The claim that Wiley Sauls was a “young legal scholar” who attended UF Law is refuted by the 1950 census
A detailed 2022 account of the 1951 Avon Park election by Jason Byrne claims that Mayor Wiley Sauls graduated from Avon Park High School in 1946 and “then went to law school at the University of Florida,” later describing him as a “young legal scholar.”[byrne-2022-election]
Under the “Could this source possibly know?” test, a 2022 blog post is a post-dated secondary account. It is directly refuted by a contemporaneous primary source: the 1950 federal census, enumerated on 27 April 1950 during Sauls’s first term as mayor. The census records the twenty-two-year-old Sauls living at home and working 60 hours a week as an unpaid salesman in his father’s retail grocery.[census-1950-avon-park] He had not attended law school, and there is no record of his admission to the Florida Bar.
Byrne’s blog post provides valuable synthesis of the 1949 and 1951 election numbers, the involvement of Barnett Bank, and the role of Black inspector W. J. Robinson, which align with contemporary reporting. However, its biographical claims regarding Sauls’s legal education are historically unsound and must be rejected as an error or conflation.
References
- byrne-2022-election — Jason Byrne. Avon Park City Council Throws Out All Black Votes in 1951 Election. 23 June 2024. https://floridahistoryblog.com/avon-park-city-council-throws-out-all-black-votes-in-1951-election/
- census-1950-avon-park — United States Bureau of the Census. Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950, Population Schedules, Florida, Highlands County, Avon Park enumeration districts. 27 April 1950. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/303137156
Where this comes from
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- single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
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Sources
- Jason Byrne, Avon Park City Council Throws Out All Black Votes in 1951 Election (2024)
- United States Bureau of the Census, Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950, Population Schedules, Florida, Highlands County, Avon Park enumeration districts (1950)
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