Enota Elementary naming library after longtime Gainesville education activist Lucile Carter

Jun. 9—The library at Enota Multiple Intelligences Academy will be named after the late Lucile Carter, a local activist with long ties to the school who died in April at the age of 90.

The Gainesville City school board heard a proposal Monday from Enota's governance council and is poised to ratify the library's naming at its June 20 meeting.

Enota's library will display Carter's name and portrait, and a ceremony is tentatively scheduled for October.

"The roots of her lifelong support for the city school system all started there," her son Doug Carter said. "To have a little piece of her legacy (honored) there at Enota where it all started is very touching to us."

Carter served as president of Enota's parent teacher association in the 1960s, and her three children and four grandchildren attended the school.

"She has long, long ties to the school," said school board treasurer Sammy Smith, a longtime friend of Carter's. "Mrs. Carter was a giant in this community."

Carter also served on Gainesville's school board for 13 years, including as its chair from 1980-82, during the racial integration of the city's schools.

"That was a particularly difficult time for people to be on the school board," Merrianne Dyer, former superintendent of Gainesville City Schools who served alongside Carter, told The Times in April.

Carter and her late husband of 66 years, Don Carter, were also deeply involved in Democratic politics and were close friends of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

They were early supporters of Jimmy Carter's first campaign for Georgia governor in late 1960s, handing out "Carter for Governor" buttons on a Green Street parade route.

Lucile Carter was appointed to the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, and also served as a delegate to the 1972 and 1976 Democratic National Conventions as a voice for the rights of women and minorities.