County Renames Courthouse in Honor of Late Brother Judge Mickle, Sr.

The Alachua County Commission unanimously approved renaming the courthouse after Brother Judge Stephan P. Mickle in March 2021, two months after he died from cancer at age 76. An official ceremony was held in January outside the main entrance of the Alachua County Criminal Courthouse in Gainesville.

Brother Mickle was born in New York in 1944, and grew up in Daytona Beach; Camden, South Carolina; and Gainesville. He graduated with honors from Lincoln High School in 1961. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Lincoln remained an all-Black secondary school until 1970. The renaming ceremony was billed as a highlight of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Florida’s 2022 events celebrating the slain civil rights leader’s legacy.

He was a member of Mount Carmel Baptist Church as well as the local chapters of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the NAACP, among other organizations.

After the ceremony, Brother Aaron Daye, a multimedia specialist with the UF Advancement, praised renaming the courthouse after Brother Mickle.

Brother Mickle, a 1963 Epsilon Pi Lambda initiate of the Fraternity, broke many racial barriers as a pioneer in Alachua County and Florida. He was the first African American to earn an undergraduate degree at the University of Florida, and the second Black student to graduate from its law school, in 1972, he became the first Black man to practice law in the county since Reconstruction, in 1979, the county’s first Black judge, and in 1984 the first Black judge appointed to the Eighth Judicial Circuit. In 1998, he became the first Black federal judge in the U.S. District Court at the Northern District of Florida.

“It’s a living legacy of his impact and what we should all strive to become – just like him,” Brother Daye says.

His widow, Evelyn Mickle, UF’s first Black nursing school graduate, said during the ceremony that her husband of 52 years was forever giving back, building bridges, and looking forward.

“Today, it is our honor and our hope,” she says, “that this renaming of the Alachua County Criminal Courthouse with Judge Stephan P. Mickle Sr. will spark hope, hope and more hope, as it is passed from generation to generation.” S