Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida, 1960–1980 by J. Michael Butler (review)

Local studies of the civil rights movement abound, and J. Michael Butler's Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida, 1960–1980 definitely fits within this tradition. Butler challenges the conventional narrative of the movement by disrupting its standard chronology and demystifying its trope of triumphalism following landmark legislative victories. He argues that the Escambia County, Florida, freedom struggle "evolved in the 1970s as one that highlighted the previously unquestioned power that local whites retained and utilized to protect their remaining social, economic, and political privileges … and the resistance African Americans encountered when they challenged entrenched white entitlement" (pp. 5–6). Butler's focus on the post-1960s black freedom movement unearths patterns found in other southern communities: a vibrant black religious tradition, desegregation battles, charismatic black leadership, intraracial class tensions, and divisions between national and local civil rights organizations. Butler's detailed look at the fierce battles against Confederate iconography at public high schools and against police brutality illuminate the importance of cultural symbols in the struggle for racial justice while highlighting the resiliency of white supremacy.

The first chapter discusses the monumental Augustus v. Escambia County School Board (1960) school desegregation suit and nonviolent demonstrations at downtown lunch counters, foregrounding the NAACP and Pensacola Council of Ministers. The Augustus decision was unique because it required the integration of the county's entire school system instead of a specific grade. Chapter 2 introduces the dynamic and controversial civil rights leader Rev. H. K. Matthews, who established an Escambia County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1971 to help revitalize the movement. Although the SCLC typically receives short shrift in the literature after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the local affiliate emerged as the leading civil rights organization alongside the local NAACP chapter under the direction of Rev. B. J. Brooks.

Chapter 3 uncovers the highly contentious process of school desegregation at Escambia High School (EHS), as black students bore the brunt of cultural forms of racism. The ubiquity of Confederate battle flags, the "Rebel" school mascot, and the singing of "Dixie" as the official song all symbolized the vestiges of Lost Cause imagery used to intimidate black students, resulting in a race riot that involved four hundred students in December 1972. Butler draws on newspaper articles from the Pensacola News Journal, a bastion of white supremacy, to demonstrate how the white community vehemently defended the so-called color-blind tradition and heritage of Confederate iconography.

Chapters 4 and 5 offer an in-depth look at Judge Winston E. Arnow's ruling on a local injunction against Confederate iconography at EHS, detailing the responses of parents, civil rights organizations, and the Human Rights Commission to the decision. Butler explains that the SCLC and the NAACP organized demonstrations not only to bolster their support for the injunction, but also to protest the police shooting deaths of Bobbie Lee Smith and Wendel Sylvester Blackwell. Chapter 6 examines the revival of the United Klans of America in 1974, followed by a detailed look in chapter 7 at the felony extortion charges filed against Matthews and Brooks for allegedly inciting a riot during demonstrations at the Escambia County sheriff's department in 1975. Butler also explores increasing tensions among civil rights leaders as the national NAACP distanced itself from Matthews because of his militant leadership style and inflammatory rhetoric. As Butler contends, the guilty verdict against both men, with Matthews receiving a much harsher sentence, underscored the problems with top-down leadership because the movement was paralyzed after their convictions.

The final three chapters of the book cover the 1976 riot at EHS, the impact of the declining national civil rights organizations on the local chapters, and ongoing racial disparities in various areas ranging from neighborhood blight to high unemployment in black communities. Although Butler presents...