LeRoy Collins - Post-governorship

Post-governorship

Upon completion of six years as governor, he became president of the National Association of Broadcasters. He resigned this at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson to become the first Director of the Community Relations Service under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Also by Presidential appointment, he became Under Secretary of Commerce on July 7, 1965. He resigned this position effective October 1, 1966 to return to Florida and become a partner in a Tampa law firm.

He was successful in obtaining the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in the primary elections of 1968 but was defeated in the general election. In the general election campaign against Edward Gurney, a photograph of Collins walking alongside Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Selma march was widely distributed to Florida voters by Gurney's supporters. The photograph contained no caption or other explanation of what Collins was doing in Selma leaving that open to the imagination of the voter. In fact, Collins had not been participating the march, but was shuttling back and forth between the marchers and the Alabama authorities to attempt to craft a compromise which would avoid violence. He conducted these negotiations as a part of his job as head of the Community Relations Service. He was successful in these negotiations as violence was averted when the marchers crossed the bridge, prayed, and then returned to the other side.

A death penalty opponent, Collins participated in a protest against execution of John Spenkelink in 1979: the first post-Furman involuntary execution in the U.S. and first in Florida since 1964, outside gubernatorial mansion he once occupied (then-Governor Bob Graham let the execution proceed).

After his defeat, he left his law firm in Tampa and returned to "The Grove" in Tallahassee until his death from cancer in 1991. He was called the greatest Governor that Florida ever had many times by Florida governors Reubin Askew, Bob Graham, and Jeb Bush. A tribute was entered in the official record of the United States House of Representatives on March 19, 1991 by Florida Representatives James Bacchus and Charles E. Bennett.