This year marks the 45th year the United States has recognized March as National Women’s History Month. Since former President Jimmy Carter first proclaimed the honor in 1980, communities around the country have spent the month celebrating the contributions of women currently influencing their communities and women who influenced them in the past. 

Carter’s first presidential address to the nation following the signing of the Women’s History Month proclamation spoke to this need to recognize and honor the contributions of women each day and throughout history. 

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation,” he said. “Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.” 

Here are five women whose lives shaped many of the pieces that make the Gainesville community what it is and who inspired many in their wake to continue doing the same today.  

Black History: LaVon Wright Bracy  

In 1964, Bracy became one of the three Black students who integrated into the historically-white Gainesville High School (GHS) and became GHS’s first Black graduate. Bracy’s father, Thomas A. Wright, pushed for integration while serving as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Gainesville.  

Bracy volunteered to go to GHS since her father wanted a senior in order to get Black graduates sooner. On Bracy’s first day of school, she said she was spit on by white students, called the n-word and was isolated after the teacher told the students they didn’t have to sit next to her. Rumors spread that some students were going to kill Bracy at her graduation. Bracy wrote a book detailing her senior year at GHS. 

Education: Lassie Goodbread-Black 

The Lake City native came to Gainesville in 1925 to enroll as the University of Florida’s first full-time female student. Although UF was founded as a coeducational institution, women were barred from attending full-time in 1903—a few years before the Buckman Act designated UF as the state university for males—and could only complete summer school courses.  

Mary Alexander Daiger became the first UF female graduate in 1920 with summer school classes and in 1924, the Florida Legislature ruled that women could enroll in regular semester classes at UF if the classes weren’t offered at the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee. The women had to be a “mature age” of at least 21 years old and have already completed two years of school from a “reputable educational institution.” 

 Goodbread-Black was admitted to UF after previous schooling at the Florida State College for Women and graduated with a degree from the College of Agriculture. 

Arts and culture: Mary Ann Peebles Harn Cofrin 

The Harn Museum of Art wouldn’t be known as one of the nation’s largest art museums affiliated with a university like it is today without Cofrin. The P.K. Yonge High School graduate attended the Florida State College for Women, before marrying local surgeon Dr. David A. Cofrin.  

Already growing into a local and national philanthropist, Cofrin agreed to make a $3 million donation in November 1987 to start the art museum after her husband approached her with the idea. More donations came from Cofrin’s family members and the Harn opened in 1990 named after her late father, UF alumnus and former Chamber of Commerce leader in Gainesville Samuel Peebles Harn. 

Business: Audrey Schiebler 

Schiebler’s efforts for child advocacy left a lasting impression not only in Gainesville but across the country. She came to Gainesville in 1960 when her husband, Dr. Gerold L. Schiebler, came to serve on the faculty of the new University of Florida College of Medicine.  

While raising six children, Schiebler and her husband were among the leaders to build the Ronald McDonald House in Gainesville and she served as president of the UF Medical Guild, Medical Auxiliary and Junior League of Gainesville.  

It was through her time serving with Junior League that Schiebler helped establish the Alachua County Council on Child Abuse and lobby for the State of Florida Guardian ad Litem program, the nation’s first guardian ad litem program to achieve statewide status for state funding.  

Sports: Dr. Ruth Alexander  

Alexander founded women’s sports at UF when she established the Lady Gator Athletic Program in 1972. The former high school basketball player came to Gainesville in 1968 and was hired as chairwoman of the Department of Physical Education for Women. Alexander noticed female students could participate in all other parts of campus life, like Greek life and extra-mural clubs, and believed intercollegiate athletics should be part of that experience.  

Colleagues observed that Alexander never championed women’s athletics as a “men’s sports vs. Women’s sports” issue, but to give women an opportunity. After then UF President Stephen C. O’Connell and the University Athletic Board accepted Alexander’s proposal for women’s sports, UF became the first SEC school to allow women’s athletic competition, and only three weeks before U.S. Congress passed Title IX which equalized women’s rights in sports at schools receiving state funding.  

Alexander also became the first woman appointed to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports by former President Richard Nixon.