from: "It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke"

[sheclown]

Inspired by their 8th grade history teacher, a courageous group of children changed history's path in our city.  In his book, "It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke," Rodney Hurst talks about Jacksonville's Youth Council NAACP, its challenge to Jim Crow laws, and the threats and inevitable violence that resulted.  The book gives us a picture of Jacksonville in the late 50s and early 60s that should inspire us to always move forward protecting the rights of those who are marginalized.

Fifty years later, and we deserve to pause and look back at where we were, and give these heroes their due.

[Dark Knight]

Flop house dogs , can right those wrongs and be the symbol of diversity .

[sheclown]

Flop house dogs , can right those wrongs and be the symbol of diversity .

[sheclown]

Located at the corner of Monroe and Hogan in downtown Jacksonville, Woolworth Department Store was one of several major downtown stores.  In today's terms, Woolworth was an anchor store downtown.  You would have also considered J. C. Penney an anchor store.  Both stores were located next to each other in the J. C. Penney Building and shared a common wall.  You could literally walk from J. C. Penney to F. W. Woolworth without going outside, and behind both stores stood the Robert Meyer Hotel.  Together, the three structures occupied an entire city block.  (The recently built Charles E. Bennett Federal Court House now sits on that site.)
     When you entered Woolworth from Hogan Street and looked to the left, you could see a lunch counter spanning the entire Monroe Street side of the store.  Eighty-four lunch counter seats were punctuated by spacious customer-serving bays and bright windows.
     You could stop and eat at Woolworth's convenient lunch counter after spending time shopping in Woolworth or after shopping downtown.  You could, that is, if you were white.  For Blacks, an invisible sign read, "Lunch Counter, FOR WHITES ONLY."
     If Black shoppers wanted to eat in Woolworth after shopping, the process worked differently.  Woolworth wanted you to spend your money, but only where they wanted you to spend your money.
     Enter Woolworth again.  The white lunch counter is on your left.  If you started walking to the rear of the store, you would walk past the cosmetics counter;

     then walk past the costume jewelry counter;
     then walk past the popcorn popper;
     then walk past the candy counter;
     then walk past the women's clothes counter;
     then walk past the men's clothes counter;
     then walk past the children clothes counter;
     then walk past the "White" and "Colored" water fountains;
     then walk past the work shoes counter;
     then walk past the dress shoes counter;
     then walk past the bedroom shoes counter;
     then walk past the picture frames and mirrors counter;
     then walk past the aquarium supplies counter;
     then walk past the stairs leading upstairs to the restrooms marked "White Women," "White Men,", "Colored Women," "Colored Men";
     then walk past the pet food and pet supplies counter;
     then walk past the house plants;
     then walk past the gardening supplies counter;
     AND THEN, and only then, would you see the Colored lunch counter, with its fifteen seats and no windows.

Hurst, Rodney, "It Was Never About a Hot Dog and A Coke" (p.54-55)

[sheclown]

For those of you too young to remember:

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had also restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[sheclown]

The 8th grade teacher:

Rutledge Pearson (September 9, 1929 - May 1967) was an educator, civil rights leader and human rights activist. He was also a notable baseball player in his early years.

On Jul 27, 1952 in the Reading Eagle Newspaper, Pearson is mentioned as playing for the 1952 New York Black Yankees, of the Negro League. He was 6'3 and played first base.

He was featured on the cover of JET magazine on April 20, 1964, with the headline: "Former Baseball Star Leads Jacksonville Civil Rights Struggle."

Pearson served as president of the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP during the 1960s. He supported the civil rights efforts in nearby St. Augustine that led to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In May 1967, he was mysteriously killed in a car accident on the way to organize Laundry workers in Memphis, Tennessee. A school in Jacksonville, Florida is named in his honor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutledge_Pearson

http://books.google.com/books?id=aMEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=JET+magazine+Rutledge+Pearson&source=bl&ots=u4vqxT4qCX&sig=ZQIObpHJ2l_MKQOex6hg8H9CaSA&hl=en&ei=0zYMTK6mIYGBlAfgzLGfDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

& btw, Pearson was a Springfield resident.

[sheclown]

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public ("public accommodations.")

Once the Act was implemented, its effects were far-reaching and had tremendous long-term impacts on the whole country. It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws in the southern U.S. It became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

[sheclown]

Bar honors civil rights leader
01/21/2008
by David Ball
Staff Writer

When Patricia Pearson was just a young teenager living in Jacksonville in the 1960s, just answering the phone could be a frightening experience.

Often, the voice on the other end spouted racially charged death threats against her, her family and especially her father, civil rights activist Rutledge Pearson.

“In the ‘60s, the city was divided into two communities. If you were black, you used the back door of white businesses,” she said. “But regardless of these efforts, the tide of racial segregation, discrimination...had turned.”

It was because of the work of activists like Rutledge Pearson that the tide did turn in Jacksonville and across the nation, and the former NAACP president who now has a public school and city park named in his honor was remembered at Thursday’s Jacksonville Bar Association luncheon.

To celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Bar members heard from Pearson’s daughter as well as a former student, Patricia Moman Bell, who learned under Pearson when he taught social studies in segregated Jacksonville classrooms.

Pearson’s widow and brother were also in attendance and were thanked for their personal sacrifices during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Reggie Luster, the Jacksonville Bar’s only black president since the group was founded in 1897, led the invocation.

On each table, a note asking “Have you lived in a time or place where you had fewer civil rights?” spurred much discussion among the attendees. Stories included racism against black attorneys and judges, sexism against the few women at law schools in the 60s and 70s and even classism told by the children of poor, working-class parents.

However, the most inspiring stories came from Pearson’s daughter and student.

The stories told how Rutledge Pearson found his first success as a baseball player in the American Negro League. He got a chance to play ball in Atlantic Beach with a farm team of the Milwaukee Braves, but he was ultimately barred because of his race.

The end of his baseball career led Pearson to become a teacher and also an advisor to the NAACP, which later made him president of the Jacksonville branch.

“He never raised his voice and never needed to. He commanded respect,” said Moman Bell. “Just as attorneys are, Rutledge Pearson was the embodiment of the constitution. That is his legacy.”

Pearson organized sit-ins, picket lines and was involved with the famed Axe-handle riot in Jacksonville in 1960. He even represented the city during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on Washington in 1963, when his most famous speech, “I have a dream,” echoed through the nation’s capital.

He later got involved with ensuring the rights of black workers’ unions. It was during a trip to Memphis to help striking laundry workers in 1967 that he died during a suspicious car accident. While the FBI found no foul play, the local Ku Klux Klan was eager to write to Pearson’s family and claim responsibility.

“I remember he was asked if he liked the life of a civil righter,” said Patricia Pearson. “He said, ‘It’s just like skimming off hot grounders at third, but without a glove.’”

But in front of the racially diverse faces of attorneys and judges in the crowd, Pearson’s most poignant encapsulation of her father came at the beginning of her speech, when she talked about how Rutledge viewed his home city.

“He believed this city could become a place where people of all colors could live, work and love,” she said.

http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=49275

[sheclown]

Apparently there is an elementary school named after Pearson.

Ironically, a year after he died, a high school was named after the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, the organization which claimed responsibility for Pearson's death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest

Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the civil war.  Not only was he the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, he was also accused of war crimes at the Battle of Fort Pillow for "conducting a massacre upon hundreds of black union army"  soldiers.

Nathan Bedford Forrest High School is the name of two high schools in the United States. Due to the controversy of naming a school for Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, many schools formerly named after him have adopted new names. The controversy regarding use of the name Nathan Bedford Forrest reached its peak in 1998 where Richard Donaldson and Harry Zeigler were taken to court for openly protesting the use of his name and sued the school district for one hundred thousand dollars. The case was dismissed by the judge and no further proceedings on this matter have arisen.

The two that still exist are:

    * Forrest School (Chapel Hill, Tennessee)
    * Nathan Bedford Forrest High School (Jacksonville, Florida)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest_High_School

[sheclown]

A link to NPR's story celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Greenboro's "sit-in" lunch counter demonstrations -- the one that started it all...

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=18615556&m=18617270

[CS Foltz]

Flop house dogs , can right those wrongs and be the symbol of diversity .

sheclown .......you and strider have the chance to make a mark in more ways than one kid! If I can help, let me know!

[sheclown]

Thanks CS your encouragement is very inspirational and we need your help!  I have started talking about Flop House Dogs on another thread:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,5752.new.html#new

Because this thread "Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke" 

[KenFSU]

Great book.

Hurst is speaking at the Jacksonville Historical Society sometime in the next few weeks.

Definitely want to check it out.

[sheclown]

Great book.

Hurst is speaking at the Jacksonville Historical Society sometime in the next few weeks.

Definitely want to check it out.

06-15-2010         
Jacksonville Historical Society (6:00 PM)
Book Presentation and Book signing Old St. Andrews Historical Church
317 A. Philip Randolph Dr. Jacksonville, Fl

http://www.rodneyhurst.com/calendar.php