Fortune Taylor News Today

New and slick and shiny objects are attractive in their gloss, but need time to develop depth and spirit. This is true for places as well as people. Much of Florida is too newly minted to have this patina, so if we value character, we need to stop demolishing and paving over our older neighborhoods.

Fred Hearns, a historian with the Tampa History Center, highlights Fortune Taylor, a formerly enslaved woman responsible for connecting east and west Tampa.

Tampa's Riverwalk is lined with markers and busts that tell the city's rich history and share the stories of some of its most-well known residents. On Monday, a little-known name was added among the past mayors and movers and shakers that left their marks on the city.

Fred Hearns, the curator of Black History at the Tampa Bay History Center, discusses some of Tampa's forgotten, neglected and buried past.

Robert Johnson wasn’t famous in his day and his image is lost to time. Yet nearly 90 years after his body was found on the banks of the Hillsborough river, his name will be added alongside those of prominent city leaders memorialized along the Riverwalk.

Fortune Taylor, a Black woman, was responsible for connecting East and West Tampa in the late 1800s.