| History of Florida |
|---|
.jpg) Map ofFlorida et Regiones Vicinae from ca. 1640 |
|
 Florida portal |
The history ofTallahassee, Florida, much like thehistory of Leon County, dates back to thesettlement of the Americas. Beginning in the 16th century, the region wascolonized by Europeans, becoming part ofSpanish Florida. In 1819, theAdams–Onís Treaty ceded Spanish Florida, including modern-day Tallahassee, to theUnited States. Tallahassee became a city and the state capital of Florida in 1821; the American takeover led to the settlements' rapid expansion as growing numbers ofcotton plantations began to spring up nearby, increasing Tallahassees' population significantly.
Tallahassee is situated within theApalachee Province, home of theApalachee, aMississippian culture of agrarian people who farmed vast tracts of land. Their capital,Anhaica, was located within Tallahassee's city limits.
The name "Tallahassee" is aMuskogean Indian word often translated as "old fields", or "old town." Its also known as "Tally" as a nickname.[1] This may stem from theCreek (later calledSeminole) Indians that migrated into this region in the 18th century. The Apalachee's success as agriculturalists did not go unnoticed by the Spanish, who sent missionaries to the area throughout the 17th century. Several mission sites were established with the aim of procuring food and labor for the colony atSt. Augustine. One of the most important mission sites,Mission San Luis de Apalachee, has been partially reconstructed as a state historic site in Tallahassee.
The Spanish missionaries were not the first Europeans to visit Tallahassee. The Spanish explorer,Hernando de Soto spent the winter of 1538-1539 encamped at the Apalachee village ofAnhaica, which he had taken by force. De Soto's brutal treatment of the natives was fiercely resisted, and by the following spring De Soto was eager to move on. The site of Anhaica, near present-day Myers Park, was located in 1987 by Florida archaeologist B. Calvin Jones.
Anhaica, in the early period of Spanish colonization, was the capital of the Apalachee Province (ofSpanish Florida).
It was burned on March 31, 1818, by GeneralAndrew Jackson, at the onset of theFirst Seminole War.[2]: 39–40 [3]
The founding of Tallahassee was largely a matter of convenience. In 1821, Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States. A territorial government was established, but the impracticalities of alternately meeting inSt. Augustine andPensacola, the two largest cities in the territory at the time (the Spaniards had built a road),[citation needed] led territorial governorWilliam Pope Duval to appoint two commissioners to establish a more central meeting place.
In October 1823, John Lee Williams of Pensacola and Dr. William Simmons of St. Augustine selected the former Indian settlement of Tallahassee, roughly midway between the two cities, as a suitable place. Their decision was also based on its elevation and location near a beautiful waterfall, now part ofCascades Park, and the old capital of the Apalachee chiefdom,Anhaica, burned byAndrew Jackson in 1818.Neamathla, a Creek chief, was living there in a new town calledCohowofooche.
In March of the following year it was formally proclaimed the capital. Florida did not become a state, however, until 1845.[4]
On November 1, 1823, John Lee Williams wrote to Florida congressional delegate (and later governor)Richard Keith Call about the location of the capital:
Doct. Simmons has agreed that the Site should be fixed near the old fields abandoned by the Indians after Jackson's invasion, but has not yet determined whether between the... old fields, or on a fine high lawn about a mile W. In both spots the water is plenty and good.
In 1824, the City of Tallahassee, the county seat and only incorporated city in Leon County, was established following a decision by thestate legislature to locate thecapital of the newFlorida Territory midway between the population centers of St. Augustine and Pensacola. The city was not formally incorporated until December 1825, with the first municipal elections being held in January 1826.
In 1824, GeneralMarquis de Lafayette was awarded aland grant by theUnited States Congress. The grant consisted of a 6-mile (9.7 km) by 6-mile (9.7 km) square of land in what is today mostly northeast Tallahassee. Although the Marquis never visited his property in Florida, he sent people to growlimes andolives and to producesilk from moths. However, the colony failed, and most of the residents went toNew Orleans or back to France. Those who remained lived in an area of Tallahassee that still is calledFrenchtown. Lafayette eventually sold his property.
In 1826,Achille Murat, nephew ofNapoleon Bonaparte, moved to the Tallahassee area, most likely in response to the July 4, 1825Lafayette Land Grant, which also attracted many other Frenchsettlers. He purchased land inJefferson County, Florida and named itLipona Plantation. "Lipona" is an anagram for Napoli, the Italian spelling ofNaples,Italy, where he was to rule.
The following outline represents a brief historical sketch of the area:
In 1827,Ralph Waldo Emerson, after a visit, called Tallahassee "A grotesque place of land speculators and desperados."[5][6] Emerson would become a great friend and confidant of the aforementioned Achille Murat for years.
Around 1830, theUnion Bank, Tallahassee's first bank, was established by William Williams. TheSeminole Wars, unsound banking practices, and thePanic of 1837 caused the closing of the bank in 1843. In 1847, the bank was purchased by cotton plantation owners William Bailey and Issac Mitchell. It later became aFreedman (negro) bank from after theCivil War until 1879. The building has been used as a church, feed store, art house, coffee house, dance studio, locksmith's shop, beauty shop, and shoe factory. In 1971 the bank was moved from the original site on the west side of Adams Street, between College Avenue and Park Avenue, to just east of the Capitol on Apalachee Parkway and Calhoun Avenue.
The rough hewn frontier capital gradually grew into a town duringFlorida's territorial period. In anticipation of becoming a state, the territorial government erected aGreek Revivalmasonry structure that would befit a state capitol. The structure opened in 1845 in time for statehood and eventually become known as the "old Capitol" which stands in front of the current new capitol high rise today.
In 1834, theTallahassee Railroad was constructed, connectingSt. Marks with Tallahassee to facilitate shipping of cotton to northeastern ports. It is reported to be the third oldest railroad in the United States.[citation needed] Three years later, it was extended toPort Leon, briefly thecounty seat ofWakulla County until it was destroyed byhurricane. In 1856 the mule-drawn line, with wooden rails, was replaced with steel rails andsteam locomotives. The route has been paved and is today theTallahassee-St. Marks Historic Railroad State Trail.[7]
Also in 1834,Thomas Brown, who would later serve as Florida's governor, built an inn called Brown's Inn, located on the west side of Adams Street between Pensacola and Lafayette streets.
The Floridian newspaper reported in 1840 that the Great Florida Mail route ("previously sent by theAlligator Route") connected Tallahassee (Port Leon), via steamboats and stagecoaches, with Apalachcola, Pensacola, andMobile, Alabama to the west, andSt. Augustine,Brunswick, Georgia, andCharleston, South Carolina on the east. The trip from Mobile was3+1⁄2 days "in favorable weather", and the fare $26.50.[8]
In 1841,Francis W. Eppes, grandson ofThomas Jefferson and a successfulcotton plantation owner becameIntendantmayor of Tallahassee. Eppes served as mayor until 1844. Eppes described the town's Marion Race Course "A hotbed of vice, intemperance, gambling and profanity." He held that the rest of the town was little better. Eppes would again serve from 1856 to 1857.
During theantebellum period, Tallahassee was at the center of the fast-growing "middle counties" of Florida, which held the bulk of the antebellum state population. For several decades before theCivil War, nearbyGadsden County was the most populous in the state. Cotton and tobacco plantations and smaller farms were the main draw for population growth as well as economic and political power. Many cotton plantations such as theWilliam Bailey Plantation,Barrow Hill,Francis Eppes Plantation,La Grange Plantation were built within what is now Tallahassee.
.jpg)
Tallahassee was the only Confederate state capital east of the Mississippi not captured by Union forces during theCivil War, and the only one not burned. TheBattle of Natural Bridge was fought outside Tallahassee. TheFSUROTC has the rare privilege of displaying a Civil War battle streamer, due to participation in that battle by volunteers that included teenagers from the nearby Florida Military and Collegiate Institute (that would later becomeFlorida State University).[9][10]
Leon County produced two companies who fought as part of the1st Florida Infantry Regiment. One of the companies, dubbed the "Leon Artillery," was reportedly made up of "Tallahassee boys, young, healthy, and many of them wealthy."[11]
Following the Civil War, much of Florida's industry shifted to the south and east, a trend that continues to this day. After the abolition ofslavery, regional industries which previously relied on forced labor, likecotton andtobacco, began to decline. Consequently, the state's primary industries transitioned tocitrus,naval stores,cattle ranching, andtourism, mainly to the south and east due to favorable climate and geography. This growth was particularly evident around the Jacksonville area and along theSt. Johns River.
At the same time, newly liberated African Americans establishedFrenchtown, the oldest historically black neighborhood in the state.
In January 1883 Reverend John Kost,A.M.,M.D.,LL.D ofMichigan proposed to carry out the mandate of the 1868 Constitution requiring a state university. Kost selected Tallahassee and theWest Florida Seminary for the location of the university. The university was called theFlorida State College for Women and later called theFlorida State University.[12][13][failed verification]
On October 3, 1887, theState Normal College for Colored Students began classes, and became aland grant university four years later when it received $7,500 under the Second Morrill Act, and its name was changed to State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students. However, it was not an official institution of higher learning until the 1905Buckman Act, which transferred control from the Department of Education to theBoard of Control, creating what was the foundation for the modernFlorida A&M University.
Dry goods store owner George W. Saxon began making loans to farmers during the 1880s which led him to filing for a bank charter in 1895. The bank grew and by 1975, Saxon's great-grandson and bank director,DuBose Ausley, began formation of several banks into one group. Capital City Bank now has 70 banking offices and serves people as far north asValley, Alabama andMacon, Georgia toPort Richey, Florida in the south.[14]
During the 1880s and 1890s Tallahassee was served by theCarrabelle, Tallahassee and Georgia Railroad, which ran fromGeorgia to Tallahassee and on toCarrabelle inFranklin County.
The St. James Hotel was constructed sometime during the 1870—1883 period. It was a 3-story hotel with aporch wrapping two sides, located on the corner Monroe Street and Jefferson Street. The St. James became the Bloxham House from 1909 to 1913. Moved to 410 N. Calhoun Street, this building possesses both local and statewide significance, having served as the residence for GovernorsWilliam D. Bloxham andMadison S. Perry from 1881 to 1901. It is also Tallahassee's finest remaining example ofFederal residential architecture. In 1980 theFlorida Heritage Foundation oversaw the restoration of this building.[15]
In 1881, the Leon Hotel was constructed at 110 East Park Avenue. AVictorian style 2-story building, it had ornate porches on both first and second floors with sprawling grounds. The Leon was destroyed by fire in 1925.
Throughout much of the 20th century, Tallahassee remained a sleepy government and college town, where politicians would meet to discuss spending money on grand public improvement projects to accommodate growth in places such asMiami andTampa, hundreds of miles away from the capital. By 1901, the infrastructure development continued to trend growth to the south, first by thePlant System Railroads to the fledgling port of Tampa and then theFlagler railroad to the remote outpost of Miami. However, Tallahassee was firmly entrenched as capital and in that year the 1845 capitol building was expanded with two new wings, and a small dome.
In 1905,Florida State College became a women's school called theFlorida Female College and, in 1909, the name of the college was changed toFlorida State College for Women.[16]
In 1919, TheFlorida Legislature passed a new citycharter for Tallahassee, authorizing a Commission-Manager form of government. The position of directly elected mayor ended and a system of rotation amongcity commissioners for mayor began.
TheFloridan Hotel was constructed opened May 2, 1927, on the corner of Monroe Street and Call Street. It became the home of statelegislators during legislative sessions and it has been said that more of Florida's business took place in the Floridan than in the Florida Capitol. The TallahasseeRotary Club met in the Floridan during this decade. The Floridan was demolished in 1985. The 4-story Cherokee Hotel was constructed in 1922 at Park Ave and Calhoun St.[17]
In 1928, the City of Tallahassee purchased a 200-acre (0.81 km2) tract of land for $7,028 for its first municipal airport.[where?] It was namedDale Mabry Field in honor of Tallahassee native Army CaptainDale Mabry. The airport was dedicated on November 11, 1929, with its first manager being Ivan Munroe.
In 1931, theLively Vocational Technical School was established and is still in existence on Appleyard Drive.
In 1947, the legislature returned Florida State College for Women to coeducational status, founding theFlorida State University.[16]
Musician and entertainerRay Charles made Tallahassee his part-time home. Charles began sitting in with theFlorida A&M University student band and playing with jazz brothersNat Adderley andCannonball Adderley.[18]
On May 26, 1956, twoFlorida A&M University students were arrested by the Tallahassee Police Department because they refused to give up their seats next to a white passenger. They were charged with "inciting a riot", though the white woman they sat next to made no objection. The next night a cross was burned outside their rooming house.[19] Carrie Patterson, a FAMU junior, was a 21-year-old wife and mother from the small town ofLakeland, Florida. She was able to return home just twice a year. Wilhemina Jakes, a FAMU senior, was a 26-year-old born inHardeeville, South Carolina and was fromWest Palm Beach, Florida. Both young women were studyingelementary education at FAMU.
Rev. C. K. Steele and Robert Saunders representing theNAACP began talks while blacks started boycotting the city's buses. This boycott was similar to that in theMontgomery bus boycott withRosa Parks. Former bus patrons began a car pool lasting through May 26, 1957, several other events took place which would change segregation in Tallahassee. The Inter-Civic Council endedthe boycott on December 3, 1956.
On January 7, 1957, the City Commission repealed the bus-franchisesegregation clause because of a recent federal ruling that outlaws segregated buses in Florida. Tallahassee's bus terminal would later be named after Steele.
In 1959,Betty Jean Owens, anAfrican-American woman, was brutally raped by four white men in Tallahassee.[20] The trial of Owens' rapists was significant in Florida, and the South as a whole, because the white men were given life sentences for their crimes. This severe of a sentencing had not occurred for white men in the South accused of raping black women previous to Owens' case.[21]
On March 16, 1960, the Tallahassee Police Department usedtear gas to break up a student protest demonstration in the city. Protesters also attempted a boycott of The Mecca, a popular eatery across from the gate of Florida State University. In 1963, orchestra leaderCount Basie was refused service at the restaurant after performing at Florida State, which precipitated a protest in which Basie participated.[22] Similar protests were launched against McCrory's,Woolworth's,Walgreens, andSears. (For more information, see below,History of Tallahassee, Florida#Black history.)
By the 1960s, there was a movement to move the capital toOrlando closer geographically to the growing population centers of the state. That motion was defeated however, and the 1970s saw a long-term commitment by the state to the capital city with construction of thenew capitol complex and preservation of the old capitol building. In 1961,Tallahassee Regional Airport is opened.
In 1964,Killearn Estates became Tallahassee's first planned community. Formed from land owned by the Coble family and known asVelda Farms, it was unusual in that it had underground utilities preserving a natural appearance.[23]
In 1966, TheTallahassee Community College was established just west of what was Dale Mabry Field. TCC would grow and educate over 14,000 students per semester.
On January 9, 1978,serial killerTed Bundy arrived in Tallahassee fromAtlanta by bus. While in Tallahassee, Bundy rented a room at a boarding house under the alias of "Chris Hagen". Bundy went on a spree committing numerous petty crimes including shoplifting, purse snatching, and auto theft. In the early hours ofSuper Bowl Sunday on January 15, 1978, he bludgeoned to death two sleeping women, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and seriously wounded Karen Chandler and Kathry Kleiner inside theirFlorida State UniversityChi Omegasorority house. He then clubbed and severely injured another young woman, Cheryl Thomas, in her home a few blocks away.
On February 15, Bundy stole an orangeVW Bug belonging to Rick Garzaniti of Tallahassee. Bundy was stopped shortly after 1 a.m. by Pensacola police officer David Lee. When the officer called in a check of Bundy'slicense plate it was proven to be stolen. Bundy scuffled with Lee before finally being subdued.
Bundy was found guilty of these and other murders and was executed January 24, 1989.
Tallahassee has seen an uptick in growth in recent years, mainly in government and research services associated with the state andFlorida State University. However, a growing number of retirees are finding Tallahassee an attractive alternative toSouth Florida's high housing prices andurban sprawl.
In 1993, the Leon County Public Library was renamed theLeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library in honor of Florida's 33rd Governor,LeRoy Collins.In 1997, Tallahassee citizens selectedScott Maddox as their first directly elected mayor since 1919.
TheU.S. presidential election of 2000 betweenAl Gore andGeorge W. Bush would play out to a great degree in Tallahassee. Bush won the election night vote count in Florida by a little over 1000 votes. Florida state law provided for an automatic recount due to the small margins.
The closeness of the election was clear and both the Bush and Gore campaigns organized themselves for the ensuing legal process. The Bush campaign hiredGeorge H. W. Bush's formerSecretary of StateJames Baker to oversee their legal team, and the Gore campaign hiredBill Clinton's former Secretary of StateWarren Christopher and Tallahassee attorneys W. Dexter Douglass and John Newton.
The Gore campaign, as allowed by Florida statute, requested that disputed ballots in four counties be counted by hand. Florida statutes also required that all counties certify and report their returns, including any recounts, by 5 p.m. on November 14.
At 4:00 p.m.EST on December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, ordered a manual recount, under the supervision of the Leon County Circuit Court, of disputed ballots in all Florida counties and the portion of Miami-Dade county in which such a recount was not already complete. That decision was announced on live worldwide television by the Florida Supreme Court's spokesmanCraig Waters, the Court'spublic information officer. The Court further ordered that only undervotes be considered. The results of this tally were to be added to the November 14 tally. This count was in progress on December 9 at theLeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library,[24] when the United States Supreme Court 5-4 (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting) granted Bush's emergency plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping the incomplete recount.
In 2016,Hurricane Hermine swept through the city, knocking out power to 80% of the city, includingFlorida State University, and bringing down trees. This was the first hurricane to make a direct hit on the city sinceHurricane Kate in 1985.
Tallahassee has a strong black history. Before theCivil War Leon County led the state in cotton production,[25] and had the greatest cluster ofplantations in the state. (SeePlantations of Leon County.) Centrally located Tallahassee—only north Florida had any significant population—was the center of Florida'sslave trade.[26] In 1860, Leon County's population was 73% black, almost all of themslaves;[27] there were more slaves in Leon County than in any other county in Florida.[28] (AdjacentGadsden 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 publichistorically 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 InstructionJonathan C. Gibbs, who was elected a Tallahassee city councilman in 1872.) According to the 2010 Census, Tallahassee's population was 34% black,[29][30] whereas Florida as a whole is 17% black.[31] A commemoration of theEmancipation Proclamation is celebrated on May 20 of each year, at theKnott House (run by theMuseum of Florida History), where the proclamation was read on May 20, 1865.[32]
Tallahassee is the location of the John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History & Culture (John Gilmore Riley House),[33] and theCarrie Meek and James N. Eaton Sr., Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum.
Like other Southern cities, Tallahassee wassegregated from the end ofReconstruction until the early 1970s; the closing of the underfunded[34]: 185–188 Florida A&M Hospital in 1971 is a good marking point for the end of segregation in Tallahassee. Tallahassee's rigid segregation led to its nickname of "Little Mississippi",[35] and racism in pre-integration Tallahassee has been described as "virulent".[34]: 5 Real estate deeds in white neighborhoods were typically accompanied by covenants prohibiting sale to blacks (seeShelley v. Kraemer). Tallahassee turned downAndrew Carnegie's offer of a grant to build alibrary, because under Carnegie's rules it would have to serve black patrons. (Carnegie, faced with this, instead built in 1907 theCarnegie Library on the campus of what is now Florida A&M University. Tallahassee's former whites-only public library is today theDavid 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.[36] The local newspaper, theTallahassee Democrat, had a regular black section in the paper. White subscribers received in its place the business section.
After theCivil War, many newly free blacks settled in the area that came to be known asFrenchtown (because it was on part of theLafayette Land Grant). It occupied relatively undesirable, low-lying land to the northwest of the Capitol, the downtown, and theGovernor'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 theLeRoy 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. WhenJames Baldwin visited to read some of his work at FAMU, he stayed at (and could only stay at) theTookes Hotel.[37] Frenchtown was a stop on theChitlin' Circuit, and famous black musicians likeLouis Armstrong,B. B. King,Ray Charles,Cab Calloway,Little Richard,Little Milton,Al Green,Lou Rawls, andNat andCannonball Adderley performed there;[38] in the 1940s Ray Charles and the Adderley brothers lived there.[39] 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, whenU.S. 90 was built from Tallahassee to Quincy, the main route out of Tallahassee to the west.[40]
The community was served by the Lincoln Academy, then Lincoln High School (seeOld Lincoln High School), the first school to serve blacks inLeon County and one of three in the state providing secondary education toAfrican Americans. (PresidentAbraham Lincoln was a hero for blacks, but was hated by segregationist whites.) Its firstprincipal was John G. Riley (seeJohn Gilmore Riley House), who had been born a slave, and who was head of the local chapter of theNational 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-whiteLeon High School. As often happened duringdesegregation, and as also happened with theFlorida 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.[41] The building, today called the Lincoln Center, is used for delivering social services.[42][43] There is no connection with the current, distantLincoln 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.[44]
Until the extension of Colorado St. about 1990, Frenchtown had no direct link to the white neighborhoods to its north.
Abus boycott in 1956,[45] inspired by and the first to followthat of Montgomery, Alabama, led (aftercross burnings[46][47] and violence[48]) to integrated seating in 1957.[49][50][51] This successful boycott informed the desegregation of theMiami Transit Company in 1957.[52]
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'".[53] It marks the beginning of theCivil Rights Movement anddesegregation in Florida.
Fifty years later, theTallahassee Democrat apologized for the segregationist perspective with which it covered the boycott.[54]
In 1960, in imitation of the nationally famousGreensboro 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 TallahasseeWoolworth's. At least one white student from FSU was expelled for participating. The sit-ins were unsuccessful (Woolworth's desegregated nationally in 1962), and helpedsegregationist governorFarris Bryant win election later in 1960.[55]
As a result of picketing and sit-ins organised by the local chapter ofCORE, by 1963 lunch counters atSears,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.[56]
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.[57] 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".[56]
Under pressure fromMedicare, which refused to fund segregated hospitals,[58]Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in the late 1960s started accepting black patients, and theFlorida 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 atFlorida A&M University.
As elsewhere, the hardest part of the struggle for integration in Tallahassee concerned the school system.[59] Despite the unanimousSupreme Court ruling inBrown 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).[60][61] Many Floridians viewedBrown v. Board of Education as "a day of catastrophe — aBlack Monday — a day something likePearl Harbor".[62] Although the desegregation process in Florida brought less violence and upheaval than in other Southern states,[63] 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.[64] Leon County "fought school integration as tenaciously as any community in Florida".[63] Florida schools were not fully desegregated until the late 1960s,[65][66] and in Tallahassee, only after the "dyed-in-the-wool segregationists", as school Superintendent Freeman Ashmore called them, had decamped for three newly foundedsegregation academies:Maclay School,North Florida Christian High School, and Maranatha Christian Academy (closed).[67] GovernorLeRoy Collins (1955–1961) supported (gradual) school desegregation—the first Southern official to do so[68][69]—but the legislature passed a resolution declaring Brown v. Board of Education "null and void", as a federal imposition onstates' rights. "By the time Collins left office in 1961, Tallahassee, like most of Florida, remained committed to preserving a segregated school system."[70]
The Florida legislature, in an apparent response to the pressures for integration and to FAMU students' activism, in 1965 defunded theFlorida A&M University College of Law, which soon closed, and set upa new one at FSU the following year.[71]
GovernorBob Graham (1979–1987) spoke repeatedly in favor of the merging of Florida A&M University with the formerly all-whiteFlorida State University, which admitted its first African-American student in 1962.[72][73] Merger was discussed in the Education Committee of several legislative sessions.[71] Loud and anguished voices from the black community led to this proposal being scrapped. TheFlorida Board of Regents tried another approach to achieving integration by deciding (1985) to locate a new pharmacy school at FAMU rather than FSU. As a step toward integration this also failed, as the school remained a primarily white enclave on the otherwise black campus. TheFlorida A&M University – Florida State University College of Engineering was founded as a joint venture of the two universities (and located, roughly, between them.)
Tallahassee has achieved a remarkable attitudinal change. It has gone from arguably the most racist city in the state—and Florida from 1900 to 1930 led the country inlynchingsper capita[74][75]—to one of the most tolerant.
Primarily this has been driven by the expansion ofFlorida State University, founded in 1947, to serveWorld War II veterans studying under theG.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 toFlorida 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 theLeon County School System. In 1982, Tallahassee electedAlfred Lawson Jr. to theFlorida House of Representatives, where he served until 2000. A resident writing in 1986, who mentions these two facts, described racial tensions as "mild".[76] Subsequently,Alan B. Williams was elected to the House, and Lawson to theFlorida Senate.
