The Florida Capitol Museum

The Florida Capitol Museum:

 Looking at The Workforce Past, Present & Future

Tuesday evening, TCC hosted one of the many events apart of Tallahassee’s first “March of Museums” series. Students along with local people from the community all joined together to discuss the matriculation of Florida’s Labor workforce over the past years with special guest speaker Steven Noll.

Steven Noll has published three books and is a current professor at the University of Florida

This event along with many others in the first “March of Museums” series all highlight the many museums in the states capitol that commemorate Florida’s history.

The Florida capitol. Museum speaker series focused on the theme of “The Way We Worked: Labor and Florida history”. The discussion focused on topics ranging from good jobs, fair wages, unemployment rates, tourist drawn economic systems, and so many other things that make up this state’s economy. Mr. Noll went into depth about the start of Florida’s economic system with the assistance of clip art displayed through a slide show. All of the art used showed different stages and areas of Florida that drew economic growth depending on the resources obtained from a specific area during a certain time frame. From plantations to sharecrops or the development of industrial shifts in the natural land to lumber mills.

 Mr. Noll really went into depth on the racial tensions and social injustice that took place in the development of Florida’s workforce. With the beginning of Florida’s workforce being developed through the use of slaves for free workers for jobs such as plantation workers. “Leon county is the fifth largest cotton producer of all counties in Georgia and Florida.” Said Noll.

The images used really captured the progression of Florida due to the use of these slaves. His presentation even illustrates life for workers after the civil war when many blacks and indigenous slaves moved into positions of sharecropping, turpentine workers, tobacco plant works and etc.

But over the years many of the jobs that have held economic growth in Florida continue to be diminished by the continues demolition of Florida’s natural lands for the development of human habitation and industry services or tourist attractions. According to Noll some of Florida’s top 3 current economic problems are that, “Many people have a problem finding a good paying job.  Workers aren’t being properly trained for these jobs once hired and third we need to be concerned about caring for Florida’s environment while balancing these good paying jobs”.

As for the spectators, they were very engaged with Mr. Noll’s presentation and had quite a bit of feedback. There were even a couple sugar plant labor workers who just so happened to be in town and thought this would be a great opportunity to voice some of their own concerns about the future of Florida’s workforce and their position in it.

Many guest discussed their own opinions on how to improve the job market and how to prepare workers to take on jobs in the future.

When asked about their overall goal for the series, Ms. Tiffany Baker, the museum director over at Florida’s capitol had this to say. “Basically, we are providing an historic context to the community. We want to give people a generally overall analysis of Florida’s history to look at through a set of fresh eyes. That way we are able to discuss or make more informed discussions about the issues that are taking place.”

The “March of Museums”, commemorates Florida heritage month and will continue to take place with other events within the community until April 15^th.