The Suncoast Tiger Bay Club greets visitors to its website with the words: “Welcome to the Tigers’ Den… [serving] …as a civic commons where thought leaders and citizens of all political stripes come together to discuss the pressing issues of our time.”
Up until very recently, however, those issues failed to include the racially fraught history of St. Petersburg. That changed when, in 2019, some of the realities of living in St. Pete as a Black person versus a Caucasian person were discussed during the Tiger Bay lunch meeting “Race & The Legacy of Racism in the ‘Burg.”
It was a historical conversation, the first time in the group’s history that it focused solely on race in the city. Then-president Elise Minkoff promised it would not be the last, noting that the lunch crowd’s attendance for that event was the largest they had that year.
In 2021, history was made again at the club, when for the first time in its 43 years of existence, it elected a Black person to the office of president. Rev J.C. Pritchett II, pastor of St. Pete’s Faith Church, took the helm after being selected last December and sees his election as yet another sign of St Pete’s changing conversations on equity in the city.
