The Florida Holocaust Museum (The FHM) is pleased to present an original exhibition Beaches, Benches and Boycotts: The Civil Rights Movement in Tampa Bay. The exhibition opening reception will take place at the Museum on Saturday, September 7th at 7:00 p.m. and is free to the public, with reservation. The program will include a panel discussion about the history of Tampa Bay’s African American communities in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota. The discussion will be moderated by Judge Charles Williams and panelists will include Fred Hearns, formerly of Tampa, Gwendolyn Reese of St. Petersburg, and Victoria Oldham of Sarasota.
Photo courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times
The focus of most Civil Rights history is written about places like Alabama and Mississippi, as if few challenges occurred elsewhere. Tampa Bay remained racially segregated at the dawn of the Civil Rights era and many local institutions and establishments held out on integration for several years after Brown v. the Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Under “Jim Crow” every aspect of African American life in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and their surrounding cities was segregated. Restricted covenants were in place that segregated residential neighborhoods. African American children had to attend segregated schools that were under-funded and often in disrepair. Blacks could only be cared for at “Black only” hospitals, and other public and private establishments like restaurants and beaches were often segregated – if blacks were allowed in at all.
Photo courtesy of the City of St. Petersburg
The Civil Rights Movement in Tampa Bay may have had characteristics similar to other areas of the South but its stories are its own. This exhibition illuminates our region’s struggle with racial equality and shine a light on the local leaders who changed our cities.
The exhibition opening reception is free and open to the public. Seating is limited! To reserve your seat, please call 727.820.0100, extension 301.Beaches, Benches and Boycotts: The Civil Rights Movement in Tampa Bay opens to the public on Saturday, September 7, 2019 and will be on display through Sunday, March 1, 2020 at The Florida Holocaust Museum.
The Florida Holocaust Museum is located at 55 5th Street S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.
For additional information, please visit: https://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/explore-2/exhibits/beaches-benches-and-boycotts-the-civil-rights-movement-in-tampa-bay
Cover Image: Protesters picket outside Tampa’s movie theaters on June 20, 1963. Photo courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times.
Thank you very much for this article!! It helps to better document what many of today’s African American shore fishermen in their mid-to-late 50’s & 60’s have shared with me as an almost 20 year resident of Old Southeast. As children many of them were brought by to their parents to play & fish in what we call now Lassing Park. Their stories help to document the forced migration process black experience in the City when blacks were 1st forced to leave what we now call Spa Beach (Then called North Mole Beach.) Many of them also recounted stories from their parents about when they then had to watch from afar at what we now call Demens Landing (South Mole Beach) as only white people seemed to be enjoying the St. Pete Pier. Later they then forced to flee South Mole Beach further South to Lassing Beach.
One day when sharing old stories with 3 such gentlemen, one of them lamented that it seems now that with the new 2015 Downtown Waterfront Plan that the City will again force them to look for another place even further South if the City does in fact successfully entice even more tourists to then invade Lassing Park by even proposing a wooden boardwalk to be build across it! So much for Judge’s original intent of his gift of this land to be used as PASSIVE COMMUNITY PARK!!