Solomon Williams, who broke the color barrier on Florida’s railroads to become the state’s first black locomotive engineer, died February 11. He was 101.

When Williams became an engineer in 1921, the sight of a black man driving a train so surprised some people they offered him money to take his picture, he once said.

Williams’s place in state history was confirmed by the Manatee County Historical Commission, which gave him an award in 2001.

Williams will be forever linked with Manatee County’s locomotive icon, Old Cabbage Head, which sits in the Manatee Village Historical Park. The high profile job earned him 10 cents an hour.

“People used to run up to the train to get a look at me cause they’d never seen a black man driving a train before,” he once said in an interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

“They used to give me money to take my picture, 50 cents, a dollar. They’d stand next to the train and I’d wave out the window and blow the whistle or come down and stand next to the train with them. Some white people even gave me $5 to take my picture.”

Williams retired in 1951 along with Old Cabbage Head, he said, because no one else around could drive it.