E. LILYAN SPENCER, PIONEER & PLAYER

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E. LILYAN SPENCER, PIONEER & PLAYER

 

 

1905–1957

 

Winner of the 1937 Women’s Doubles ATA National Tennis Championship

Winner of the 1931 Women’s Singles FTA State Tennis Championship

Holder of State Women’s Singles Title for 10 Years Without Suffering Defeat in Competition

Humanitarian, Activist, Restauranter, Real Estate Investor and Youth Sports Advocate

First Female Principal of an Inner-City School at the Secondary Level in Leon County

Principal, Coach, Math Instructor, Athletic Director – Bond Junior High School: 1941-1951

 


One of the more essential community institutions in Leon County, Florida was Bond Junior High School (now
Bond Elementary School), originally established in 1935. In 1941, the Leon County Board of Public Instruction
solicited the much sought after services of E. Lilyan Spencer of 825 Eugenia St. in Tallahassee, to serve as
principal and athletic director. Ms. Spencer proved herself to be a brilliant, no-nonsense, and highly capable
administrator who recruited Leon County’s best and brightest teachers to serve on the faculty. Known as a
disciplinarian, she kept a strap and paddle, but rarely had to use them.


“All she had to do was appear,” said the late M. Lucile Williams (principal of Bond, 1973-1981) in 1996, who
taught under Spencer between 1949 and 1950. “She had things in check.” Williams said Spencer set high standards for both her students and her staff. She demanded excellence and accepted no excuses when it came to truancy. Her diligent and determined work regarding student absenteeism kept many students in school, even taking students into her home who were less fortunate.


Eldis Lilyan Spencer was born in 1905 in Tallahassee, Florida to the Rev. Abraham B. Spencer (1863-1924), of
Decatur, Georgia and Lucinda C. Stroman Spencer (1871-1933), of Tallahassee. She was chairperson of the
women’s day program and a lifelong member of Fountain Chapel A.M.E. Church on Eugenia Street, where her
father had been pastor. Ms. Spencer and her sisters, Harpie Mae Adams and Willie Gertrude Holly, graduated from the Florida A&M College for Negroes (FAMCEE) and lived within three blocks of each other in the Villa Mitchell Hill subdivision, where they grew up. An older brother, Armenus J. Spencer (1892-1921) preceded them in death. She graduated from the original Lincoln High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics with a special certification in administration and supervision from FAMCEE, taking a personal interest in the growth and development of the neighborhood children. A large contingent of the Spencer family
came to Tallahassee at some point during the late 19th century. 

 

For a time, Ms. Spencer lived in Jacksonville, Florida and Orlando, Florida. She was an avid athlete in her 20s, playing on the segregated national tennis circuit and winning ten (10) state championships, as well as a national
championship. As of 1954, Ms. Spencer was the only Florida woman to win honors in national competition,
according to the St. Petersburg Times. Playing professional tennis throughout the 1930s, she was the Florida Tennis Association (FTA) Women’s Singles Champion in 1931. In addition to this achievement, she was holder of the State Women’s Singles Title for 10 years without suffering a defeat in competition. Perhaps E. Lilyan Spencer’s most triumphant accomplishment came about when she won a National Tennis Title at the 1937 Southern Open Championship, also known as the 21st American Tennis Association (ATA) Nationals, held at
Tuskegee Institute. Ms. Spencer and Bertha Isaacs (1900-1997), of Nassau, Bahamas, won the Women’s
Doubles match. Her championship feat is mentioned in an exhibit of the International Tennis Hall of Fame
entitled: “Breaking the Barriers: The ATA and Black Tennis Pioneers.”


Before beginning her service at Bond School, Ms. Spencer taught 1st through 3rd grades at the two-teacher
Richardson Elementary School in the Richardson community located off Springhill Road near today’s
Tallahassee International Airport. She taught 25 students and served as principal of the school. Following her
appointment to lead Bond Subdivision School, additional grades were added and the name changed to Bond
Junior High School, with senior grades also briefly becoming part of the makeup according to newspaper
accounts and the oral recollections of a former student. She was the first woman to serve as principal of an
inner-city school at the secondary level in Leon County’s history, and the first woman to preside over an
institution providing education for senior grade students.


Ms. Spencer played an integral role in the establishment of the Bond Community Credit Union, an organization
for which she served as Treasurer. She chaired the Negro Division of the March of Dimes campaign to raise
money for children with polio, having attended a special school to broaden her knowledge of the disease. In
1949, she raised $500, equivalent to $6,631.60 in 2024, more than any other division of the campaign. She also
assisted with arranging a drive for 168 black children to receive free medical examinations during National
Negro Health Week in 1948. That year, Bond School received connection to city water services, which greatly
reduced the risk of health hazards due to the contamination of well water. Enrollment more than tripled to
nearly 700 students by the end of the decade, which necessitated the need for a new school plant. Ms. Spencer’s
boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, both of which she coached, received statewide recognition and awards during
her tenure.


In 1949, a new $125,000 brick addition to the school was completed; a ten-room building which included
classrooms, offices, supply and boiler rooms, and sanitation facilities. A six-classroom masonry addition was
also planned for Bond in 1950, which was dedicated in April 1951. A champion for youth sports, she was chairperson of health and physical education for the countywide Negro Pre-School Planning Conference. Though praised by both black and white citizens for her work throughout the community, Ms. Spencer asked the Board of Public Instruction not to reappoint her to the principalship in 1951, instead retaining her positions
as athletic director, mathematics instructor and girls’ basketball coach.


Ms. Spencer’s community service also extended to the Leon County Negro Auxiliary Christmas Seal Sale
Committee; an annual fundraising drive which supported the year-round tuberculosis control program of the
Ochlockonee Tuberculosis and Health Association, which she chaired on behalf of the Bond Subdivision. In
1947, she was issued a permit to open a restaurant at 829 Eugenia St. in Villa Mitchell. Though the name of the
restaurant is not known, Ms. Spencer applied for a county permit to sell beer from the location in 1949. She was
also a real estate investor and property owner, who sold lots to former Bond principal Walton S. Seabrooks, the
Lewis family, and to Mozerna Riley (widow of educator John G. Riley) in the Villa Mitchell Hill and Cherry
Hill subdivisions. She also sold homes and granted mortgages to blacks as well as whites in other sections of the
community.


By 1954, Lilyan Spencer had joined the faculty of Roulhac Negro High School in Chipley, Florida, where she
was also head basketball coach, and was lauded by the Florida Interscholastic Coaches Association with an
award; having coached her teams to be the best in the state, according to a July 30, 1954, St. Petersburg Times
article. Admitted to FAMU Hospital in late 1956 for an undisclosed illness, she died in Tallahassee on January
24, 1957, at the age of 51. She was funeralized two days later at Fountain Chapel Church and buried in Oakland
Cemetery. Having no children of her own, Ms. Spencer’s niece, Altamese Horatio Holly Reddick, became the
executor of her estate. Ms. Spencer married Jerry Lee Tinsley in Orlando, Florida on April 3, 1927, with the
marriage ending in divorce in 1939.


In 1996, after a yearlong nomination and research process, Bond neighborhood residents asked city commissioners to name a new three-acre neighborhood park and stormwater retention facility after E. Lilyan Spencer, and fellow neighborhood activists Rev. Daniel B. Speed and Mrs. D. Edwina Stephens. It is now known as the Speed–Spencer–Stephens Park. And while it had been decades since Ms. Spencer was considered well-known, Lucile Williams commented at the time that the recognition “gives her back the respect she once had.”


Ms. Spencer served the youth of her community for her entire life. She was chairperson of health and physical education for the Leon County School District’s Negro Pre-School Planning
Conference. She emphasized youth sports, and consistently dominated state competitions as a high school coach and athletic director.
 

She was recognized in 1954 by the Florida Interscholastic Coaches Association for having the greatest basketball teams in the state as a coach. In 1996, a park, the Speed-Spencer-Stephens Park in Tallahassee, Florida was named and dedicated in her honor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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