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A Look Back On Tampa's Black History

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 7, 2009

Otis Anthony has dedicated his life to improving conditions for the black community in Tampa. One of his many contributions is a collection of oral histories, articles and transcripts that he gathered in the 1970s and has since donated to the University of South Florida for preservation. The following are excerpts from an interview he did with G.V. Stewart, a black educator in Tampa before and after integration.

Can you describe historically the condition confronted the black students in Tampa?

So many things that existed at that time and were accepted because we as blacks really had no knowledge of standards and what should have been. We were brainwashed, when you think in terms of a wartime view. We thought we were getting a pretty good deal, most of us, because we just didn't know. We had several elementary schools that were poorly staffed. ... We had one senior high school. We had the usual four or five subjects - math, social studies, science and then two electives. We had no gymnasium, extremely limited playing facilities for our students, poor laboratories and poor accommodations for vocational education. But we did have in our favor a spirit and a desire to take advantage of what we had, which I think in some instances was and is superior to some of the attitudes that I see around today.

What was the dominant position of black parents during the '30s towards education?

Well, I think most black parents didn't know what, exactly, it was they wanted for their children; we simply knew that education was a way out of the situation in which they found themselves. Most of the jobs, I'll say 80 percent, were in the reading fields and domestic fields, and most blacks realized if in some way they could get an education, they could beat that type of field. ... I knew at that time blacks who had finished college and were into domestic work. Not only that, if you check the records, you'll find that most bellhops, and redcaps, many of those people were highly trained but they couldn't get jobs.

Mr. Steward, was there a high exploitation rate at this time?

Well, we had students and parents that respected the school and its staff and its program. We in the teaching profession felt that it was our duty to do everything within our power to keep the students in school and not to push them out. An individual had to be almost incorrigible before he was sent home. We tolerated students that many of today's educators would not even think about tolerating. But we were trying to keep the kids in school.

What do you think was the educational salvation of the black students in the '30s and '40s as opposed to the '60s and '70s? Was he getting a better degree of education then as opposed to now with the conditions that he was under?

Well, are you speaking of after integration? ... I know this is a transition period, and both blacks and whites are adjusting to a new method of educating children. There were some advantages in the segregated setup, and those were coherences, the desire of the black teachers to certainly salvage every potentially good student so that we would not lose him or her to the vicissitudes of life, and I don't think that this exists in the new setup. I don't think that white teachers have ever been as dedicated to saving young people as blacks because of this type of situation. We had to save these young blacks because they were our future. They were the ones who were going to help pull us up by our own boot strings. ... To get out and go to homes at night and call mothers and fathers and tell them what they must do to save Johnny and so forth.

Now I was saying that there were many advantages in the segregation system. But now when you look at the overall picture and the future of education, certainly the integration system is best because when we have passed the transition period, ... then young whites and blacks can sit in classrooms with equal staff, facilities, goals and opportunities and make America a better place in which to live.

FROM THE TEACHERS' POINT OF VIEW

Concerning teachers pay, when you first started out, do you remember how much you were making?

Well, the first job I made $55 per month, and at my first principalship at Robles Pond I was making $80 per month. And then when I went to Dunbar, they raised my salary to $97 per month. And these were unequal salaries, I might say, when compared to the white personnel. Now I might say that whites aren't making too much either, although they were making ... perhaps double that of what we were making. In addition to that, we had no salary schedules at that time. Officials, the administration perhaps as I see it, now had the discretion to pay almost what they wanted to.

How about the displacement of black officials after the 1970s?

Actually, they were trying to hold blacks and encourage them to stay with the school system as that we could have qualified educators and good starts. But you see what really happened is that the labor market and the career market broke open. ... The average educated person - unless he was a professional, when I say professional I mean went into medicine or dentistry and he came out with a degree - he was forced to seek teaching as a respectable position. ... Now you will notice that the more qualified blacks are seeking everything other than teaching because we have been disenfranchised toward teaching. I expect this to finally diminish as we go into these opportunities that are open to us after awhile. It will be just like athletics. If you recall when they opened up athletics to blacks, there was a flood of blacks particularly in baseball. Teaching is a very enjoyable profession, and as soon as these jobs are filled by blacks, which will take some time ... you'll find that they'll be back into teaching.

What I was concerned with was, during integration, we had black officials that were principals promoted to assistant principals and coaches promoted to assistant coaches.

Yes, this was a part of the process of changing the system over. Naturally the blacks would feel discriminated against, and he was. The white officials couldn't bring themselves to place a black principal - let's say there are two schools, a black and white high school, and the black principal is a well-trained individual with a master's degree from, let us say, Chicago University, and the white principal is a person, a graduate from the University of Florida with a master's and three years of experience, and they have got to merge these two institutions - it is almost impossible.

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