Path to Unity

Creative Pinellas is pleased to be hosting The Florida Bar’s Path to Unity Project from November 30 – December 15, 2022. Path to Unity is a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Florida Bar ‘s Standing Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, honoring attorneys in Florida who exemplify the values for The Florida Bar’s mission for equality.

“This program is a celebration of diverse attorneys who are each trailblazers in their own right,” Starlett Massey and Kyleen Hinkle, co-chairs of the Pinellas County Path to Unity committee, said in a prepared statement. “It is designed to educate lawyers and non-lawyers alike about our country’s civil rights movement. Each of these attorneys both lived and influenced the modern civil rights movement. Their stories remind us of our potential to impact positive change.”

The esteemed lawyers being featured in the exhibit include:

• James Weldon Johnson – the first Black person admitted to The Florida Bar through an individual examination who also wrote the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in 1900 that became referred to as the Black national anthem
• Anna Brenner Meyers – the founding member and first president of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers
• Judge Mario Goderich – the first president of the Cuban American Bar Association and the first Hispanic/Cuban American to hold all of his judicial posts
• Larry D. Smith – a tireless advocate for the LGBTQ community and the first openly gay member to serve on the Supreme Court Commission of Florida
• James Kracht – a blind and fierce advocate for blind lawyers in Florida and past president of the Florida Council for the Blind, who helped organize The Florida Bar’s first CLE seminar about lawyers with disabilities

Click here to learn more about the traveling exhibition

We are so excited to work with the committee and to host this exhibit at the gallery at Creative Pinellas,” said Barbara St. Clair, Creative Pinellas CEO. “Art has a unique way of connecting ideas and emotions, of telling stories in ways that create an opportunity for people to learn things they didn’t know and see things in new ways. In this case, five amazing portraits, of five powerful leaders, who changed the world in positive ways.”
Creative Pinellas is also offering a Continuing Legal Education course that aligns with the exhibit on Thursday December 8, 2022, from 3-5pm featuring Larry D. Smith, the only living lawyer to be honored with a Path to Unity portrait. For more information and to register for the CLE program, please visit REGISTER HERE