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The lost reels: Race relations in Tampa
Lloyd Sowers reports
TAMPA, Fla. - Looking back in time can be unpleasant – even shocking.
We recently discovered a trove of WTVT news film that had been stored away in a forgotten corner of the station’s prop room. One reel of film showed a Ku Klux Klan rally, complete with a cross burning, that we believe occurred in the mid 1950s somewhere here in the Tampa Bay Area.
"It’s passed down from generation to generation," the hooded Grand Dragon said as the glow of the flaming cross illuminated the black and white footage.
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Hatred helped fuel racial tension that finally reached a flashpoint in Tampa in June of 1967.
"The trouble here is the white man thinks he can rule us," said an unidentified, young Black man as our camera captured the mounting anger in West Tampa. The scene cuts to another man speaking to reporters.
"The thing that really triggered it was the shooting of this young fella." It was Bob Gilder, who would later head the local chapter of the NAACP.
The young fella he was speaking of was 19-year-old Martin Chambers. He was an unarmed Black man who was shot by a white Tampa police officer following a burglary that Chambers was allegedly fleeing from. It touched off three nights of rioting around Central Avenue, the heart of Tampa’s Black business district.
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Hundreds of National Guard troops would arrive to try and quell the riots. Our footage shows numerous fires burning and police officers carrying rifles.
The footage hasn’t been viewed in decades.
"Wow," was the first reaction from Fred Hearns, Curator of Black History at the Tampa Bay History Center, who grew up in Tampa during the 1960s and 70s. He was a boy when the riots happened.
"This is amazing that you have this," said Hearns, as he viewed the film on a laptop computer. "You've got shots of Central Avenue that I've never seen before."
The riots were a death knell for the Tampa’s premier Black business district.
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"We lost this area that was known as the Harlem of the South, where we had Black businesses and Black entertainment venues where people who were world renowned came to perform," said Hearns. "The Central Avenue Business District was never the same after June of 1967."
Hearns said, at that time, there was fear the violence would spread to other parts of Tampa, as the killing of Martin Chambers brought rage, especially in other young Black people who already felt they were the victims of racism in Tampa.
"I feel there are many causes," said Hearns. "This [the death of Martin Chambers] is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Riots in Tampa and other cities followed years of discrimination and segregation.
"Blacks could not sit in certain places, could not go to certain places, could not eat in certain places," said Hearns.
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In the 1967 footage, Gilder and other Black leaders called for calm and a full investigation of Chambers’ death. We see Gilder at the microphone again.
"I don't know the details, but there's never any justification for citizens taking the law in their own hands," he said. But the rioters were incensed by what they heard on the streets. They heard that Chambers was trying to give up when the officer shot him."
"Whether it's true or not, that's the story that angered so many young people," said Hearns. "The story was that he was giving up, and they shot him in the back."
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In the film we see tempers flaring as hot as the fires on Central Avenue. The film shows another press conference in the Black neighborhood.
A reporter asks a question. A young black man interrupted.
"You just want to write a story," he shouted. "We live here."
The comment caught Hearns’ attention.
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"We live here. He said a lot then because that’s what a lot of folk felt, that people were speaking for them. People were saying what they thought and what they felt."
More of Tampa might have burned, had it not been for the idea of organizing young Black men to help bring peace. On the film we see Black leader Jim Hammond speaking about the plan that he and others in the community devised.
"There will be a platoon of around 30 people in each of these areas and broken down into squads, and within the squads there will be sections," he said.
The next scene shows the people who were enlisted. They wore white, military-style helmets. They were known as the White Hats.
"And eventually this grew to well over a hundred," said Hearns. "They were all men, all Black, and they came from all parts of the city. They didn't all live in the Central Park Village Community."
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Hearns said the White Hats had credibility in the community.
"Many of the young men who became White Hats were among the angriest in the beginning," he told us. "They were recruited from young neighborhood leaders who others would follow," said Hearns. "It worked, and the riots ended."
It’s become an important piece of Tampa’s history.
"It really was a beautiful thing," said Hearns. "Nothing like this had ever happened before in Tampa, where young Black men had an opportunity to be in charge of something."
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The peace held even as the officer who shot Chambers was cleared.
"Officers of the law have the complete duty to use the limits of force necessary to capture felons who are fleeing from justice," said a state prosecutor at a press conference covered by WTVT.
Hearns said some things did improve for Black people in the area after the killing of Chambers and the riots that followed. Our footage shows Governor Claude Kirk arriving in Tampa where he met with members of the Black community.
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New programs aimed at helping the community followed, but what happened is still remembered.
"To this day there are people who say justice was never done in the case of Martin Chambers being killed," said Hearns.
In the minds of some, the fires that burned in the summer of 1967 have never been fully extinguished.