OLD SOUTH, NEW SOUTH, OR DOWN SOUTH?: FLORIDA AND THE MODERN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

From Old South to New South, or Was It? : Jacksonville and the Modern Civil Rights Movement in Florida

chapter two From Old South to New South, or Was It? Jacksonville and the Modern Civil Rights Movement in Florida Abel A. Bartley Behind Florida’s carefully cultivated image of a racially moderate paradise with year-round sunshine, sandy beaches, and scenic palm trees is the reality of its ugly racial heritage. African American residents know that Florida’s history is not quite as pristine and alluring as its beaches and sunny images. In reality, much of the state’s past, like its numerous gated communities today, is hidden from public view. Florida of yesteryear, like the rest of Dixie, was a totally segregated milieu in which the social, political, and economic institutions were designed to maintain and preserve white supremacy. Florida’s African Americans suffered the same racial prejudice that other black southerners faced. Civil rights protestors met with the same violence and resistance that activists experienced in other “more radical” states. Remarkably, much of this Old South history remains concealed from those who reside in what has long been cast by state and business leaders as a progressive, New South Florida. By focusing on the struggle for civil rights in Jacksonville, students of these issues can gain a useful understanding of the complexities of the contemporary civil rights struggle in a city and state in major transition. In essence, Jacksonville’s struggle mirrored the statewide struggle to open society to full African American participation. Jacksonville, a city often politically and culturally associated with southern Georgia, is in many aspects a microcosm of “New South” Florida, a place where African Americans were tolerated but civil rights progress was resisted. Jacksonville’s long-time mayor, Haydon Burns, served 48 bartley as a sort of warden locking the door to racially progressive initiatives until he moved to Tallahassee as governor in 1964. The leading proponent for civil rights in Jacksonville, Rutledge Pearson, served as local and then state president of the NAACP. Pearson, whose own career had been cut short by racism, became a determined opponent of segregation. These two men carried on a real and symbolic localized battle over civil rights, a poignant contest that ultimately captured the attention of the state and nation. By uncovering the Burns-Pearson confrontation in Jacksonville, and the key role that “everyday people” played in the destruction of Jim Crow institutions in that key Florida city, this and future generations will better understand the Sunshine State’s painfully racist past and its African American community’s resistance to inequality in a state characterized by complex changes as it faced the modern civil rights movement. As one of Florida’s largest and most complicated mixes of natives, immigrants, South Georgia transplants, Yankee newcomers, and African American populations, Jacksonville reflected well the demographic, social, and racial diversity that was sweeping most of peninsular Florida in the post-Brown era. In that regard, Jacksonville at once maintained the status of reflecting and shaping the nature of race relations in the proverbial Sunshine State. Indeed, as the city grew over the years, so did its prestige and racial problems. Between 1920 and 1960, the city’s population had increased from 25,000 to 388,000. The 105,700 African Americans who resided in the city became concentrated in Jacksonville’s urban core. As this process occurred, whites left the city for the more affluent suburbs. This population shift created new racial tensions as the decreasing numbers of whites sought to maintain their hegemony over the city. These white leaders were not only opposed to civil rights, but they also demonstrated a hostile attitude towards public education and open government in general. Thus, in order for Jacksonville to transcend from an Old South mindset to a New South profile, painful and sustained changes would have to occur from the bottom to the top of city affairs. Predictably, Jacksonville’s rendezvous with modern civil rights would not be tranquil.1 After the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, most whites foresaw the demise of segregation; the only issues still in question were how long would it take and how much resistance would the South manifest? Both of these questions were quickly answered as the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the so-called Brown II case on May 31, 1955. It did not mention segregation or desegregation; nevertheless, it did reaffirm the High Court’s commitment to seeing the process of public school desegregation begin immediately. Although the Court did not force any radical...