Bro. Fred G. Minnis

In 1935, Brother Fred G. Minnis was the National Director of Education for Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., the year when the Beta Alpha Chapter was chartered. He, along with national officer James Weldon Johnson, was key in the effort to form an undergraduate chapter in the city of Boston, MA. Today we give him thanks for a lifetime of service and achievement.

Bro. Minnis’ destiny with history was frequent. In the lead up to World War II (WWII), Bro. Minnis, Sr. joined the US Army as an Officer, he would serve as just one of two African American officers to lead a Civilian Conservation Corps company for five years. Serving with distinction and achieving the rank of Major, in 1941 Bro. Minnis, Sr. was selected as one of the original African American Officers to open the Tuskegee Air Base in AL. Charles E. Francis, author of Tuskegee Airmen: Men Who Changed A Nation credits, Bro. Minnis, Sr. for being “greatly responsible to the success of the Tuskegee [Airmen]”—the federal government’s program that trained African American men to become pilots and maintain fighter jets.

Bro. Minnis returned to Washington, DC, after The War to attend Howard University where he earned his law degree in 1951. Next, he attended Georgetown University where he earned a Legal Letters Master degree (LLM). In 1956, he ultimately moved to St. Petersburg, FL, in Pinellas County, where he opened the first African American-owned law firm. Mr. Minnis headed the law firm that represented the Citizens Cooperative Committee, the NAACP, and the NAACP Youth Council in their many legal actions in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, in Bro. Minnis’ honor, the Black Bar Association of Pinellas County bears his name: “The Fred G. Minis, Sr. Bar Association.”

Other Accomplishments:

Bro. Minnis, Sr. served as the only African American researcher supporting the development of the New Deal’s Social Security Act.

Bro. Minnis, Sr. first served as a professor at Florida A&M University when he arrived in FL. He ultimately resigned in protest when he learned that he made $3,000 less than the most junior white law professors made at the University of FL.

Throughout his years as a pioneering attorney and community advocate, Mr. Minnis mentored and provided opportunities for clerkships to lawyers such as James B. Sanderlin, Pinellas County’s first African-American judge.

Bro. Minnis, Sr. was known as the “grandfather” and “Dean” of African-American lawyers in Pinellas County.