God And School

HALEY MICKENS
1873 - 1950
ALICE FREDERICK MICKENS
April 14, 1888 - Jan. 19, 1988
Haley Mickens helped start Palm Beach County’s first black church. His wife, Alice Mickens, turned the humiliation of separate and unequal schooling into a calling.
Mickens made a living running the wheelchair concession for E.R. Bradley’s Beach Club casino. The “wheelchairs” were three-wheeled rickshaw-type vehicles also called “Afromobiles,” because they were usually pedaled by blacks. One day in 1893, while meeting with friends in the Styx, the black section of Palm Beach, Mickens said, “Fellows, we could at least have a prayer meeting.” That led to Payne Chapel A.M.E. Church.
Alice Mickens helped lead the civil rights fight in West Palm Beach. She helped open theaters to blacks and boost standards at schools. She was on the board of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach for more than 30 years and a longtime friend of Mary McLeod Bethune. She often lobbied with Bethune in Tallahassee.
She dined with Eleanor Roosevelt, opened her home to Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche and helped persuade the state to open a home for wayward black adolescent girls.
Alice Mickens’ foster daughter, Alice Moore, was often alongside her. Moore, who taught at Roosevelt Elementary School for 30 years, has worked to keep the memory of her foster parents alive.
- ELIOT KLEINBERG