Dyckman, Martin A. Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins.

• Author: Johnson, Lloyd
• Position: Book review

Dyckman, Martin A. Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. xii + 332 pages. Cloth, $29.95.

Martin A. Dyckman, retired associate editor and commentator on Florida government and politics for the St. Petersburg Times, has produced an excellent biography of LeRoy Collins, who served as governor during a tumultuous period of Florida's history, from 1955 to 1961. Dyckman spent five years carefully researching and writing this work, making use of numerous primary sources such as newspapers, government documents, and oral interviews.

LeRoy Collins (1909-91) was the son of an independent grocer in Tallahassee, Florida's capital city, and attended public schools there. After graduating from high school in Leon County, he briefly attended the Eastman Business School in New York before returning to Florida. Although he never enrolled in a four-year college, he later graduated from Cumberland School of Law in Lebanon, Tennessee, and passed the state bar examinations in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida. He then began a career as an attorney in Tallahassee.

His first years as an attorney in Tallahassee were a struggle. Collins eventually became involved in politics by being elected to the Florida legislature, and married into a prominent Florida family when he wed Mary Call Darby in 1932. Darby later inherited The Grove, Tallahassee's most distinguished antebellum mansion. Collins later commented that restoring this mansion almost bankrupted them because they spent most of their time and money renovating the house and making it habitable. While Collins was governor, The Grove also served as the governor's residence while the new governor's mansion was being constructed next door.

Public service was Collins' true calling. Collins said that serving in the legislature was not personally important to him, "but what I could do there was of tremendous importance" (p. 31). His upbringing in Tallahassee shaped Collins' personality and compassion toward all people. Throughout his career, he was known as a great storyteller. He drew on his many experiences working with his father and was able to see and experience a wide range of lifestyles and personalities. Based on his conscience and his personal moral beliefs, he used his government service as an opportunity to correct many of Florida's social problems. (Although he was a segregationist because he served the state during the Jim Crow...