Tampa's Path to Equality Part 5: The Breakthrough
TAMPA, Fla. - Tampa celebrates a proud anniversary on February 29. On Leap Day of 1960, black high school students defied segregation at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, and it led to peaceful integration throughout Tampa as black and white community leaders came together.
The backstory:
The students received protection and support from then-Tampa Mayor Julian B. Lane, and after Lane formed a biracial committee to negotiate the end of segregation in Tampa, Florida’s former Governor LeRoy Colins took the next big leap in March 1960 in a statewide radio address.
RELATED: Tampa’s Path to Equality Part 4: The Sit-ins
He stunned the white supremacists who elected him by denouncing segregation. He called it undemocratic, unrealistic and unchristian.
"It is unfair and morally wrong," said Collins, who added, "We can never stop Americans from struggling to be free."
Collins also announced a statewide biracial committee modeled after Tampa’s, and he picked Tampa Committee members Perry Harvey Sr. and Cody Fowler to serve on this one as well.
"He never stopped working and trying to help our community grow," said Cody Fowler’s grandson Jim Davis (a former Tampa U.S. Representative). "It's about sitting with people, digging deep, finding out what we have in common, looking beneath the surface, whether that's a color of the skin or what otherwise might seem to separate us and how we work together for the benefit of everybody. That's what this story is about."
Dig deeper:
In Tampa, the committee spent months convincing lunch counters to integrate.
"The problem is, of course, these stores are not independently owned," said civil rights historian Dr. Steven Lawson.
They're national chains, and none want any backlash.
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"The manager of Woolworth's would say, 'Well, if I integrate my lunch counter, I'm going to lose all these white customers. They're going to go to Kress,'" explained Lawson. "So, if you could figure out a way in which all of them do it at the same time, and they got permission from the national headquarters, that they could do that."
Therefore, the committee brokered negotiations with 18 different stores. Their internal notes from August 1960 revealed just how much they put into coordinating places and times, staffing detectives in stores and more.
"They would choose groups of two students," said Lawson. "They would be in their Sunday best. They would go to the various lunch counters at the exact same time. And this was not going to be known exactly to the public at large."
They did it, and then announced it later—too late for mobs to attack.
"That's how change occurs when people can talk and discover they have more in common than they realize," said Joyner.
READ: Tampa's Path to Equality Part 2: The Awakening
And, Mayor Lane kept going.
"They started doing the pools. We have a group of African Americans that want to come use the pool," said Mayor Lane’s grandson Julian Lane III. "[Mayor Lane] said, let them swim. It's their right. They can swim."
He helped integrate the fair by showing up on the day reserved for blacks, as did Governor Collins. Both put Florida on the path to equality, and both paid for it politically.
Mayor Lane lost re-election.
"This is about courage. Mayor Julian Lane lost his reelection without regret," Davis said.
Gov. Collins lost his next campaign for U.S. Senate.
MORE: Tampa's Path to Equality Part 1: The First Steps
"He was a man of real moral courage. It killed his political career. But when you stand up for what you believe in regardless as to what eventually may happen to you, you know in your heart that you did the right thing. And he did," said Arthenia Joyner, who participated in Tampa’s sit-in movement as a high school student.
Craig Patrick explains how Tampa’s progress in 1960 inspired change across the nation, how the lessons of 1960 helped restore peace later, and how they can also bring us together today — in the next part of his series, "Tampa’s Path to Equality."
The Source: The information in this story was gathered through interviews with Jim Davis, Dr. Steven Lawson, Julian Lane III and Arthenia Joyner. It also includes information from historical research by FOX 13's Chief Investigator Craig Patrick.
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