NOVEMBER 1999

SINGLETARY

Florida prisons chief moves into classroom

By Dana Peck
Special to the Florida State Times

Harry Singletary has been in one spotlight or another most of his life.
At school, he was an all-star basketball player - the first black to integrate his team - and such a talent that his college retired his number when he left.
At work, he became the secretary of Florida's Department of Corrections - the first black to head the prison system - and expanded it under intense media scrutiny to double its size.

And this year, bright lights are focused on Singletary still; but this time it's the bright lights of the classroom where he is Florida State's newest criminology instructor.

"All I want to do is teach, make people think, teach them how to learn," he said. Despite his accomplishments, Singletary sometimes presents himself as "just a country boy from Tarpon Springs," the "son of a maid and a fruit picker." That impression could only suggest the complexity of the man. The son of devoted parents, he earned a degree in social work when most black youths didn't dream of college.

"The worst kind of slavery is ignorance," he quotes his father as saying.

Though he read constantly and taught himself the classics, Singletary did not apply himself to classwork when he was an undergraduate at Florida Presbyterian College, now Eckerd College.

"I was not a very good college student," he said. "I had a lack of focus; I played basketball, bridge, pool and went carousing."

Nevertheless, he graduated, and with a promising basketball career waiting for him: He had been named all-America by the Associated Press and United Press International, and was recruited by the Los Angeles lakers

But he eventually returned to school, this time as a serious scholar, and earned a master's degree in social work at the University of Chicago. After graduation, Singletary stayed in Illinois six years working in juvenile justice and the state's prison system, until he decided to return to his roots in Florida.

Eventually he settled in Tallahassee with his wife and three children, and worked his way to the top in the Florida Department of Corrections.
In 1990, Gov. Lawton Chiles named him as the head of the state's largest agency. Singletary steered the department through a crisis of forced early releases for prisoners and a massive building program.

At the same time, he saved the system millions of dollars in management changes.
"Harry is a gentleman and a scholar," said Robert Verdeyen, director of standards and accreditation at the American Correctional Association in Lanham, Md. "He had the vision to reinstitute the accreditation of Florida's prison system," which helps to keep litigation down and ensure that Florida meets federal standards.

Students say that Singletary's experience gives him an edge in the classroom.
"It helps for him to have experience," said Tameka Brown, a junior communications major and criminology minor at Florida State. "His lectures are not out of the book. He's actually lived it."
As he lectures, he paces back and forth along the aisles, recounting the habits of Edgar Allen Poe one moment to make a dramatic point, and bringing to life a routine day in the life of a prisoner in Florida.

This semester, Singletary teaches two Introduction to Corrections classes. He also is working with the Leon County School District supervising special programs for troubled youths. Eventually he says he wants to teach full-time, specifically in the areas of public administration and management leadership.

"I don't want them to pigeonhole me as just a corrections person," he said. "I know a little bit about government."

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