MEET OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
| Gwen Allen-Carston | Executive Director |
| Charles Carston | Board Member |
| Willie Wright | Board Member |
| Linda Sweezer in Memoriam | Event Coordination Team Member |
| Charmaine Boston | Food Services Coordinator |
GWEN ALLEN-CARSTON
Gwendolyn Cynthia Allen was born and raised in Leesburg, Florida by her parents, family-members, neighbors and friends in 1952. She attended Dabney Elementary for 6 years. She went on to the only Black/Negro High School in town, Carver Heights High from 1965-68. In 1968-1970 Gwen was forced, by the new system of integration, to attend Leesburg Senior High School, and was required, by law, to leave all thoughts and customs from the Negro school behind and take on all the “white” traditions, symbols, activities, teachers and everything that belong to the “white High School” and just get along. Well, you can imagine, if you know Gwen at all, that this mindset did not sit well with her and still doesn’t to this day. The hurt and the utter lack of caring to uproot the students from everything familiar, without any preparation or awareness of the forced agendas which she and her classmates had to endure, in order to “get along” in the city during the times of change in the country. Tensions caused by the unfamiliar were the challenge to overcome them and help find a “happy medium”. She graduated in 1970 and went on to Southern University in Baton Rouge and reclaimed her identity as a strong, beautiful, creative, caring and successful Black woman. Ready to meet the new opportunities head on!
LINDA SWEEZER (In Memoriam)
