Florida was battlefield in '60s civil rights clash
A USF St. Petersburg seminar this week looks at the state's role in the civil rights movement with many who participated.
By JON WILSON
Published May 30, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - In Tallahassee, civil rights activists staged a bus boycott similar to the more famous one in Montgomery, Ala.
Martin Luther King was arrested in St. Augustine during one of the last demonstrations before Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Freedom Riders visited St. Petersburg, where demonstrators picketed movie theaters, dissolved the color line at city beaches and integrated lunch counters.
Florida wrote its own complex chapters in civil rights history, but events here have been less prominent and less studied than more dramatic ones in crisis-point states such as Alabama and Mississippi.
This week, the Sunshine State's role in the freedom movement will be examined in detail.
Featuring veteran activists who got their start during the 1950s and 1960s era, the largest Florida civil rights conference ever will be held at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg from Wednesday through Sunday.
It is presented by USF St. Petersburg's Florida Studies division, which last year was named one of the campus' programs of distinction.
At the conference's heart are nearly 20 panel discussions. They are intended to throw light on how the movement developed in many of the state's urban areas and to discuss the way it played out in politics, economics, labor and systems of justice.
Sessions also are scheduled about the role of women in the movement and how civil rights issues were covered by Florida media.
The panel discussions are free and open to the public but require registration at the sites. Panels will be held on campus at the Karen Steidinger Auditorium, the Florida Center for Teachers and the Campus Activities Center.
Small fees are charged for some other conference events, such as receptions, luncheons and a bus tour. Sunday's farewell breakfast is $15. To make reservations for those events, call 727 553-4840. The conference schedule is available online at www.usf.edu/news/past_issues/docs/ Civilrights.pdf. Click on "calendar of events" in the upper right-hand corner.
The Looper, the city's downtown trolley, has been reserved to serve the conference on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The free service will shuttle between the Hilton St. Petersburg and conference venues.
About 100 movement veterans and scholars are expected to participate. But the emphasis is on the veterans, who will tell their stories and share their experiences.
"This is more af a people's conference to stress the grass roots nature of the movement," said Ray Arsenault, a longtime USF history professor who is helping organize the conference. Arsenault and Gary Mormino, another veteran USF history professor, are in charge of the Florida Studies program.
Among participants are Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and former U.S. Rep. Walter Fauntroy, Southern Christian Leadership Conference veterans who were on the front lines of the '60s rights campaigns.
Also coming are Robert Hayling, who led the St. Augustine movement, and Congress of Racial Equality leaders Patricia Due and Gordon Carey.
Freedom Riders Bernard Lafayette and Israel Dresner are expected, as is Stetson Kennedy, an author and anti-Ku Klux Klan activist who infiltrated the racist organization.
Several longtime Tampa Bay area activists will attend: Sevell Brown, Darryl Rouson, Omali Yeshitela, James Ransom, Delano Stewart and Winnie Foster, for example.
The conference is expected to result in renewed interest in the state's civil rights fights and is likely to generate books and other material for publication, Arsenault said.
It also will carry a message for contemporary affairs in such areas as upcoming school choice, issues of criminal justice and conditions for migrant workers, he said.
"These are not dull, dead issues," Arsenault said. "The state has become so multicultural that understanding the civil rights movement will help us deal with that."
