The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Keith E. Collyer

In the autumn of 1951 the Avon Park city council voted to throw out every ballot cast in the town’s Black polling place. The lawyer who stopped it was Keith E. Collyer of Avon Park, and by the most likely reading of the contemporary press he was, at the time, the City Attorney of Avon Park.

What he did in 1951

The Supreme Court of Florida’s report of Gough et al. v. State ex rel. Sauls et al. names him plainly: for the appellees — Wiley Sauls, Jr., J. B. Sparks and Mannin Kirkland — “Keith E. Collyer, Avon Park.” Against him, for the city council, were Sumter Leitner of Arcadia and S. Colquitt Pardee, Jr. of Avon Park.[gough-1951]

The Tampa Tribune’s reporting of 11 October 1951 shows what that meant week by week. Collyer obtained the alternative writ of mandamus for Sauls; the hearing on it was held at Sebring on Monday 8 October, and Judge Don Register granted a peremptory writ. When the council did not comply “forthwith,” the contempt citation “was issued late yesterday on petition of Attorney Keith Collyer, who told the court that the councilmen named in the peremptory writ had failed to meet ‘forthwith’ and carry out its orders.”[trib-1951-10-11]

And on the evening of 10 October, when the council finally gave way, it was Collyer who put the winners in office:

The following winners, as determined by a Sept. 15 resolution, were sworn in by Collyer as a notary public: Mayor Wiley Sauls, Jr., for his second term; Councilmen Lenny Rush, Mark Smith, Clifford Thomas and J. B. Sparks, newcomers to the council, and Mannin Kirkland, reelected.[trib-1951-10-11]

The same story quotes him casting doubt on the legality of the council’s own compliance, because the Supreme Court had by then suspended Judge Register’s order: he “said he doubted the council’s action was legal … he thought it was worthless because the council knew at the time that the State Supreme Court had issued an order suspending Judge Register’s writ.”[trib-1951-10-11]

Was he the City Attorney?

The Tribune attaches the title to him — “City Attorney … Collyer” — and it is the paragraph in which he doubts the council’s action.[trib-1951-10-11] If that is right, then the City of Avon Park’s own lawyer went to court against the City of Avon Park’s own council, on behalf of the men its Black precinct had elected. That would be a remarkable position for a lawyer in a segregated Florida town in 1951, and it is worth stating carefully rather than confidently.

The same page complicates it. A few paragraphs later, Judge Register refers to “their city attorney, S. C. Pardee, Jr.” — the retiring council’s.[trib-1951-10-11] Both titles cannot be simultaneously right in the ordinary sense, unless the office changed hands in the middle of the affair, or the newspaper used “city attorney” loosely for whichever lawyer was speaking for the council of the moment. The question is open, and only the city’s own records will close it. A separate reading of the same page by a second researcher reached the same conclusion independently.

The offices he held

Two are documented, and neither is “City Attorney.” In 1949 the Florida Bar’s professional news recorded that “Keith Collyer of Avon Park has been named attorney for the Highlands County commission.”[flbar-1949] In June 1955 the Attorney General of Florida addressed an opinion to “Keith E. Collyer, County Prosecuting Attorney, Sebring.”[ago-55-139] So two years before the election affair he was the county’s lawyer, and four years after it he was the county’s prosecutor. The Tribune’s “City Attorney” may be a confusion with one of these, or he may have held the city post too; the question stands.

He was still writing for the Florida Bar Journal in November 1971, on the state’s new no-fault insurance law, and the Bar’s record of him carries a last address at Satsuma, on the St. Johns River in Putnam County — which sits between Avon Park and the Jacksonville firm of Black & Collyer of 1967, and makes it likelier that the two Collyers are one man who moved north.[courtlistener-collyer]

What else he did

Collyer had a working Highlands County practice for at least fifteen years around this, and the reported decisions show its shape.[courtlistener-collyer]

Case Year What it was
Board of County Commissioners v. F. A. Sebring Realty Co., 63 So. 2d 256 1953 County land litigation
Droit v. State ex rel. Long, 71 So. 2d 259 1954 Mandamus to compel certification of a Justice of the Peace election, turning on whether Chapter 27592, Special Acts of 1951, abolishing Justice of the Peace districts in Highlands County, had taken effect
Strine v. State, 86 So. 2d 426 1956 Criminal appeal
In re Shepherd’s Estate / Loy v. Shepherd, 130 So. 2d 888 1961 Probate appeal, in which Collyer and S. Colquitt Pardee appear as co-counsel on the same side, with Mattie W. Tompkins and Hue E. Nunnallee
Roberts v. Church, 173 So. 2d 727 1965 Civil appeal

Two things stand out. He came back to Highlands County election law within three years, in Droit v. State ex rel. Long, again by mandamus, again to make an official certify a result. And by 1961 he and Pardee, who had opposed each other in the Avon Park case, were on the same side of a probate appeal — which is what a two-lawyer town looks like.[courtlistener-collyer]

A “Keith E. Collyer” of the firm Black & Collyer, Jacksonville, appears in Jobe v. Jobe, 202 So. 2d 791 (1967). It may be the same man moved north, or another of the same name; sixteen years and a change of city and firm make it a lead, not an identification.[courtlistener-collyer]

His birth and death, where he trained, when he was admitted to the Florida Bar, when he came to Avon Park and when he left, his family, and whether he ever said anything about the case of 1951 are not recorded. No Find a Grave memorial has been found under any spelling.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Supreme Court of Florida, Special Division B (Chapman, J.), Gough et al. v. State ex rel. Sauls et al., 55 So. 2d 111 (Fla. 1951) (1951)
  2. The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Fla.), Avon Park Council Action Questioned, by Hayden Williams — The Tampa Tribune, 11 October 1951, page 17 (1951)
  3. The Florida Bar, Looking back at the lawyers, leaders, and legacies of 1949 — quoting the Florida Law Journal's news of the profession: 'Keith Collyer of Avon Park has been named attorney for the Highlands County commission' (2024)
  4. Office of the Attorney General of Florida, Attorney General Opinion 55-139, 23 June 1955, to Keith E. Collyer, County Prosecuting Attorney, Sebring (1955)
  5. Free Law Project, CourtListener opinion search: reported Florida decisions naming Keith E. Collyer as counsel, 1953-1967 (2026)

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