Historian Gloria Jean Royster invites locals to spend the day at the bridge on the anniversary of its renaming to Madame Fortune Taylor Bridge.
Historian Gloria Jean Royster is inviting locals to spend the day at the Madame Fortune Taylor Bridge on Monday, October 19, the anniversary of the bridge's renaming. The bridge sits at the corner of W Laurel St. and Doyle Carlton Dr. in downtown Tampa, right in the River Arts District.
The bridge is named for Madame Fortune Taylor Ranson, a formerly enslaved woman who became one of Tampa's most prominent Black entrepreneurs and landowners in the 19th century. She was one of the early settlers of what is now downtown Tampa, and her name lives on in Fortune Street and the bridge itself. There's no known photograph of her, so most of what we know comes from oral history. She managed the household staff for the Clarke family—former mayor Edward A. Clarke bought much of the Taylor homestead in 1875—and she was a benefactor of Beulah Baptist Church and Historic St. Paul A.M.E.
Local lore adds a few more layers to the spot. The late Rev. Billy Graham is said to have honed his oratory skills preaching on Fortune Street, and the bridge itself is credited with helping save Tampa's struggling cigar industry. For a while, the bridge didn't carry her name, but Royster's activism led local leaders to restore it in 2017, and a historical marker went up in May 2018.
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It's a quiet piece of the city that most of us drive over without a second thought, so spending a day there is a good way to actually stop and look at it. The gathering is on Monday, October 19, at the Madame Fortune Taylor Bridge, at the corner of W Laurel St. and Doyle Carlton Dr. in downtown Tampa.
