Orlando in the Summer of 1963 – “The Summer of Schools and Pools”
This is the third in a series of articles focusing on the momentous local changes and events in the civil rights struggle, fifty years ago in Orlando, by Doug Head, former Orange County Democratic Party Chair.
Keeping it Quiet and Inside City Hall
Orlando crept up on integration while keeping the structure of power intact. Fifty years ago, on Monday the First of July, 1963, the Orlando Sentinel Pink Pages (a “Negro Edition” Supplement to the paper) reported that there was lots of fun to be had in City Recreation programs in Black Playgrounds. Meticulous attendance numbers were kept to ensure that the activity was recorded. Reflecting the times, there was no mention of the City’s large “Sunshine Park” (the site of the old demolished Amway Arena) or Lake Eola or other “White” parks. Rather the Pink Pages reported on “Black” playground activities like “marbles, bat-ball, jacks, pegboard, hopscotch and horseshoes” at the “Black” parks at Carter Street, Murchison Terrace, Lake Mann, Callahan Junior High School and Jones High School playgrounds. Activities also occurred at Hungerford in Eatonville and Phyllis Wheatley in South Apopka and Charles Drew in Winter Garden. But most city parks and facilities remained closed to Black people, including the large baseball fields at Sunshine Park, just north of Livingston.
On July 2nd, 1963, Hotels in the area announced a careful plan to integrate with select Negroes to check into various hotels. By agreement with the Black Members of the Mayor’s Bi-racial Committee, the first individuals checking in were to be identified by the local NAACP. The next day, (in an obscure story), Mayor Carr announced that he was pleased by his meetings with the Negro Members of the Bi-Racial Committee which had occurred in his “private conference room” at City Hall. But above that story on the Front Page, was an inflammatory headline, “Negro Revolt Bolstered” in which it was revealed that Whitney Evers of the Urban league, Roy Wilkins of the national NAACP and James Farmer of CORE had met secretly in June with leaders of progressive national foundations. Their concern was that “the Negro revolt”, which they as leaders had encouraged, was in danger of “getting out of hand”. The story suggested that the “leadership” was losing control of the movement to the people in it. Martin Luther King got no mention.
Elsewhere in Florida, things were getting hot. In St. Augustine a White “boy” of 19 was arrested for blasting at the home of a prominent Negro leader with a shotgun from a passing car, wounding four Negro youths in a “minor” way. The White “boy’s” companions in the car were “released to the custody of their parents”. In Ocala, sit-ins at local diner counters were shutting down diners, while – in the same town – a Negro, Pinkney Whitney, got enough votes to enter a run-off for City Council. These events involved the independent and active NAACP Youth Council, not the seniors like those meeting quietly in Orlando with the Mayor. In Winter Park, Mayor Trovillion appointed his own Bi-Racial Committee, reflecting Orlando’s. Members were: Mayor Trovillion, Commissioner Jim Blake, Francis Jackson, Frank Oliphant, Joseph Romita, Dave Cunningham (an asst. District Atty.) and police Chief Buchanan. Black Members were Rev. V.J. Lane, Rev. A.M. Scott, Mrs. Pearl Reir, Lonnie Roundtree, F.M. Otey, and Mrs. Hazel Venable. On July 6th, Florida’s Democratic Senator Smathers, who was close to President Kennedy, announced that he would not support the public accommodation provisions of the Civil Rights proposal being advanced and would vote against it, which he did a year later. On the 10th, the US House of Representatives threatened to cut aid to segregated schools, which thoroughly annoyed the Sentinel. There were no plans to register Negro Children in White Schools.
By July 8, 1963, the NAACP National Convention, meeting in Chicago, had, with much contention, approved a plan to move ahead on all fronts with demonstrations and actions. (Fifty years later, the NAACP will meet in Orlando this month). The Sentinel argued, with a story headlined “NAACP starts Militant Drive Toward Equality,” subtitled “Moderate Voices Drowned Out,” that this would lead to violence, while citing the beginning of the trial of Byron De la Beckwith in Mississippi for the murder of Medgar Evers. As historical fact, it took thirty years to and three trials to convict that murderer. The Sentinel also responded with an editorial cartoon, showing a keg of dynamite with lit fuses on a cart dragged by Kennedy. The keg was labeled “Explosive Racial Demonstrations” and Kennedy carries a paper labeled “Civil Rights Force Bill” as he drags the bomb toward Congress. “Pass Our Bill and this will Disappear” says the caption.
Orlando’s Klan (known to have bombed and killed for racism in Central Florida) was quiet, but on July 10, above the local news* the Sentinel announced, with a banner headline running across the entire front page, the national plan, “Klan Mobilizes for Non-Violent Self-Protection”. No Klan Member could have missed the call to arms.
But it was the Sentinel Editorial of July 10 which really demonstrated the Orlando “Way” of resolving problems…pretend they do not exist. The editorial was entitled “Integration without Incident” and it praised local “leaders,” especially Mayor Carr, who was to lose his next election. The editorial praised the bi-racial commission for its long hours and work, which had seen very little press coverage and was closed to observers. The result, the Sentinel declared, was that “Orlando has proceeded without incident or demonstration to work out a pattern of integration acceptable to all.”
The Sentinel really concluded too fast, because the solution was hardly “acceptable to all” and there was still a long summer ahead.
*All through early July there was a peculiar local Story dominating the news like our recent celebrity trials. The Bolito rackets, numbers games, which pre-dated state-run lotteries, were being investigated. On the 10th, Orlando’s Police Chief was implicated (he lived in then all-White Rock Lake at a published address on Arlington Street next door to a kingpin of the Bolito market, to whom he was selling his house) and he resigned. Note: Bolito was a great accumulator of community wealth for a community like Orlando’s Black Community where there were no banks. Bolito kings often funded construction and opening of businesses where no White Bank would go.
Third of a series of articles on Orlando civil rights struggle.
