Samuel Bruce McDonald, a community activist and one of the first Black administrators in the Palm Beach County School District, died on May 29 at age 98.
McDonald made history in 1968 as the first Black principal of a nearly all-white school in the county, Boca Raton Junior High. He was a U.S. Army veteran who taught at and then served as assistant principal at all-Black Roosevelt High in West Palm Beach before working as an area superintendent for the school district.
He came out of retirement to serve as interim director of the Urban League of Palm Beach County, and, in recent years, led efforts to transform the historic Roosevelt High School site into a cultural arts and Black history museum.
The 20,000-square foot museum is slated to open in 2028 and is expected to include a research library and gallery space and will host community and youth programs. Roosevelt High, closed in the 1970s after desegregation, was a segregated Black high school that was a focal point for Black education and activism, a story the museum is expected to tell.
McDonald was honored with a JM Family Enterprises African-American Achievers Award in 2012 for his lifetime dedication to education and equality. His face is part of a mural on Tamarind Avenue in West Palm Beach, not far from Roosevelt.
McDonald’s wide influence in Palm Beach County
“The Black history museum at historic Roosevelt should be named after him,” said Dr. Debra Robinson, a former Palm Beach County School Board member. “It was his vision, and he worked to make it happen.”
Robinson is one of many friends, relatives and associates remembering McDonald as a quiet man whose advocacy and example were far larger than his voice.
“He was fairly soft-spoken, but his words were heard loudly,” Robinson said. “He was a guiding force. The school district talked Mr. McDonald out of retirement to be the principal at Roosevelt Elementary when my eldest son was in the first grade. That’s when I met him.”
It was a fortuitous meeting.
“At some point that year, he suggested to me that I run for school board and, a decade later, I did,” Robinson said. “I suspect he planted the seed.”
Robinson served on the school board for 22 years, herself leaving a significant mark on local public education.
Urban League of Palm Beach County CEO Patrick Franklin said McDonald was among the first people he spoke to when he took the job in 2002. McDonald had come out of retirement to lead the organization through a difficult time.
“Wonderful gentleman,” Franklin said. “Lots of wisdom and knowledge. He was a mentor to me when I first got to the Urban League, and I had many conversations with him.”
McDonald shared some of what he had experienced at the Urban League, and Patrick said he knew he was talking to a man with a deep, extensive history of commitment to the area.
In 1998, The Palm Beach Post looked back at McDonald’s efforts to help local residents accept desegregation.
The Post reported that there were “rumors about bomb threats, about school violence, about the competence of this handsome black man with the elegant elocution and the no-nonsense attitude who, one day, found himself caught in the currents of desegregation and agreed to steer an uncharted course.”
There were those who would not follow that course.
“Some white parents sent their kids to private schools rather than subject them to the unknowns of integration,” The Post reported. “Some black parents failed to come to the school when their kids were disciplined, and those children, “fending for themselves,” would end up with suspensions “for insubordination.”
It wasn’t just students and parents who were stuggling with the realities of desegregation — and of working with and for Black people.
“One teacher said he could not bring himself to work under the supervision of a black person,” McDonald told The Post. “I told him I appreciated his candor, and said I could assist him in getting a reassignment.”
That response was typical McDonald, NAACP activist Alfred “Zach” Straghn told The Post.
“He didn’t care if you were white, blue, black or green,” Straghn said. “He was there to see that those students get educated, and that’s what he sold. He sold it to the parents, to the teachers, to the community.”
Samuel McDonald was born on May 3, 1928, in Blitchton, an unincorporated community in Marion County. At the time of his death, he was the last living charter member of both the Gamma Gamma undergraduate chapter at Talladega University and West Palm Beach alumni chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
Family and friends say his life was decidated to mentorship, scholarship, achievement and service.
“His commitment to the residents of West Palm Beach and that whole area was essential,” Franklin said. “I can’t say enough good things about him and the life he had and the things he did throughout his life. Just a great man.”
McDonald is survived by his children — Sylvia McDonald-Kaufman, Tammy A. McDonald, Bruce N. McDonald, and Delphine V. McDonald — as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Celebration of life arrangements had not yet been finalized as of June 2.
In a statement, the family said: “We take comfort in knowing that his legacy will live on through the generations of students he inspired, the organizations he strengthened, the communities he helped shape, and the many lives he touched.”
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Black educator, civil rights fighter remembered as soft-spoken giant
Reporting by Wayne Washington, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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