In memoriam: Hal Lewis, longtime UF and P.K. Yonge educator and crusader for school desegregation

Hal G. Lewis Sr., a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in education at the University of Florida and a crusader for desegregation of Florida schools and college campuses, died at his daughter’s home in Livermore, Cal., on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2005. He was 97.

Lewis, who lived in Gainesville, also was the principal of P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, the UF College of Education’s laboratory school, from 1944-48. He was a professor of educational foundations at the college for 42 years, spanning 1936 through his retirement in 1979.

He first came to the college in 1935 to take courses required for renewing his teaching certificate. G. Ballard Simmons, then principal at P.K. Yonge, was so impressed by the young teacher from Georgia that he invited Lewis to join his faculty. There were only six College of Education faculty at that time—more than a decade before UF became coeducational.

Lewis’s ties with P.K. Yonge lasted for more than 60 years—as a teacher, principal, parent and College of Education professor. He first taught social studies and then core courses at the lab school from 1936 until 1941. After obtaining his doctorate at Columbia University, he contacted Simmons, by then UF’s acting dean of education, about returning to P.K. Yonge. Lewis was hired as principal in 1944 and served for three years before returning to teaching at the UF College of Education, where he served as chair and sole faculty member of UF’s newly formed Department of Foundations of Education, which housed the programs in education psychology, research methods, and social and philosophical foundations of education.

Hal Lewis: through the years…
Hal Lewis Hal Lewis Hal Lewis

During the tumultuous period of desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s, Lewis focused his efforts on preparing teachers to work with children of a different race, a development that didn’t sit well with all teachers-in-training of that era. He served two terms as president and one as board chairman of the Florida Council on Human Relations, one of the first southern groups to work for desegregation. He also founded the Gainesville Council on Human Relations and served for 10 years on the Florida Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Behind the efforts of Lewis, J.B. White (dean of education from 1949-64) and other UF faculty and administrators, UF enrolled its first black student in 1958, into the College of Law. The College of Education soon followed suit.

“Dr. Lewis’s desegregation activism occurred at a time in North Florida when such behavior entailed serious risks,” said Richard Renner, a College of Education faculty member from 1965-2003. “His longlife contributed much to improve race relations.”

Professor Rod Webb, an education faculty member since 1971, said Lewis was “a proud son of the South, but he recognized in his teens the evils of segregation and fought furiously to end it. His dedication to equality was deep and his opposition to injustice was unequivocal.

“Hal scanned the social horizon. He dedicated the college and the P.K. Yonge School to innovation and to anticipating the problems that schools would face in the near future.”

Lewis remained at the College of Education until 1979, when he was appointed Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus upon his retirement.

“Hal never walked a well-worn path. He found his own way and did so with amazing and gentle grace,” Webb said. “When Hal was in his 90s, students he had taught 30, 40 and 50 years earlier would still seek him out to thank him for his guidance, kindness and inspiration.”

Lewis was born in 1908 in Greensboro, Ga. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1930, where he was in the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, before earning his doctorate from Columbia. In Gainesville, he was active in the Gainesville community and his church.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Godwin Lewis, and son, Hal Graham Lewis Jr. Survivors include his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Lewis Costantino of Livermore, Cal.; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the Lewis family requests that donations be made to the P.K. Yonge Alumni Fund, 1080 SW 11 th Street, Gainesville, FL 32601; or to The Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Dr. Lewis’s obituary includes biographical information from two reference books: “Exploration and Experimentation: The Road to Educational Excellence/The College of Education 1905-2001”; and “A History of the P.K. Yonge Laboratory School” by Louisa Bohannon Taylor (1995).