Attorney Salesia Smith-Gordon comes from a long line of men and women who believe boundaries do not apply to them.

Born to a sharecropper family, her grandfather with only a second-grade education rose to own his own car repair shop. Her mother was among the first 14 blacks admitted to the University of Florida, and a few years later, she became the first African American to graduate from the university’s journalism school.

Her father is a former president of Florida A&M University.

“I was always aware anything I wanted to be was possible,” Smith-Gordon said. “I did not have those kinds of mental barriers, believing there was a particular ceiling for me. Of course there are challenges, being African American. There are challenges, being a woman. There are double challenges being both.”

Smith-Gordon is president of the F. Malcolm Cunningham, Sr. Bar Association, as association of black attorneys started in Palm Beach County in the late 1970s.