She was one of two youths selected to attend a meeting at the White House with President John F. Kennedy,
Martin Luther King, Jr. and NAACP and Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) executive direc- tors to advocate for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Newton-Logsdon and her husband, John L., also known as Jack, were active participants in the Columbia chapter of CORE, a group focused on non-violence in the fight to end segregation and dis- crimination.
After she graduated, the Logs- dons continued their activism in Washington, D. C., where she began her career as a social science analyst for the Department of Health, Edu- cation and Welfare.
The Logsdons moved to New York, where her 30-year career began as a Special Education Teacher, and then later on she worked as Associate Commissioner for children and families of the New
York State Office of Mental Health. Her bio in the program closed with: “Education is one thing they can’t take away from you. If you get an education, you can go anywhere, you can do whatever you want to. Nobody can stop you. Just keep on
keeping on.”
The Logsdons have been resi-
dents of Tampa for 25 years. They are parents to 2 adult children.
Logsdon shared that Mrs. Newton-Logsdon and her sister, Edith Freeman, have told their story through StoryCorps, a na- tional non-profit organization and one of the largest oral history proj- ects.
The StoryCorps recordings are archived at the Library of Congress and are also included in the collec- tion of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Cul- ture.
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