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A Look Back At Tampa's Black History

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 8, 2009

Otis Anthony has dedicated his life to improving conditions for blacks in Tampa. One of his many contributions is a collection of oral histories, articles and transcripts he gathered in the 1970s and has since donated to the University of South Florida for preservation. The following are excerpts from some of his interviews.

On Living Conditions

The following are from an interview with Edwin G. Artest, who came to Tampa in the 1920s.

What were the conditions of the blacks in Tampa in the '20s?

Sometime after I came ... the banks had a boon bust or something, and many people lost money. Before the boon, which was before the bust, before 1926, it looked like people were doing very well because many people had bought some homes.

But after the banks closed, things got pretty tough. And it was rough up until 1933, until Roosevelt came and brought the New Deal. It was pretty rough.

I do remember groceries were sold; they were very low. You'd get 5 pounds ... of flour, that's A&P flour, was 15 cents. ... I remember you could get Jewel lard for 8 cents a pound. I remember they had bread, think it was Sally Ann bread, you could buy 5 cents a loaf. It was a small loaf at that time, but it was very difficult to get the money to buy it 'cause a man making $18 a week was a pretty high salary. A woman would make $6 or $8 a week, and therefore we didn't have much money to buy much with, so it was pretty tough.

Were you here during the Depression also?

That's when everything was a little tough, but we got along. My family got along pretty 'cause we were carrying the Tribune. ...

The Tribune was about 15 cents a week and paid about 7 cents for a week's paper, so we made about 8 cents. ...

My dad lost some money in the bank, and the bank closed. He lost some money in the bank, and he was never able to retrieve it.

Excerpts from Nolin Johnson:

What kind of work were you doing when you came to Tampa?

I came here to work railroad, at the coastline freight house. I was working at the freight house and the old man that was over me ... called me to his office and ... fired me.

I began to walk away when I thought about I wanted something to eat. I went back and asked Paul the checker when could I get my money.

He told me I could have my job back if I treated the white man with a little more respect.

I told him that I hadn't done anything.

Excerpts from Miriam Anderson, an educator:

What were the occupations of the majority of blacks during the '30s and '40s?

I don't know exactly when the Longshoremen's Union started - by two blacks - Mr. Perry Harvey and one was Michael Lazzerus. They actually started the union, and there was a bunch of oppositions to them starting it, and they were afraid to go home at night. They had to hide out until it was completed.

Now, there were orange pickers, and I imagine there were longshoremen.

As far as jobs, was there large unemployment?

Well, of course, the jobs were menial labor like janitors and service jobs like maids. People still picked oranges and worked in fields. There were some white-collar jobs like insurance agents, and there were several black mail carriers during that time.

Excerpts from Georgette Gardner, an educator:

What were the living conditions and the working conditions of blacks in Tampa in the 1930s?

Their living conditions were very poor, and, of course, just as now, there were many people who were unemployed, and, of course, naturally discrimination was at the highest at that particular time.

There was much discouragement on the part of the black people. We really didn't seem to know what it was all about, but we felt and we understood that we weren't left out.

And even though, of course, Negroes for the most part have always been very religious, even so that didn't do much to help them come from under that depressed feeling.

But as the years passed, days seemed to get better, and their living conditions improved.

Eventually employment improved because we began buying homes, renovating and fixing up our homes.

All at once we got some pride from somewhere and begin to be very proud that we were Negroes.

Excerpts from businessman James Hammond, who was born in Tampa in 1929:

Suppose you tell us more about the '50s in Tampa?

During the '50s, this was where you got very involved. ... An organization called the Young Adults for Progressive Action ... was composed of anybody that was interested in trying to do away with discrimination. ...

In those days, a lot of the people involved were schoolteachers who wanted to get involved, who weren't afraid of their jobs, also people from the community, from all walks of life, who wanted to do something and get this town moving progressively in destroying discrimination.

So we met weekly, sometimes over the weekends and holidays. So our first target or strategy was where could we do something that would have the biggest impact? One of the things we thought about was supermarkets and places that blacks bought.

So one of the first things we did was to organize ourselves into contacting the supermarket owners and the merchants. That was our second objective, to contact the merchants downtown to get them to stop discriminating and to hire blacks. There were no blacks working even as bag boys in stores. No stores hired blacks except as janitors and other typical stereotype jobs.

We felt that our first major thrust almost simultaneously would be in supermarkets and our secondary thrust would be the downtown stores. So we talked to merchants, and they did not hear what we were saying. So we decided to start the boycott in Tampa.

What year was this boycott?

Around '56, '57. What we did was make a head count, particularly on the weekends, of how many blacks by numbers worked in the store and how many whites worked in the store. And we also made an estimate of the stores that had from 80 to 95 percent of blacks buying, as opposed to whites buying. So the highest headcount of blacks buying, we decided that we would use this as our first target.

So then we went downtown ... to the store on 22nd and Eighth Avenue, which is part of the Kash n' Karry chain, Food Carnival, I believe was the name of the store. There was another store which opened up later on in Progress Village on the Causeway. Those were our major stores, and we picketed them for weeks and weeks. And finally we pretty well detoured all blacks from buying at these stores. The stores went down to practically no business. ...

What happened?

They got an injunction against us picketing and boycotting. You know, I don't really know how that case turned out. ... But the store did finally negotiate to hire, so blacks started as cashiers and bag boys. It did end up with some material advantages. They also hired some blacks as meat cutters.

Excerpts from the Rev. Leon Lowry, former head of Tampa's NAACP:

What prompted you to start this movement of sit-ins and your struggle to help integrate these systems?

For many years, as I grew up in childhood, my father was a fighter for human rights and dignity and first-class citizenship for blacks. The thing was situated by the awakening of blacks across the South with the kind of the thing that Ms. Rosa Parks did and also the sit-ins demonstrations that occurred in North Carolina and out in Kansas City. ... So I suppose, in part, it was a spin-off of what was happening in other areas.

The whole thing was the idea of fighting for first-class citizenship. It involvement was a dangerous thing. It marked one and made one very, very visible when one took the leadership in that area.

There were those in power who occupied a certain position who did not intend to very easily relinquish their position of power and their place of allotting over blacks in the community.

When you first started these sit-ins, were blacks in Tampa eager to help you?

Not the adults, the children in junior high school and senior high. In fact, not even the adult members of the NAACP would involve themselves in it. As a result of this, I had to be responsible for some perhaps 200 youngsters who were eager to share. ... Even though the adults did not participate as such, they did not prohibit their children from so doing.

In your marches or demonstrations, were you ever met with violence?

Attempted, I had police protection, and the youngsters had it. We usually formed our line of march at St. Paul AME church in the basement. There, I instructed the youngsters, and we marched downtown. We were given police protection. No attempts of violence was made as far as the children were concerned.

All the attempts and intimidations of violence were directed toward me. Even to the shooting in my home, threats of bombing of the church, threats by the KKK, I was never bodily harmed.

There were those who were after me with baseball bats and ax handles and things of that nature, but because of the proximity of the officers assigned to guard me, I never was harmed, fortunately. There are bullet holes in the windows of the house over there. This happened during the heyday of the demonstrations. ...

There were many threatening telephone calls, and in many instances, one picked up the telephone and the language that came over it was quite profane. ... Fortunately, I was never harmed.

How long did it last before you were allowed to sit at the diners?

Anywhere from approximately three to six months. ...

We local black leaders agreed on the manner that we would approach this desegregation of the lunch counters, restaurants, hotels, and etc. ... We had won a victory, so we would not go in now just throwing things around, behaving as the individuals on the other side had been behaving, because they were real unkind, profane. And now that we had won a victory, we felt we could afford to be magnanimous.

We talked about tipping, courtesy, at the same time, the store managers and the owners briefed their employees and had them understand they expected certain kinds of behavior from them. It went over very well. ...

Each day there were black couples in various sections of the community going in restaurants and sitting down, and from that point on until the present time, it has been this way.

The next step was to get jobs, have the bars let down. ... We worked to get blacks in the fire departments, upgrading the blacks in the Tampa Police Department.

Keyword: Black History, for a special report on blacks in Tampa.

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