Gainesville MLK Commission leaders have a combined $300k in federal tax liens

Courtesy of PublicCrime.com

BY DUSTIN TERRY

Court records show six-figure federal tax liens filed against the founder and vice president of Gainesville’s MLK Commission of Florida — just weeks after their most celebrated public moment in decades.

On the morning of January 19, 2026, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward and Rodney J. Long stood together in the cold outside City Hall, gold scissors in hand, and cut the ribbon on the newly renovated Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Garden. More than two hundred people — bundled against rare North Florida temperatures in the low 40s — turned out to witness the moment. Diyonne L. McGraw, Long’s longtime partner in the commission he founded, watched from the crowd, days away from being inducted into the organization’s Hall of Fame.

It was, by most accounts, the crowning moment of Long’s more than four decades of civil rights commemorative work in Gainesville — a $1.8 million public garden, rebuilt in Dr. King’s name, anchored in the heart of the city Long had spent his adult life organizing.

Within days, the Alachua County Clerk of Circuit Court began recording a different kind of document.

On February 11, 2026 — three weeks after that ribbon-cutting — a Notice of Federal Tax Lien was filed against Rodney J. Long and his wife, Carole M. Long, at the Alachua County courthouse. The amount: $97,083.52 in unpaid personal income taxes spanning six years. On February 27, a second lien was recorded, this one against a business entity connected to Diyonne McGraw — Successful Living II LLC — for $89,661.07 in unpaid employer payroll taxes. A third lien against the same company followed on March 31, 2026: $114,500 in unpaid federal pension plan obligations. McGraw’s combined lien exposure, through the LLC, totals more than $204,000.

The three liens, totaling roughly $301,000, are matters of public record. They do not constitute criminal charges, and they carry no presumption of wrongdoing. Federal tax liens are civil instruments — the government’s legal claim on assets when taxes go unpaid — and they are frequently resolved through payment plans, settlements, or successful disputes with the IRS. But they are, by design, public. And in this case, they attach to two of Gainesville’s most recognizable civic voices at a moment when both were at the height of their public prominence.

The three liens, totaling roughly $301,000, are matters of public record. They carry no presumption of wrongdoing — but they attach to two of Gainesville’s most recognizable civic voices.

A MOVEMENT BUILT OVER FORTY YEARS

To understand the significance of these documents, it helps to understand who Rodney Long is in Gainesville — and what it took to become that person.

Long was a student at the University of Florida in 1982 when he organized the city’s first Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative March. It ran from the UF Plaza of Americas to the Downtown Community Plaza. He was in his twenties. King had been dead for fourteen years. Most of the country had moved on. Long had not.

Two years later, in 1984, he petitioned the Gainesville City Commission to appoint a King Memorial Celebration Committee. The Commission agreed. In 1985, that committee merged with another organization and became the Martin Luther King Jr. Fund, Inc. In 1993, it was renamed the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Florida, Inc. — the organization it remains today, with Long as its president and founder. According to Florida Division of Corporations records, Long has served as the organization’s registered agent since 1986, listing his home address as 3609 NE 156th Avenue in Gainesville — the same address that appears on the February 2026 tax lien.

Over four decades, Long built the commission into one of the most sustained civil rights commemorative organizations in Florida. It hosts an annual Hall of Fame Gala, a commemorative march, a scholarship program, and a two-week series of MLK observance events each January. The commission maintains the MLK Memorial Garden in front of City Hall. Long has served as a Gainesville City Commissioner — the city’s first district mayor-commissioner — and has earned recognition from mayors, governors, and community leaders across the state. He is also the President and Registered Agent of the African American Accountability Alliance of Alachua County (“The 4As”), which he helped found in 2006.

In January 2024, the commission inducted Long himself into the MLK Hall of Fame — an honor he had spent years giving to others. “I’ve had people ask me, ‘What took them so long?'” Long said at the ceremony at the University of Florida Hilton Hotel and Conference Center, drawing laughter and applause from hundreds of attendees.

He was, in that room, among the most celebrated people in Alachua County.

DIYONNE MCGRAW: THE VICE PRESIDENT AND THE LLC

Diyonne L. McGraw came to Gainesville after graduating from Florida A&M University, and over nearly 22 years, she built a parallel record of civic engagement. She joined the MLK Commission in 2009 as its Vice President — a role she still holds. She organized the commission’s annual MLK Education Symposium, launched the inaugural MLK Youth Extravaganza, and has served as a central figure in virtually every major MLK commemoration event Gainesville has hosted in the past fifteen years.

Her civic biography is extensive. She served as Chair of the Alachua County School Board. She was President of the Mu Upsilon Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and served as a University of Florida Graduate Advisor for the Iota Lambda Chapter of the sorority. She was Vice President of the African American Accountability Alliance (“The 4As”) and chaired its Political Action Committee. She attempted a run for Gainesville City Commission.

At the January 2026 Hall of Fame ceremony, McGraw was among the honorees inducted — recognized by the same organization she has served for nearly two decades.

Weeks later, federal tax liens began appearing in the courthouse records associated with her business, Successful Living II LLC.

Successful Living II LLC, one of McGraw’s businesses that operate group homes for disabled adults, is registered in Florida with a mailing address of PO Box 5935, Gainesville, FL 32627; two of the three liens filed in early 2026 name it as the taxpayer. The first, filed February 27, covers $89,661.07 in unpaid Form 941 payroll taxes for the quarter ending March 31, 2024. Form 941 is the Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return — the form businesses use to report income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes withheld from employees’ paychecks, along with the employer’s share of those taxes. Its non-payment means that either employee withholdings were not remitted to the government, or employer contributions went unpaid — or both.

The second lien, filed March 31, 2026, is for $114,500 in unpaid Form 5500 obligations. Form 5500 relates to employee benefit plans — pension funds, retirement accounts, and similar programs that employers are required to administer and report to the federal government. A lien for unpaid Form 5500 obligations suggests the LLC may have had a retirement or benefit program it failed to fund or properly report.

Form 941 is the form businesses use to report taxes withheld from employees’ paychecks. Its non-payment means that either employee withholdings were not remitted to the government — or employer contributions went unpaid.

Together, the two liens against Successful Living II LLC total $204,161.07.

THE LIEN AGAINST RODNEY LONG: SIX YEARS OF UNPAID TAXES

The lien against Rodney J. and Carole M. Long is personal — filed against the couple at their home address on NE 156th Avenue, the same address Long has used as the registered agent address for the MLK Commission for decades. It covers six separate tax years: 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 — six years of Form 1040, the standard personal income tax return.

The unpaid balances by year tell their own story. The largest single-year debt is from 2018: $58,377.75. The 2020 balance is $11,870.92. By 2021 it had dropped to $4,614.56, then it climbed again to $9,667.97 in 2022, $7,037.43 in 2023, and $5,514.89 in 2024. The cumulative total across all six years is $97,083.52.

The lien was assessed over multiple dates stretching from June 2019 through June 2025 — meaning this was not a single year of financial difficulty, but an extended period during which federal tax obligations were assessed and went unresolved. The notice was signed on January 30, 2026 — eleven days after the MLK Memorial Garden ribbon cutting — and recorded at the Alachua County courthouse on February 11.

The Last Day for Refiling dates on the Long lien extend from 2029 to 2035, meaning the government’s claim on the Longs’ assets — their property, bank accounts, and other holdings — remains active for the foreseeable future unless the debt is resolved.

WHAT A FEDERAL TAX LIEN IS — AND IS NOT

A Notice of Federal Tax Lien is a legal and administrative instrument. It is not a criminal charge, an indictment, or a finding of fraud. It is the government’s formal declaration that a taxpayer owes money and that the United States has a legal claim on that taxpayer’s property as security for the debt. Liens are filed under Sections 6321, 6322, and 6323 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Tax liens are a relatively common outcome when taxpayers — individuals and businesses alike — fall behind on payments to the IRS. They can arise from a wide range of circumstances: a business losing revenue, a disputed assessment, a failed payment plan, income reporting discrepancies, or simple financial hardship. People at every income level and in every profession receive them. Their presence in the public record is, in most cases, the beginning of a process — not its end.

Liens can be resolved through full payment, an Installment Agreement with the IRS, an Offer in Compromise (in which the IRS agrees to accept less than the full amount owed), or — in some cases — by successfully disputing the underlying assessment. Once resolved, the IRS issues a Certificate of Release, and the lien is effectively extinguished.

What distinguishes the liens in this case is their size, their timing, their concentration in a single public-facing organization’s leadership, and — in the case of the LLC liens — their nature. Payroll tax failures and pension fund failures affect employees, not just the business owner. Workers whose paychecks were taxed expect those withholdings to have been remitted to the federal government on their behalf. When they are not, the consequences extend beyond the employer to the employees whose future Social Security credits, retirement accounts, or tax records may be affected.

None of that establishes wrongdoing in any legal sense. But it raises questions that the public record, on its own, cannot answer.

What distinguishes these liens is their size, their timing, and — in the case of the LLC — their nature. Payroll failures affect employees, not just the business owner.

THE IRONY OF THE MISSION

The Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Florida describes its mission plainly on its website: to carry on Dr. King’s legacy by advocating for the nonviolent elimination of poverty and racism in Gainesville, Alachua County, and throughout the State of Florida.

Poverty. That is the word at the center of the commission’s stated purpose. King himself, in the final years of his life, was consumed by the economic dimensions of inequality — the Poor People’s Campaign, the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, the argument that civil rights without economic rights was an incomplete liberation. The commission Long founded in that spirit has spent four decades doing real work in that name: scholarships, marches, commemorations, garden dedications, symposia, community resources.

It is not lost on observers that the organization’s two most prominent leaders — its founder and its vice president — now have the federal government asserting claims against their personal and business assets over unpaid taxes, including payroll taxes and pension obligations that bear most directly on working people.

Whether that irony is meaningful or merely coincidental is a judgment each reader will make. But the documents are real, the amounts are substantial, and the people named in them are not private citizens. They are public figures who have accepted, and sought, prominent roles in their community’s public life.

A NOTE ON WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW

Investigative reporting requires honesty about its limits. The public record in this case is clear on certain facts: three federal tax liens, three taxpayers (one individual couple and one LLC), specific dollar amounts, specific tax types, and specific filing dates. The IRS’s involvement and the courthouse recordings are verifiable and unambiguous.

What the public record cannot tell us is why. It cannot tell us whether Long and McGraw are in active negotiations with the IRS to resolve these debts. It cannot tell us whether the underlying assessments are disputed. It cannot tell us what financial circumstances — a bad year in business, the disruption of the COVID pandemic years, a personal hardship — may lie behind the numbers. It cannot tell us the current status of any payment arrangements, or whether any of these liens have been partially satisfied since their recording.

The 2018 tax year at the center of Long’s largest single debt — $58,377.75 — was assessed in June 2019 and has now gone unresolved for nearly seven years. That timeline is long. But it is not, by itself, explanatory.

These are questions that Rodney Long and Diyonne McGraw could answer. As of publication, they have not.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Prior to publication, this author made multiple attempts to contact Rodney J. Long and Diyonne L. McGraw for comment. We were unable to reach either individual. This article is based solely on publicly available court records, Florida Division of Corporations filings, and prior news coverage. Nothing in this article should be construed as an allegation of criminal conduct, fraud, or intentional wrongdoing. Federal tax liens are civil instruments and do not carry any presumption of criminal liability. If Mr. Long or Ms. McGraw wish to respond, correct the record, or provide context, they are encouraged to contact dustinreedterry@gmail.com. We will update this report upon receiving a response.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

The liens will remain on record at the Alachua County courthouse until the underlying debts are resolved or the liens are otherwise released. The Last Day for Refiling dates — which extend as far as 2036 in the case of the Successful Living II LLC liens — mean the government’s security interest in the named taxpayers’ assets remains active for years under current law.

The MLK Commission of Florida, as a separate nonprofit legal entity, is not named in any of the liens. The organization’s public programming, its Hall of Fame, its scholarships, and its annual commemorative events are not directly implicated by these filings. The commission was incorporated in 1978 and holds active status with the Florida Division of Corporations. Its annual events continue.

Long, now in his sixties, has given more than half his life to the work the commission represents. McGraw has given nearly two decades. Whatever the resolution of these tax matters proves to be, that work is part of the permanent record of this community — just as these liens now are.

The courthouse where the liens were filed is three blocks from the MLK Memorial Garden where Long and the mayor cut the ribbon on a cold January morning. The garden is open to the public. The courthouse records are, too.

SOURCE DOCUMENTS

Notice of Federal Tax Lien — Rodney J. & Carole M. Long, Serial No. 533244926, Instrument #3673540, recorded February 11, 2026, Alachua County, FL. Total: $97,083.52 (Form 1040, tax years 2018–2024).

Notice of Federal Tax Lien — Successful Living II LLC, Serial No. 534256726, Instrument #3676558, recorded February 27, 2026, Alachua County, FL. Total: $89,661.07 (Form 941, Q1 2024).

Notice of Federal Tax Lien — Successful Living II LLC, Serial No. 536568726, Instrument #3682215, recorded March 31, 2026, Alachua County, FL. Total: $114,500.00 (Form 5500, tax year 2023).

Florida Division of Corporations filing, Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Florida, Inc., Document No. 743075, active.