Tarpon Springs MLK Foundation

08/07/2025

Come out for on Saturday August 30th, at the Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center
324 Pine St, Tarpon Springs, FL
Doors open at 6pm
Show starts at 7pm
Tickets only $20
Contact 727-645-9731 or 727-379-1997




Presented by the Dr.MLK Jr Event and Scholarship Foundation

06/10/2024

Tickets are available now! Join us for an Evening of Soulful Praise with Rev. Tarver & The Original Florida Spiritualaires AND The Mighty Sons of Zion! Contact any committee member for further details and ticket purchases.

02/21/2024

John Albert Burr designed a lawn mower with traction wheels and a rotary blade that was designed to not easily get plugged up from lawn clippings.

Burr also improved the design of lawn mowers by making it possible to mow closer to building and wall edges. You can view U.S. patent 624,749 issued to John Albert Burr.

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02/21/2024

Dorothy Lavinia Brown was born in Philadelphia, in January of 1919 to an u***d mother who moved to Troy (NY), and then placed her in an orphanage when she was just five-months-old. In 1925, Brown's estranged mother reclaimed her, only to see her run away from home on five separate occasions.

At age 15 (the last time Brown ran away from her mother), she enrolled herself in high school. Recognizing that she had no place to stay, the school's principal arranged for Brown to live with foster parents who became a very positive influence in her life.

Brown went on to graduate at the top of her high school class at the age of 18, and then enrolled at Bennett College in Greensboro (NC), where she graduated number two in her class in 1941. Pretty remarkable so far, right? Well, hold onto your seats to see what she did next.

Following college, Brown returned to Upstate New York where she worked as an inspector at the Rochester Army Ordnance Dept. for two years before returning to school to study medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

After graduating from medical school in 1948, Brown became the first African-American female to be appointed to a general surgery residency in the racially segregated South.

Fast-forward to 1957 and Brown was named Chief Surgeon at Riverside Hospital in Nashville, and in 1966, became the first African-American female to be elected to the Tennessee State Legislature.

Along the way, she also became the became the first unmarried woman in Tennessee authorized to be an adoptive parent.

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02/13/2024

02/13/2024

FREE Health Education & Produce, March 5th-9th from 1pm-2pm. Registration required

02/08/2024

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931) was a pioneering American surgeon and hospital founder. An African American, he founded Provident Hospital in 1891, which was the first non-segregated hospital in the United States. Provident also had an associated nursing school for African Americans. He is known for having completed the first successful heart surgery.

02/06/2024

Before Venus & Serena Williams, there was Margaret and Matilda Peters. They were nicknamed “Pete” and “Repeat” for their doubles playing skills and last name. The Peters Sisters attended Tuskegee University in 1937.

While they were in college, segrègation laws did not allow African Americans to compete against Whites, so the Peters sisters played in the American Tennis Association (ATA), which was created specifically to give African Americans a forum to play tennis competitively.

After graduating from Tuskegee University in 1942, they both continued to play tennis in the American Tennis Association. They won 14 Doubles Tennis titles between 1938 and 1953. Despite their great skill, the sisters were never allowed to compete against the great white doubles players of the time.

By the time the walls of segregation in tennis started falling, the Peters sisters were past their prime and were never able to compete in racially integrated matches. However, they gained fame as tennis stars. Margaret and Matilda Peters were inducted into the Tuskegee Hall of Fame in 1977.
Black women are legendary.

02/02/2024

On this day in 1960, four black college students staged a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, NC.

They sparked a national movement across the country. Instructions were simple: sit quietly and wait to be served.

Source: African and Black History AfricanArchives

02/02/2024

Edmond Berger had an interest in increasing the efficiency of engines, at the time the internal combustion engine was still fairly new and had poor reliability issues. This is how in 1839 Berger came about to invent the spark plug in France.

A spark plug relies on electricity to pass a spark between two electrodes. This ignites a fuel mixture inside an engine to generate power. Many modern-day internal combustion engines depend on spark plugs. Berger never received a patent for his invention, and there is some debate if the date of his creation is accurate as the internal combustion engine was still in its early stages. This spark plug would have been very experimental at the time. Nevertheless, historians still acknowledge Berger for his trailblazing work in the automotive field.

02/01/2024

"Welcome to Black History Month. Black History is our history, White, Black, Asian, Spanish-Speaking and Native American, Everyone, our people." - Maya Angelou