Joseph Lang Kershaw, Sr. Collection

3 Linear Feet

Joseph “Joe” Lang Kershaw, Sr. was the first African American legislator elected to the Florida Legislature since Reconstruction. Born on June 27, 1911, in Live Oak, Florida, Kershaw was a 1930s Florida A&M University alumni who saw the beginning of football at the college, pledged Kappa Alpha Psi, and worked as a janitor inside the Florida Legislature. After working as a teacher in what is now known as Miami-Dade County, Kershaw was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1968 and served for 14 years. He also served as chairman of the Elections Committee, where his work led to the formation of the Florida Human Rights Commission. Kershaw died in Miami, Florida, at age 88 on November 7, 1999. The documents in this collection mostly pertain to aspects of his personal and academic life and his role as a legislator in the Florida House of Representatives. It also has documents about his father, A. J. Kershaw, and friends/colleagues like Gwendolyn Cherry and Althea Gibson.

The collection consisted of two boxes and an additional donation during processing. The first box was transferred from the Active Collection Room located on the third floor of the Meek-Eaton Black Archives. It was 0.25 linear feet with some original order to the collection that the archivist tried to maintain during the survey and cataloging process. The second box, containing sixteen items and one oversized item, was donated by Joseph L. Kershaw, Jr. on December 14, 2022, and was pulled from a safe storage area while awaiting processing. It was one cubic foot and did not have an original order. The final donation was made by Joseph L. Kershaw, Jr. and Deana Lee Ponso on February 5, 2024, and did not have an original order. Categories were created to organize new, acid-free folders into an arrangement. The original folders were discarded, and the new folders were rehoused into three boxes. Two boxes were 0.5 linear feet each, and one box was 2 linear feet. The aforementioned oversized item was displayed as limited supplies, and space did not allow placement in a box. Using original sub-headings, the materials were grouped by subject and material type and filed alphabetically and chronologically. While the first box mainly had papers, the second box held papers and small artifacts. The third box largely dealt with too large artifacts for the 0.5 boxes. In 2024, the collection was prepared for digitization after being rehoused in linear feet archival boxes, solidifying the collection at 3 boxes and miscellaneous items on display.

Open

Researchers should cross-reference this group of records with other material in the archives collection. Examples of other collections include the Black Archives collection, Althea Gibson, Gwendolyn Cherry, James N. Eaton, and Benjamin L. Perry.