Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution by Mary E. Adkins (review)

Mary E. Adkins has written a well-organized and well-researched narrative history describing the challenging process in the 1960s by which Florida and Floridians developed and approved a new constitution, thereby replacing the post-Reconstruction document dating from 1885. As Adkins argues, with the new constitution of 1968, "Floridians reclaimed their state sovereignty … [and] made modern Florida" (4).

The author, director of Legal Writing and Appellate Advocacy and a Master Legal Skills Professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, brings extensive experience to this project. Adkins writes clearly and confidently about her subject, yet in a readable fashion that nonspecialists will enjoy. This is a compelling story, well told.

A preface and introduction lay out subjects to be addressed in the book. Among these are the rapid post-1945 transformation of the state and a resistance to this change by economic and political power brokers; the role of the federal government in transforming this system; the constitution revision commission that led the process of writing a new document; and the challenging path that culminated in 1968 with the legislature and voters approving the constitution. The first chapter, detailing the 1885 constitution and several unsuccessful twentieth-century attempts to modify or change parts of it, gives needed context to the bitter fights that marked the decade preceding adoption of the new state charter.

Adkins organizes succeeding chapters chronologically, always keeping her story linked to national debates on civil rights taking place at the time. She demonstrates, for example, how several US Supreme Court rulings on reapportionment in the early 1960s effectively forced Florida to address the failings of its existing constitution. But stubborn state political leaders effectively resisted change until 1965-66, when, after the courts found several reapportionment plans unconstitutional, the legislature created a constitution revision commission (CRC) that met and ultimately proposed a new document.

The sometimes rancorous history of this commission, from the debates about whether it would be created at all and what powers it would have to its membership and subsequent deliberations, fills the middle chapters of Making Modern Florida. Adkins traces the stories of the public hearings and debates and brings to life significant actors in this drama, such as Chesterfield Smith and Beth Johnson. She also links the CRC to ongoing changes in the political arena and does so in a way that allows even lay readers to follow. Concluding chapters recount the history of the state legislature in July 1968 ultimately agreeing on the new constitution, and voters in November of that year approving it. An epilogue describes how the CRC process continues to play a role: an amendment to the 1968 constitution contains a provision requiring a new CRC to meet once every twenty years to examine the constitution and propose possible changes. The most recent met in 2017-18.

Oral history has a meaningful place in this book. The author outlines in the preface how she accessed interviews at the University of Florida's Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, some dating back to the 1970s. In addition, Adkins conducted interviews of her own with several persons who played prominent roles during the time. In total, the bibliography lists seventy-six individual interviews, from several collections; the author conducted fourteen of these during 2011-2014. Together the body of interviews provides a representative selection.

How this oral history evidence is used, though, differs by chapter. For example, early chapters on the 1885 constitution and Supreme Court reapportionment cases of the early 1960s—together more than a quarter of the book—make almost no use of oral history, relying instead on legal cases, secondary literature, and various archival sources. But as the narrative begins to examine the CRC and the process culminating in the approval of the 1968 document, Adkins relies more heavily on oral history evidence. Most often the author chooses to summarize material...