Waymakers

When Pauline Lawrence (MS ’72, Ph.D. ’75) met Carlton Davis in 1971, she had just been accused of interfering in the domestic affairs of the United States. Her crime? Holding a sign outside Tigert Hall. Lawrence had joined other Black students in a peaceful protest on what would become known as Black Thursday, a pivotal point in the struggle for racial equity at the University of Florida.

Picketing was out of character for Lawrence, UF’s first Black female graduate student in entomology and a native of Buff Bay, Jamaica.

“My focus was on getting my research done, being a good student and returning to Jamaica,” said Lawrence, now professor emerita.

Her experiences, however, bore out the grievances the Black Student Union brought to then-UF President Stephen O’Connell that Thursday. Lawrence, openly referred to as “that girl” and “hot pants” in her department, was astonished at the lack of Black people in leadership positions at the university. She cried upon learning that janitors, predominantly elderly Black men, were forbidden to use campus bathrooms and had to relieve themselves in containers they kept in their cars.

UF had admitted its first Black student in 1958 under federal mandate. By the time Lawrence arrived in 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered UF to demonstrate progress. Only about 350 of UF’s 20,000 students were Black, and UF did not hire its first three tenure-track Black faculty until 1970. Among the hires was Davis, an agricultural economist.

Unlike Lawrence, Davis was no stranger to activism. Also from Jamaica, he had attended the University of the West Indies during a rich period of thought and debate, led by a cadre of eminent Caribbean scholars who advocated for independence from colonial powers.

When Davis heard about Lawrence’s plight, he reached out to help. Ultimately, Lawrence’s fear of being deported went unrealized, but Davis would play a key role in negotiations with O’Connell in the wake of Black Thursday, which culminated in the arrests and suspensions of more than 60 Black students. At one point, Davis resigned in protest at the students’ treatment. It was refused, and he received a flood of encouragement from across campus to stay and help increase the representation of Black scholars at UF.

That’s exactly what Davis did – but not alone. He and Lawrence wed in 1976, the year she was hired as an assistant professor of zoology, the first Black woman to join the department’s faculty.

Together, Lawrence and Davis spent their academic careers at UF, not only conducting renowned research in their respective fields, but laboring to make the institution a more hospitable place for Black researchers.

‘Who’s going to do it?’

While Lawrence preferred to advance through hard work and quiet determination, Davis was more comfortable confronting the status quo. He co-founded UF’s Association of Black Faculty and Staff and served as the Black Graduate Student Union’s first faculty adviser. Davis frequently spoke on behalf of Black faculty and students with university administrators. Lawrence thought of him as “the tip of the spear.”

“When we met with, say, a president or provost, Carlton was the one who got pushed forward,” she said. “He was always very good at articulating what it was the group needed to say. But because of that, it was almost like, ‘Here comes the troublemaker.’”

Soon after Davis’ arrival, he was asked to chair the working committee for UF’s first Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunities plans – steps the Supreme Court directed UF to take. In a 2011 interview with the UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, Davis recalled mixed feelings about the assignment.

“They were using us Black people to carry the ball for the university,” said Davis, distinguished professor emeritus. “Essentially, we were writing the manuals that would result in getting more of us here. So, I saw it as an obligation to some extent.”

When university leaders claimed it was too difficult to find qualified Black applicants for professorships, Davis, Lawrence and others pored over campus job announcements and reached out to Black researchers across the U.S.

“Our mindset was ‘It is the university’s responsibility, but if we do not step up, who’s going to do it?’” Lawrence said.

As a Black woman, Lawrence found herself on committees to recruit both people of color and women, serving on as many as 10 at a time.

Making UF history

Even in retirement, Lawrence and Davis continued to invest in UF’s success. Lawrence created an endowment for undergraduate research in entomology, and the couple also supports the UF Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. They’ve also given back to their native Jamaica, funding a mobile dental clinic, a farm that provides employment to young men and academic scholarships at the University of the West Indies.

Lawrence and Davis knew these service activities would not count toward their tenure and promotion. After exhausting days of teaching and committee work, Davis would return to his office after supper to work on his research, often not driving home until 1 a.m.

“In retrospect, I wonder how I survived,” he said. “But I was determined.”

‘I could not be just average’

Being among UF’s first wave of Black scholars came with intense pressure and surveillance. Police often tailed Davis on the streets of Gainesville after dark, and he was repeatedly suspected of having forged his UF ID when he tried to cash checks.

“It was a strange, eerie feeling: people’d look at you,” he recalled in his oral history interview. “They had not seen Black faculty members.”

After Lawrence asked her department head why a colleague with fewer publications received a larger raise, he accused her of being “hoity-toity” and entitled. She was often excluded from social gatherings with other early-career faculty members.

She and Davis felt their publications and academic achievements were under close scrutiny.

“We could not be just average,” Davis said.

Shaping the university through science

Average they were not. Both Lawrence and Davis established research programs that garnered widespread recognition.

While the majority of entomologists focused on managing agricultural pests through chemical insecticides, Lawrence probed fundamental questions of biology and physiology instead. She was particularly interested in the interactions between insect pests and their natural predators.

Lawrence’s research in African wasps helped to secure her a position as the first Black woman to be a full professor in UF/IFAS.

Lawrence became the first scientist to identify a pox virus in a wasp, a discovery she made while hunting for the secret to an African wasp’s success at parasitizing fruit fly larvae. She found that the wasp adds this viral accomplice when it injects its eggs into its host, knocking out its immune system. Lawrence also sequenced key genes in the virus, a first step in its potential use in pest management or as a future transporter of new genes in pharmaceutical applications.

After she received a competitive offer from another university in 1994, then-UF President John Lombardi personally advocated for her to stay and join the department of entomology and nematology. She was the first Black woman to be a full professor in UF/IFAS.

As a professor of food and resource economics in UF/IFAS, Davis studied poverty in rural Florida and the South, particularly among people of color. He evaluated rural housing and how the food stamp program shaped nutrition in minority households. He also analyzed island economies in the Caribbean Basin and their ability to compete in global trade and often fielded calls from Caribbean government officials and academics seeking his insights.

Davis was inducted into the George Washington Carver Public Service Hall of Fame at Tuskegee University, an award given to those whose work mirrors Carver’s philosophy – “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” He also received the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1990, Davis became the first Black person at UF to be awarded the rank of distinguished professor.

But he is often remembered most for his dedication to mentoring. He took dozens of Black students under his wing, including those from the Caribbean and Africa, and his ability to connect people helped raise UF’s international profile, Lawrence said. Among Davis’ protégés was Ralph Dean Christy, now a professor of emerging markets at Cornell University.

The strain of having to continually prove oneself, however, took a toll. Not long before his death, Davis told Lawrence, “Pauline, it has not been without a price.”

“We very much support the university. But I don’t think people realize what we and others went through helped make the university what it is,” Lawrence said.

Still, she said, Davis loved the University of Florida and the leaders who wanted to contribute to the university’s growth.

“His favorite word was ‘perspicacious,’” Lawrence said. “And I think I could say that for Carlton. He was able to see what could be and didn’t dwell too much on what had happened.”

One of their recent gifts to UF supported the construction of a dormitory at UF’s Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead, now under the directorship of Edward “Gilly” Evans, a mentee of Davis and the first Black person to lead the center.

For Lawrence, the donation was personal. She studied at TREC during her Ph.D. under the leadership of Richard Baranowski. For Lawrence’s protection, Baranowski insisted she stay at the field station instead of in town, where the Ku Klux Klan was active.

To her, the new dorm represents a place where today’s UF students can safely live, study and enjoy what she often missed: a sense of community.

The Pauline O. Lawrence Student Residence is the first UF building named after a Black person.

In her speech at the groundbreaking, Lawrence honored the struggles of people of color who came before her. “Their blood, sweat and tears are in this soil,” she said. “Indeed, the naming of this residence not only recognizes the past history of the University of Florida, but it marks the beginning of the making of a brand-new history.”