E. Lilyan Spencer
E. Lilyan Spencer
E. Lilyan Spencer
E. Lilyan Spencer
E. Lilyan Spencer
Winner of the 1937 Women’s Doubles ATA National Tennis Championship

Winner of the 1931 Women’s Singles FTA State Tennis Championship

Holder of State Women’s Singles Title for 10 Years Without Suffering Defeat in Competition

Humanitarian, Activist, Restauranter, Real Estate Investor and Youth Sports Advocate

First Female Principal of an Inner-City School at the Secondary Level in Leon County

Principal, Coach, Math Instructor, Athletic Director – Bond Junior High School: 1941-1951

Eldis Lilyan Spencer was born in 1905 in Tallahassee, Florida to the Rev. Abraham B. Spencer (1863-1924), of Decatur, Georgia and Lucinda C. Stroman Spencer (1871-1933), of Tallahassee. She was chairperson of the women’s day program and a lifelong member of Fountain Chapel A.M.E. Church on Eugenia Street, where her father had been pastor. Ms. Spencer and her sisters, Harpie Mae Adams and Willie Gertrude Holly, graduated from the Florida A&M College for Negroes (FAMCEE) and lived within three blocks of each other in the Villa Mitchell Hill subdivision (now “Greater Bond”), where they grew up. An older brother, Armenus J. Spencer (1892-1921) preceded them in death. She graduated from the original Lincoln High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a special certification in administration and supervision from FAMCEE, taking a personal interest in the growth and development of the neighborhood children. A large contingent of the Spencer family came to Tallahassee at some point during the late 19th century.
For a time, Ms. Spencer lived in Jacksonville, Florida and Orlando, Florida. She was an avid athlete in her 20s, playing on the segregated national tennis circuit and winning ten (10) state championships, as well as a national championship. As of 1954, Ms. Spencer was the only Florida woman to win honors in national competition, according to the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times). Playing professional tennis throughout the 1930s, she was the Florida Tennis Association (FTA) Women’s Singles Champion in 1931. In addition to this achievement, she was holder of the State Women’s Singles Title for 10 years without suffering a defeat in competition. Perhaps E. Lilyan Spencer’s most triumphant accomplishment came about when she won a National Tennis Title at the 1937 Southern Open Championship, also known as the 21st American Tennis Association (ATA) Nationals, held at Tuskegee Institute. Ms. Spencer and Bertha Isaacs (1900-1997), of Nassau, Bahamas, won the Women’s Doubles match. Her championship feat is mentioned in an exhibit of the International Tennis Hall of Fame entitled: “Breaking the Barriers: The ATA and Black Tennis Pioneers.”
Beginning her professional career as an educator, Ms. Spencer taught 1st through 3rd grades at the two-teacher Richardson Elementary School in the Richardson community located off Springhill Road near today’s Tallahassee International Airport. She taught 25 students and served as principal of the school. Closer to her home and neighborhood was one of the more essential community institutions in Leon County, Florida, Bond Junior High School (now Bond Elementary School), which was originally established in 1935. In 1941, the Leon County Board of Public Instruction solicited the much sought after services of E. Lilyan Spencer of 825 Eugenia St., to serve as principal and athletic director. Ms. Spencer proved herself to be a brilliant, no-nonsense, and highly capable administrator who recruited Leon County’s best and brightest teachers to serve on the faculty. Known as a disciplinarian, she kept a strap and paddle, but rarely had to use them.
“All she had to do was appear,” said the late M. Lucile Williams (principal of Bond, 1973-1981) in 1996, who taught under Spencer between 1949 and 1950. “She had things in check.” Williams said Spencer set high standards for both her students and her staff. She demanded excellence and accepted no excuses when it came to truancy. Her diligent and determined work regarding student absenteeism kept many students in school, even taking students into her home who were less fortunate.
Following her appointment to lead Bond Subdivision School, additional grades were added and the name changed to Bond Junior High School, with senior grades also briefly becoming part of the makeup according to newspaper accounts and the oral recollections of a former student. She was the first woman to serve as principal of an inner-city school at the secondary level in Leon County’s history, and the first woman to preside over an institution providing education for senior grade students.
Ms. Spencer played an integral role in the establishment of the Bond Community Credit Union, an organization for which she served as Treasurer. She chaired the Negro Division of the March of Dimes campaign to raise money for children with polio, having attended a special school to broaden her knowledge of the disease. In 1949, she raised $500, equivalent to $6,631.60 in 2024, more than any other division of the campaign. She also assisted with arranging a drive for 168 black children to receive free medical examinations during National Negro Health Week in 1948. That year, Bond School received connection to city water services, which greatly reduced the risk of health hazards due to the contamination of well water. Enrollment more than tripled to nearly 700 students by the end of the decade, which necessitated the need for a new school plant. Ms. Spencer’s boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, both of which she coached, received statewide recognition and awards during her tenure.
In 1949, a new $125,000 brick addition to the school was completed; a ten-room building which included classrooms, offices, supply and boiler rooms, and sanitation facilities. A six-classroom masonry addition was also planned for Bond in 1950, which was dedicated in April 1951. A champion for youth sports, she was chairperson of health and physical education for the countywide Negro Pre-School Planning Conference. Though praised by both black and white citizens for her work throughout the community, Ms. Spencer asked the Board of Public Instruction not to reappoint her to the principalship in 1951, instead retaining her positions as athletic director, mathematics instructor and girls’ basketball coach.
Ms. Spencer’s community service also extended to the Leon County Negro Auxiliary Christmas Seal Sale Committee; an annual fundraising drive which supported the year-round tuberculosis control program of the Ochlockonee Tuberculosis and Health Association, which she chaired on behalf of the Bond Subdivision. In 1947, she was issued a permit to open a restaurant at 829 Eugenia St. in Villa Mitchell. Though the name of the restaurant is not known, Ms. Spencer applied for a county permit to sell beer from the location in 1949. She was also a real estate investor and property owner, who sold lots to former Bond principal Walton S. Seabrooks, the Lewis family, and to Mozerna Riley (widow of educator John G. Riley) in the Villa Mitchell Hill and Cherry Hill subdivisions. She also sold homes and granted mortgages to blacks as well as whites in other sections of the community.
By 1954, Lilyan Spencer had joined the faculty of Roulhac Negro High School in Chipley, Florida, where she was also head basketball coach, and was lauded by the Florida Interscholastic Coaches Association with an award; having coached her teams to be the best in the state, according to a July 30, 1954, St. Petersburg Times article. Admitted to FAMU Hospital in late 1956 for an undisclosed illness, she died in Tallahassee on January 24, 1957, at the age of 51. She was funeralized two days later at Fountain Chapel Church and buried in Oakland Cemetery. Having no children of her own, Ms. Spencer’s niece, Altamese Horatio Holly Reddick, became the executor of her estate. Ms. Spencer married Jerry Lee Tinsley in Orlando, Florida on April 3, 1927, with the marriage ending in divorce in 1939.
In 1996, after a yearlong nomination and research process, Bond neighborhood residents asked city commissioners to name a new three-acre neighborhood park and stormwater retention facility after E. Lilyan Spencer, and fellow neighborhood activists Rev. Daniel B. Speed and Mrs. D. Edwina Stephens. It is now known as the Speed–Spencer–Stephens Park. And while it had been decades since Ms. Spencer was considered well-known, Lucile Williams commented at the time that the recognition “gives her back the respect she once had.”

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