Emancipation Day in Florida contrasted with continuing struggles against white supremacy
May 20, 2022
One hundred and fifty-seven years ago today, on May 20, 1865, emancipation of slaves was declared in the capital city of Tallahassee, Florida. This was nearly a month earlier than the emancipation of June 19, 1865 in Texas (Juneteenth), which became a federal holiday in 2021. The Florida Historical Society, among others, continue to advocate for recognition of May 20 as a state holiday. Although the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln was promulgated over 2 years earlier, many rebel states did not comply, which is one reason (along with communication delays) for different emancipation dates in various states.
After abolition, Florida's "Black Codes" unlawfully denied blacks' gun rights. Vagrancy laws were wielded against blacks to punish them with up to one year of hard labor, and laws were disproportionately applied to punish blacks, who were defined by law as anyone at least one-eighth black.
Although the right to vote was granted to black men with the 15th amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, in practice, this right was routinely denied, especially in the south. In addition, women did not receive the right to vote until as late as 1920 in some states, including Florida, with the ratification of the 19th amendment. Florida was actually the last state to ratify the 19th amendment, in 1969 (the same year we landed on the moon!), but by 1920 the constitutionally required three-fourths supermajority of states had ratified the amendment for its addition to the national constitution.
In Daytona Beach, approximately 200 women showed up at City Hall to register to vote on the first day city officials could register them: September 11, 1920. About one-third of the new voters were black, and among them was Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Daytona Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls (now Bethune–Cookman University). Mark Lane of The Daytona Beach News–Journal notes, "for Black women to show up in a group to vote in the 1920s South was an audacious move. It was only seven weeks later that about 70 costumed Ku Klux Klan members would leave a burning cross on a Halifax River island, parade through downtown at night, then move past Bethune's school and through the town's Black neighborhoods."
Dr. Bethune's legacy of educational leadership and advocacy recently led to her being posthumously recognized with the commissioning and placement of a new marble statute in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, which was exhibited in Daytona Beach in the fall of 2021 and will be formally unveiled in Washington, DC on July 13, 2022. Her statue will replace Florida's statue of confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith, who has the distinction of being the last confederate general to surrender to the Union.
Segregation persisted in the United States all the way into the 1960s. In Daytona Beach, the flood-prone midtown area was the only place blacks were allowed to live, where dirt roads remained unpaved into the 1970s. Eileen Zaffiro-Kean of The Daytona Beach News–Journal writes, "while white people claimed land along the Atlantic Ocean and Halifax River, Blacks were pushed inland onto property near railroad tracks and a city dump nicknamed Hell's Hole. At least one Black family that lived in a cabin on wooded land that became Beach Street had to clear out."
Today, Florida is a growing hotbed for white supremacists who feel that the Republican party, and Florida's growing status as its most critical state, aligns with their racist ideology. The Southern Poverty Law Center identified 53 hate groups headquartered in Florida in 2021, with white supremacy representing a majority of the groups. (Critics may point out that some identified Florida hate groups are black separatist groups, but white supremacy groups are far more influential and numerous.) Moreover, The Orlando Sentinel has identified Florida as #1 for arrests due to participation in the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, where right-wing radicals sought to overthrow the government of the United States.
Although Florida is home to a diverse population of over 22 million, with a majority supporting integration and equity, we face the growing risk of being governed by a vocal minority that seeks to send us back to the 1950s, if not beyond, and is consolidating the levers of power to do so. The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a father of 4 cut down by an assassin at age 39, famously promised that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." In 2022, we need the arc to start bending, sooner rather than later.
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Notes:
https://dos.myflorida.com/library-archives/research/explore-our-resources/emancipation/
FHS 2021 Virtual Public History Forum - Session 2: Emancipation Day in Florida, 63 min:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)#Florida
https://www.tampabay.com/mary-mcleod-bethune-to-replace-edmund-kirby-smith/2334730/
https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map?state=FL
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Letters from a Floridian is a new newsletter by Dr. Richard Thripp of Volusia County, Florida, modeled after Professor Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, with a focus on the corruption and authoritarian ambitions of Republicans in Florida—most notably Governor Ron DeSantis. Dr. Thripp was born and raised in the Daytona Beach area and is an accomplished educator, former Republican, husband and father, former congressional candidate, and former Chair of the Volusia County Democratic Party.