Blanche Armwood

Blanche Mae Armwood (January 23, 1890 – October 16, 1939) was an American educator, women's suffrage advocate, activist, and the first African-American woman in the state of Florida to graduate from an accredited law school. Armwood was also the first Executive Secretary of the Tampa Urban League and a founder of five Household Industrial Arts Schools for African-American women in five different states. Armwood High School in Seffner, Florida is named in her honor.

Early life Blanche Armwood was born on January 23, 1890, in Tampa, Florida to Levin Armwood Jr. and Margaret Holloman. Born into a prominent middle-class family, she was the youngest of five children. Her mother was a skilled dressmaker and her father was Tampa's first black policeman in the late 1870s and a county deputy sheriff in 1895. He was also the Supervisor of County Roads and the supervisor of Mt. Zion school. Her father and her brother, Walter, owned the only black-owned drugstore in Tampa, the "Gem." The school trained black women and girls to use then modern household gas appliances as well as other skills which would enable the students to excel in domestic service.

Between 1917 and 1920, while living in New Orleans and married to dentist John C. Beatty, Armwood received state and federal acclaim for her work in training domestic workers. In 1918, she published Food Conservation in the Home a cookbook which was popular with women of all races. The cookbook, published during World War I, had a particularly poignant introduction, stating that: "Every pound of white flour saved is equal to a bullet in our Nation’s defense."

In 1922, Jesse Thomas of the National Urban League nominated Armwood as the first Executive Secretary of the Tampa Urban League. Under her leadership, the Tampa Urban League established a public playground, a daycare center, and a kindergarten for black children and played a significant role in the development of a subdivision offering blacks decent and affordable housing. Throughout her service with the league, she served as assistant principal at Tampa's Harlem Academy School.

Armwood was appointed as the first Supervisor of Negro Schools by the Hillsborough County School Board. She is also credited with establishing Booker T. Washington School in 1925. Initially a junior high school, the first for black students in Tampa, it was quickly expanded to include black senior high school students, another first, and was the first accredited school for black students in the county.

In 1984, Congressman Michael Bilirakis and the Florida House of Representatives paid tribute to Armwood's legacy. That same year, Blanche Armwood Comprehensive High School, known today as Armwood High School, was opened in Tampa in her honor. In 2014 she was memorialized with a bronze bust on Tampa Riverwalk's Historical Monument Trail. Encore!, the revitalization of Tampa's black business and entertainment district, has renamed a street in Armwood's honor.