-
4. Black Women in the Florida Civil Rights Era, 1954–1974
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
69 ”Our aim must be to create a world of fellowship and justice where no man’s skin color or religion is held against him.” —Mary McLeod Bethune1 Florida’s Mary McLeod Bethune died on May 18, 1955—one year and one day after the US Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional . She had devoted her life to insuring that African Americans be treated as full citizens. Bethune asserted her beliefs in speeches and newspaper articles, claiming, “We must challenge, skillfully but resolutely, every sign of restriction or limitation to our full American citizenship. When I say challenge, I mean we must seek every opportunity to place the burden of responsibility upon him who denies it.”2 Though Bethune was pleased with the Brown decision, she would have been disappointed with its slow, almost always reluctant implementation . Bethune urged her people to be strong and to understand the “larger meanings of integration.” She knew she would not be alive when it happened, but in her “Last Will and Testament” she left a proud legacy and a blueprint for black Americans to follow.3 December 1, 1955, began a new phase of black activism. Florida’s white sand beaches and sunny skies often masked the racism and discrimination to which its black residents were subjected. Mired in poverty, cordoned off in segregated neighborhoods with limited city and county services, blacks in the Sunshine State depended on individuals such as Bethune, Eartha White, Viola T. Hill, Alice Mickens, Blanche Armwood Beatty and others to Black Women in the Florida Civil Rights Era, 1954–1974 Maxine D. Jones 4 70 MAXINE D. JONES voice their concerns and to lobby for equality.4 Black Floridians were active in pointing out the economic, legal, and social disparities between black and white Floridians. Harry Tyson Moore and his wife, Harriette Simms Moore, were killed for their activism on December 25, 1951. Beginning in 1934, Harry Moore had written hundreds of letters to newspapers and to local, state, and national officials calling attention to grievances in the black community. Those grievances included lynching, injustice in the courts, police brutality, teacher salary inequity, and an inability to vote. Harriette, and their daughters, Annie and Evangeline, helped Moore in his relentless campaign to secure for blacks what the US Constitution guaranteed them. But on Christmas Eve 1951 a bomb exploded under their home in Mims. Harry died that night, and Harriette died on January 3, 1952.5 Black women in Florida certainly were concerned about many of the same issues that troubled Harry Moore, but they were equally interested in improving the often-dire conditions that affected the quality of life in the black community . Through individual efforts and through their clubs and organizations, Florida’s black women worked to uplift the race and to promote race pride. Many assumed the role of community activists, advocating equal public school education and facilities, decent housing, safe play areas for youth, and affordable childcare for working women. Believing playgrounds reduced crime, Alice Frederick Mickens fought for ten years to get a safe play area for black youth in West Palm Beach. Mickens also helped to establish a day nursery for working mothers and to extend the school year for black students. In 1948, M. Athalie Wilkinson Range complained about the condition of an elementary school in Miami’s Liberty City. The school, she observed, had inadequate toilet facilities and “nothing that would be conducive to learning.” Range led a campaign that resulted in a school-board decision to build a new school for black students. These women were determined, persistent, yet often subtle and diplomatic in bargaining with the white power structure.6 But more active protests against discrimination were coming. On December 1, 1955, black women in Montgomery, Alabama, took a stand against segregation and the mistreatment and disrespect they often received from white drivers on city buses. Five months later a similar movement began in Tallahassee, Florida, the state capital. On Saturday, May 26, 1956, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University students Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson refused to give up their seats at the front of the bus to stand at the back. City police arrested Jakes and Patterson and charged them with “placing themselves in a position to incite a riot.”7 The next day a cross was burned at their off- [34.201.122.150] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:09 GMT) Florida 71 campus residence. Historian Glenda Rabby wrote, “the young women seemed...