2022 Black Heritage Calendar - Presented by the Black Educators' Caucus Inc., of Hernando County

“True community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of
individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together.” – Pauli Murray
Eugene Eleby
1942 - 1996
Dr. Eugene Louie Eleby, Jr. joined the Moton High School staff as a reading instructor
and assistant librarian in 1964. He would establish himself as the intellectual of the
staff who was as comfortable speaking with the educated as well as the common
man and woman.
Eugene was born in Mobile, Alabama, where he was an honor student at Central High
School. Eugene came of age in Alabama during the modern civil rights movement.
The Brown v. Board of Education would have some impact on his education, but
the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Governor Wallace standing in the schoolhouse
door at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa would profoundly capture his
attention. After high school, he attended Bishop State Junior College which was
referred to as the branch of Alabama State University in Mobile. After two years,
Eugene matriculated to Alabama State College in Montgomery, where Professor
Joann Robinson had used the Alabama State’s resources to make flyers to tell
people not to ride the bus and initiated an event that lasted 180 days and
bankrupted the Montgomery Public Transportation System. These experiences
impacted his direction into a career of public service. So, after earning his bachelors
and master’s degrees from Alabama State, he accepted a teaching position at
Moton High School in Brooksville just as the desegregation of the public school was
commencing in Florida. He would later earn a doctorate degree from Oklahoma State
University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Eugene was an asset to the community as a mentor, educator, and an intellectual. Therefore, it was not long before his
college sweetheart, the former Jessie Mabin was hired to the Moton staff as an elementary teacher also. Eugene was
intimately familiar with the works and thoughts of some of the black community’s popular thinkers and writers, such as
James Baldwin, W. E. B. Dubois and frequently quoted Morehouse College President, Benjamin Elijah Mays, “You make your
living by what you get, you make your life by what you give.” They made Brooksville home, purchasing a home in the
Mitchell Heights Community, joined First Baptist Church of Shady Rest, Frederick Kelly Elks Lodge 1270, and Jesse Kelly
Temple 1004. Gene once served as the Florida State Educational Board chairman for the Improved Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks of the World. His influence manifested through students he taught such as Martha Carol Maner,
Dianna Butts, Angela Humose, Franke and Peter Burnett Jr., Peter and Sharon Griffin. The Elebys were generous and kind
people who shared without groan or moan.
They spent 25 years in Hernando County as teachers before retiring in the early 1990s. They relocated to Eugene’s
hometown of Mobile, Alabama and joined the staff at his alma mater, Bishop State Community College as professors.
Eugene loved his students and community, but his wife Jessie and daughter Ejessica ranked second to God, Alabama State
University, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Incorporated. There is no question that Brooksville benefited from the life of
Eugene Eleby.
Sponsors: Jessie and Ejessica Eleby