Segregation followed as one of the results of Slavery Tallahassee has a strong black history. Before the
Civil War Leon County led the state in cotton production, and had the greatest cluster of
plantations in the state. (See
Plantations of Leon County.) Centrally located Tallahassee—only north Florida had any significant population—was the center of Florida's
slave trade. In 1860, Leon County's population was 73% black, almost all of them
slaves; there were more slaves in Leon County than in any other county in Florida. (Adjacent
Gadsden County is according to the 2010 census the only county in Florida with a majority African-American population.) In addition, and the two facts are loosely linked, it is the site of the state's largest and only public
historically black institution of higher education,
Florida A&M University, founded in 1877 as the State Normal (four years later, Normal and Industrial) College for Colored Students. (Legislation leading to its creation was introduced by former abolitionist and Superintendent of Public Instruction
Jonathan C. Gibbs, who was elected a Tallahassee city councilman in 1872.) According to the 2010 Census, Tallahassee's population was 34% black, whereas Florida as a whole is 17% black. A commemoration of the
Emancipation Proclamation is celebrated on May 20 of each year, at the
Knott House (run by the
Museum of Florida History), where the proclamation was read on May 20, 1865. Tallahassee is the location of the John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History & Culture (
John Gilmore Riley House), and the
Carrie Meek and James N. Eaton Sr., Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum. Like other Southern cities, Tallahassee was
segregated from the end of
Reconstruction until the early 1970s; the closing of the underfunded and racism in pre-integration Tallahassee has been described as "virulent". Real estate deeds in white neighborhoods were typically accompanied by covenants prohibiting sale to blacks (see
Shelley v. Kraemer). Tallahassee turned down
Andrew Carnegie's offer of a grant to build a
library, because under Carnegie's rules it would have to serve black patrons. (Carnegie, faced with this, instead built in 1907 the
Carnegie Library on the campus of what is now Florida A&M University. Tallahassee's former whites-only public library is today the
David S. Walker Library.) Schools, buses, churches, stores, movie theaters, hospitals, parks, even cemeteries were also segregated. (
Greenwood was the negro cemetery.) There was a Colored Hook and Ladder Company (
fire department); the city fire department, because of "insufficient hoses", did not respond to the fire that destroyed the Lincoln Academy in 1872. The local newspaper, the
Tallahassee Democrat, had a regular black section in the paper. White subscribers received in its place the business section.
Frenchtown After the
Civil War, many newly free blacks settled in the area that came to be known as
Frenchtown (because it was on part of the
Lafayette Land Grant). It occupied relatively undesirable, low-lying land to the northwest of the Capitol, the downtown, and the
Governor's Mansion; the latter is only two blocks from Macomb Street, Frenchtown's commercial center. Although today the southern border of Frenchtown is Tennessee Street, it previously extended to Park Avenue, including land currently occupied by the
LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library. Frenchtown is the oldest historically black neighborhood in the state. By the twentieth century Frenchtown had its own stores, doctors, pharmacy, schools, restaurants,
nightclubs, and (on Tennessee Street) a movie theater. When
James Baldwin visited to read some of his work at FAMU, he stayed at (and could only stay at) the
Tookes Hotel. Frenchtown was a stop on the
Chitlin' Circuit, and famous black musicians like
Louis Armstrong,
B. B. King,
Ray Charles,
Cab Calloway,
Little Richard,
Little Milton,
Al Green,
Lou Rawls, and
Nat and
Cannonball Adderley performed there; in the 1940s Ray Charles and the Adderley brothers lived there. All the businesses and night clubs on the western side of Macomb Street were torn down when it was widened around 1990. Macomb Street, together with Old Bainbridge Road, which starts where Macomb ends, was until 1949, when
U.S. 90 was built from Tallahassee to Quincy, the main route out of Tallahassee to the west. The community was served by the Lincoln Academy, then Lincoln High School (see
Old Lincoln High School), the first school to serve blacks in
Leon County and one of three in the state providing secondary education to
African Americans. (President
Abraham Lincoln was a hero for blacks, but was hated by segregationist whites.) Its first
principal was John G. Riley (see
John Gilmore Riley House), who had been born a slave, and who was head of the local chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Its final building (the fourth; two destroyed by fire) was located on Brevard Street, but facing the length of Macomb Street. It closed in 1969, when black students were admitted to previously all-white
Leon High School. As often happened during
desegregation, and as also happened with the
Florida A&M University College of Law and the Florida A&M Hospital, desegregation meant that the black facility was closed and most of the black teachers, principals, and coaches lost their jobs. The building, today called the Lincoln Center, is used for delivering social services. There is no connection with the current, distant
Lincoln High School. A bus line ran south from Frenchtown to Florida A&M University, where, along South Adams Street, there was a second, smaller group of black businesses. Though enlarged at the north end, this survives as the Moss route. Until the extension of Colorado St. about 1990, Frenchtown had no direct link to the white neighborhoods to its north.
Desegregation A
bus boycott in 1956, inspired by and the first to follow
that of Montgomery, Alabama, led (after
cross burnings and violence) to integrated seating in 1957. This successful boycott informed the desegregation of the
Miami Transit Company in 1957. The bus boycott was a shock to Tallahassee whites, who believed the city "had been blessed with two staples of Southern mythology, contented blacks and 'good race relations'". It marks the beginning of the
Civil Rights Movement and
desegregation in Florida. Fifty years later, the
Tallahassee Democrat apologized for the segregationist perspective with which it covered the boycott. In 1960, in imitation of the nationally famous
Greensboro sit-ins at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, black students and sympathizers held a series of sit-ins at the lunch counter of the Tallahassee
Woolworth's. At least one white student from FSU was expelled for participating. The sit-ins were unsuccessful (Woolworth's desegregated nationally in 1962), and helped
segregationist governor
Farris Bryant win election later in 1960. As a result of picketing and sit-ins organised by the local chapter of
CORE, by 1963 lunch counters at
Sears,
Neisner's,
Walgreens,
McCrory's, and Woolworth's agreed to serve all patrons, the two bus stations were desegregated, as was the municipal courtroom, and the airport restaurant became open to everyone. On May 30, 1963, 220 pro-integration demonstrators, mostly FAMU students, were arrested for demonstrating in front of Tallahassee's Florida and State Theatres. Later the same day, 100 students marching in sympathy for the first group were met by city, county, and state policemen with tear gas, and 37 were arrested. Charges were later dismissed. At some of the demonstrations there were white segregationist counter-demonstrators, carrying signs saying "
Darkies Back to Africa" and "
The South Will Rise Again".
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in the late 1960s started accepting black patients, and the
Florida A&M Hospital, with lesser facilities and with no white patients to replace the black patients it lost, closed. The building is today (2020) the administration building at
Florida A&M University. As elsewhere, the hardest part of the struggle for integration in Tallahassee concerned the school system. Despite the unanimous
Supreme Court ruling in
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, and a court statement in 1955 that compliance with the decision should take place "with all deliberate speed" (
Brown II), no schools in Florida were desegregated until 1959 (and only one school, in Miami, was integrated that year). Many Floridians viewed
Brown v. Board of Education as "a day of catastrophe — a
Black Monday — a day something like
Pearl Harbor". Although the desegregation process in Florida brought less violence and upheaval than in other Southern states, Florida counties resisted integration "by every means", and local lawsuits in federal courts, on a county by county basis, were necessary for integration to take place. Leon County "fought school integration as tenaciously as any community in Florida". and in Tallahassee, only after the "dyed-in-the-wool segregationists", as school Superintendent Freeman Ashmore called them, had decamped for three newly founded
segregation academies:
Maclay School,
North Florida Christian High School, and Maranatha Christian Academy (closed). Governor
LeRoy Collins (1955–1961) supported (gradual) school desegregation—the first Southern official to do so—but the legislature passed a resolution declaring Brown v. Board of Education "
null and void", as a federal imposition on
states' rights. "By the time Collins left office in 1961, Tallahassee, like most of Florida, remained committed to preserving a segregated school system." The Florida legislature, in an apparent response to the pressures for integration and to FAMU students' activism, in 1965 defunded the
Florida A&M University College of Law, which soon closed, and set up
a new one at FSU the following year. Governor
Bob Graham (1979–1987) spoke repeatedly in favor of the merging of Florida A&M University with the formerly all-white
Florida State University, which admitted its first African-American student in 1962. Merger was discussed in the Education Committee of several legislative sessions.—to one of the most tolerant. Primarily this has been driven by the expansion of
Florida State University, founded in 1947, to serve
World War II veterans studying under the
G.I. Bill. Its predecessor,
Florida State College for Women, was politically liberal and pro-integration, but it was small and its faculty and graduates had little political power. Secondarily, Tallahassee's change has been due to
Florida A&M University, and to the changing demographics of the state itself. Florida's population growth has been due to in-migration. An African American,
James R. Ford, was elected mayor in 1972 and was twice re-elected, serving until 1986. He was previously head of the
Leon County School System. In 1982, Tallahassee elected
Alfred Lawson Jr. to the
Florida House of Representatives, where he served until 2000. A resident writing in 1986, who mentions these two facts, described racial tensions as "mild". Subsequently,
Alan B. Williams was elected to the House, and Lawson to the
Florida Senate. ==See also==