Tampa's Path to Equality Part 2: The Awakening

Civil Rights history in Tampa

FOX 13's Craig Patrick reports.

TAMPA, Fla. - One of the most important and least known chapters in Black history played out in Tampa.

On February 29, 1960, students led sit-ins at a segregated lunch counter, and it led to the integration of lunch counters throughout the city. The story of Tampa's civil rights movement is quite different from the conflicts of Birmingham and Selma.

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It served as a guiding light for the rest of the nation.

"There was no violence," said Arthenia Joyner, who participated in the first sit-in. "There was leadership on both sides."

The full story never received the national attention it deserved on purpose.

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"The press found out about this afterwards. And it went well," said civil rights historian Dr. Steven Lawson.

FOX 13 combed through boxes of records at the University of South Florida and Tampa city archives and digitized our station's old news films to piece them all together. The city we know today looked much smaller in 1959 and had a different feel than the rest of the south.

"Tampa was unique, because Tampa had been the Ellis Island of so many foreigners that came here as Tampa was developing," said retired judge and oral historian E.J. Salcines.

"You had Spanish, you had Cubans, you had Italians, you had Greeks in Tarpon Springs," noted Lawson.

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However, Tampa was also a tangle of contradictions — a cigar industry in decline, in a city on the move, and a city blended by race and divided by race.

"Segregation was still very much a part of life in Tampa. Everything that we did was separate," said Dr. Cheryl Rodriguez, a USF professor of Africana Studies.

In its 1950s heyday, Tampa’s African American community on Central Avenue was the Harlem of the South.

"And my God, on the weekends, everybody dressed up and came Central Avenue," Joyner said. "You were immersed in a world of people who cared about you."

However, it was also a world in which white supremacists lynched Blacks, and the Ku Klux Klan rallied outside Joyner’s home.

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"I remember so well telling my dad I was afraid when they marched, and we out the window and saw him, and he said, 'don't worry, I'll protect you. But you know, everybody doesn't love you. We do. Don't worry. I'll protect you,'" she said.

That empowered students like Arthenia Joyner to challenge injustice at just the right moment — February 29, 1960 — and in just the right place — the City of Tampa.

Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., FOX 13 Chief Investigator Craig Patrick will continue his series with a look at what set the players and pieces in motion.

The Source: The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13 Chief Investigator Craig Patrick.

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