The Woman Who Made Starbucks Her Office: Remembering Florence

 

The Woman Who Made Starbucks Her Office: Remembering Florence


Florence M. Rice grew up in the Colored Children’s Orphanage in New York City.

She once told me — as we sat together in a Starbucks on 125th Street in Harlem — that the children there were taught two rules above all else: never lie and never steal. She was in her nineties when she said it, yet the words were still crisp in her memory, as if she had learned them only yesterday.

Starbucks was her “office.” She claimed it with a smile. Anyone who wanted to meet with Ms. Rice knew to come there. She would be at a table near the window, surrounded by books, papers, and manila envelopes — always ready to share something new, something historical, something that mattered.

Her apartment, and truly her entire life, was an archive. She preserved documents not just as keepsakes, but as a responsibility. And she brought those papers to us — often carefully folded, sometimes freshly photocopied — offering pieces of history she felt we needed to read, understand, and carry forward.

Sitting with Ms Rice felt like being invited into a living library. She was a keeper of stories, a guardian of memory, and a teacher whose lessons extended far beyond the walls of any orphanage or office — even one made of coffee tables and warm Harlem light.


Love, Wisdom. Knowledge, Create, Share, Unity




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