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chapter eight The Triumph of Tradition Haydon BurnsÕs 1964 Gubernatorial Race and the Myth of FloridaÕs Moderation Abel A. Bartley Throughout the twentieth century, Florida’s population steadily increased as northern migrants, retirees, and businesses relocated to the state in pursuit of its mild climate and low taxes. It is often theorized that these new residents, transplanting their northern progressive or moderate views on race relations, helped transform the state socially and create a new civil rights mindset. Yet the question of how a pluralistic society like Florida’s stood in terms of civil rights moderation during the modern struggle for civil rights is a complex one that requires an equally complex analysis process to answer. Indeed, the evaluation of historical processes as complex as those characterizing Florida during the post-Brown decade may, of necessity, lead to conflicting interpretations. As a case in point, an examination of the Florida gubernatorial election of 1964 and the racial positions of its leading candidates, particularly segregationist William Haydon Burns, sheds useful light on the enduring interpretation of Florida as an exceptional state of moderation in the region, especially given the troubling nature of race relations there after the nation and much of the South had come to terms with the inevitable.1 Since Reconstruction, African Americans in Florida had been caught in a caldron of racial prejudice and legalized discrimination. The white supremacist system in the state had denied African Americans most benefits of citizenship, reducing them to a secondclass , caste status. Even so, African Americans constituted a large percentage of the state’s population, making them a potentially critical political force. But up to 1964, segregation, triumph of tradition 177 discrimination, and intimidation had kept blacks from gaining a real measure of political power or effectively altering the caste system in Florida. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1944 Smith v. Allwright case, African Americans gained access to the formerly all-white Democratic primary, now giving them an unprecedented opportunity to influence the system. As a result, in several corners of the state, black voters and white politicians formed uneasy coalitions in attempts to protect their interests and gain access to political channels. Prominent politicians like self-proclaimed “moderate” William Haydon Burns built a political career by forming such expedient coalitions with voters. Burns’s fifteen-year tenure as mayor of Jacksonville was largely the result of a political coalition composed principally of small businessmen, middle-class whites, and, occasionally, African Americans. In this sense, Burns’s political career provides a useful model of an Old South machine politician, someone willing to make or break alliances to serve his needs. He often used this process to project a progressive public face while adhering to a rigidly private conservatism. In 1964 he put together a coalition that would provide Florida’s Old South adherents a final gasp and opportunity to use the Down South delaying tactics that had become so common to the Sunshine State.2 Indeed, 1964 was a watershed year for African Americans. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy proposed a sweeping civil rights bill that would end the nation’s long affair with segregation and legalized discrimination. Speaking to a national audience on June 11, 1963, Kennedy said, “It ought to be possible . . . for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color . . . this nation will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”3 Kennedy’s statements were fired by the heavy resistance he encountered in Dixie while trying to protect civil rights leaders and workers from reactionary violence. He was especially incensed by the actions of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who stood defiantly in the doorway of the University of Alabama, symbolically blocking black students from registering in 1963. Although Florida had no George Wallace to annoy Washington, it did have an equally staunch segregationist in the person of Haydon Burns. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed civil rights legislation as part of his larger Great Society initiative. He pressured Congress to pass the martyred president’s civil rights bill as a memorial to JFK’s legacy. On the face of it, the sweeping Civil Right Act of 1964 would finally emasculate such segregationist politicians as Florida’s Haydon Burns. But it didn’t.4 Throughout the South, including Florida, there was entrenched opposition to the proposed legislation. In Congress, southerners, including the two U.S. senators from Florida, had...

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