Arthenia Joyner

Senator Arthenia L. Joyner is Of Counsel at Swope, Rodante P.A. in Tampa, practicing personal injury and civil litigation. Born in Lakeland and reared in Tampa, she was Florida's fifth Black female lawyer and the first Black female lawyer in Hillsborough County, where she began practice after earning her B.S. and J.D. from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Stetson University College of Law awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Laws in 1991. She participated in the Woolworth lunch counter demonstrations as a high school student and was twice arrested for demonstrating against segregation during her undergraduate years at Florida A&M. As president of the National Bar Association, she was arrested while protesting apartheid outside the South African Embassy in Washington D.C. in 1985.

She served in the Florida House of Representatives and later in the Florida Senate, where she was Senate Democratic Leader. She received presidential appointments from President Clinton, including to the U.S. Delegation to the International Population Development Conference in Cairo (1994) and to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995).