ABOVE: Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith. Photo by Dylan Todd.
ST. PETERSBURG | Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith will receive a key to the city from Mayor Rick Kriseman Oct. 14, the highest civilian honor city leadership can bestow.
Among her decades of LGBTQ advocacy, in 1997 Smith co-founded Equality Florida, now the state’s largest LGBTQ-focused civil rights organization. She lives in St. Petersburg with her wife and son.
“Nadine Smith has been a community organizer, a trailblazer and a leader all her life,” Kriseman said in a statement. “From helping convene the first Oval Office meeting between a sitting president and LGBTQ community leaders in the 1990s to serving as the executive director of Equality Florida, Nadine is a leading voice for the LGBTQ community.
“She and her work are also an important part of what makes St. Pete so special,” he continued. “That is why I am incredibly honored to give my friend Nadine Smith a Key to the City of St. Petersburg.”
Smith served as one of the four national co-chairs of the 1993 March on Washington, making history by meeting with then-President Bill Clinton. She also served on the founding board of the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization and in August was reappointed to serve as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Florida Advisory Committee. A frequent winner of Watermark WAVE Awards for her advocacy and one of our Most Remarkable People in 2014, Smith is also a former journalist and Watermark contributor.
“As we approach the 25th anniversary of Equality Florida’s founding, I am honored to receive the key to a city that has become a beacon of fairness and equality for the LGBTQ community,” Smith shared ahead of the ceremony. “While the state legislature escalates attacks on our community, Florida’s cities continue to lead the state in LGBTQ inclusion.
“Mayor Kriseman’s leadership in St. Petersburg has made this a welcoming place for my wife and I to raise our child,” she continued. “We must continue to uplift the values of fairness and equal treatment under the law and ensure our city and our state are welcoming and inclusive places for everyone to live, work and visit.”
Smith will receive the key in a public ceremony during the St. Petersburg City Council meeting scheduled for Oct. 14 at 3 p.m. It will also be livestreamed via St Pete TV, which is available at this link or locally via digital cable on Spectrum’s channel 641, Frontier’s channel 20 and WOW! Cable’s channel 15.
Equality Florida also shared the news via social media. Read more below:
