FORT MYERS, Fla. — The City of Fort Myers has renamed a section of Palm Avenue to Reverend Isadore Edwards Jr. Way.
Your Fort Myers community correspondent, Miyoshi Price, attended the ceremony to speak with people about the impact Reverend Edwards' life of service had on the Dunbar community and beyond.
Community members and Friendship Missionary Baptist Church gathered at a ceremony to watch installation of the new street sign.
Reverend Isadore Edwards Jr. was a man who dedicated his life to residents of Fort Myers as an activist for voting, educational and racial equality, and religion.
The event committee played some of his old sermons while they celebrated the sign's location at the corner of Palm Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. During the ceremony, they shared that he touched many lives from when he came to Fort Myers in 1961 until he left around 1972.
His members also displayed old news clippings of Reverend Edwards Jr., who was active in the NAACP during the 1960s and even served as president.
Segregation is a term many people in this audience tells Price they experienced during the Jim Crow era.
One couple had been married for more than 60 years, and they remember fighting against segregation in Fort Myers with Reverend Edwards leading the charge.
"It means a lot he done a lot of work," says Betty Toney, who was a member of Friendship Baptist Church. "He opened a lot of doors that we thought that would never open. He taken away the name of the water fountain, opening up jobs, and making sure children go to school, and if they needed to change schools change school without incidents."
Reverend Edwards Jr. Way is at the corner of Palm Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
His street runs from MLK to Edison.
Councilmember Teresa Watkins Brown said the city council is responsible for keeping trailblazers' legacies like Reverend Edwards's alive.
"I’m a recipient of the hard work of people like Brother Isadore Edwards and all the others before and after him, which gives me this opportunity to stand and serve the community," says Councilmember Teresa Watkins-Brown, Ward 1.
