Florida Historical Quarterly
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
COVER The Daytona Beach business district, circa 1906. An automobile and telephone poles share the roadway with horses and buggies, symbols of an earlier Florida. The photograph is from the Library of Congress’ collection of negatives made by the Detroit Post Card Company. It was made available by Joan Morris, State Photographic Archives, Robert Manning Strozier Library, Florida State University, Tallahassee. The a ric uarter THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume LVII, Number 3 January 1979 I COPYRIGHT 1979 by the Florida Historical Society, Tampa, Florida. Second class postage paid at Tampa and DeLeon Springs, Florida. Printed by E. O. Painter Printing Co., DeLeon Springs, Florida. THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Samuel Proctor, Editor Donna Thomas, Editoral Assistant EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. University of Florida Michael V. Gannon University of Florida John K. Mahon University of Florida Jerrell H. Shofner University of Central Florida Charlton W. Tebeau University of Miami (Emeritus) J. Leitch Wright, Jr. Florida State University Correspondence concerning contributions, books for review, and all editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor, Florida Historical Quarterly, Box 14045, University Station, Gainesville, Florida 32604. The Quarterly is interested in articles and documents pertaining to the history of Florida. Sources, style, footnote form, original- ity of material and interpretation, clarity of thought, and interest of readers are considered. All copy, including footnotes, should be double-spaced. Footnotes are to be numbered consecutively in the text and assembled at the end of the article. Particular attention should be given to following the footnote style of the Quarterly. The author should submit an original and retain a carbon for security. The Florida Historical Society and the Editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly accept no responsibility for statements made or opinions held by authors. Table of Contents FLORIDA AND THE BLACK MIGRATION Jerrell H. Shofner 267 KEY WEST AND THE CUBAN TEN YEARS WAR Gerald E. Poyo 289 THE MOSQUITO FLEET’S GUIDES AND THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR George E. Buker 308 WILLIAM EDWARDS AND THE HISTORIC UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA CAMPUS: A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY Stephen Kerber 327 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS: IMMIGRANTS AND RADICALS IN TAMPA, FLORIDA George E. Pozzetta 337 FLORIDA HISTORY RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ................... 349 BOOK REVIEWS .................................................................. 363 BOOK NOTES ..................................................................... 389 HISTORY NEWS .................................................................. 395 BOOK REVIEWS T HE M ILITARY P RESENCE ON THE G ULF C OAST : G ULF C OAST H ISTORY AND HUMANITIES CONFERENCE, VOLUME VII, edited by William S. Coker reviewed by Don Higginbotham TACACHALE: ESSAYS ON THE INDIANS OF FLORIDA AND SOUTHEASTERN G EORGIA DURING THE H ISTORIC P ERIOD , edited by Jerald T. Milanich and Samuel Proctor reviewed by John W. Griffin THE TROUBLE OF IT Is, by David M. Newell reviewed by Gloria Jahoda THE YOUNG HAMILTON: A BIOGRAPHY, by James Thomas Flexner reviewed by Aubrey C. Land THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PLANTATION SOUTH, by Raimondo Luraghi reviewed by Julia F. Smith MILLEDGEVILLE: GEORGIA’S ANTEBELLUM CAPITAL, by James C. Bonner reviewed by Judson C. Ward, Jr. WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE: THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, by Stephen B. Oates reviewed by James Rabun FORTY ACRES AND A MULE: THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU AND BLACK LAND OWNER- SHIP, by Claude F. Oubre reviewed by Jerrell H. Shofner MY SOUL Is RESTED: MOVEMENT DAYS IN THE DEEP SOUTH REMEMBERED, by Howell Raines reviewed by Numan V. Bartley THE FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT: A STUDY IN GOVERNMENT PATRONAGE OF THE ARTS, by Monty Noam Penkower reviewed by Dorothy Dodd MEDIA-MADE DIXIE: THE SOUTH IN THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION, by Jack Temple Kirby reviewed by Ralph L. Lowenstein ST. SIMONS MEMOIR, by Eugenia Price reviewed by Marjory Bartlett Sanger HUMAN RIGHTS ODYSSEY, by Marion Wright and Arnold Shankman reviewed by Augustus M. Burns III A HISTORY OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS AND ITS ACTIVITIES AMONG INDIANS, by Curtis E. Jackson and Marcia J. Galli reviewed by R. T. King FLORIDA AND THE BLACK MIGRATION by JERRELL H. SHOFNER * HEN THE EUROPEAN WAR ERUPTED IN 1914 the flow of immi- grants to the United States was greatly curtailed, depriving developing American industries of their traditional supply of new laborers. Northern railroad and manufacturing firms then turned to the native blacks of the South as potential workers to fill the unskilled jobs so necessary to their continued growth. Southern blacks had been migrating northward in small numbers since before the turn of the century, but when northern companies began sending recruiters into the South the numbers accelerated enormously. Beginning with the Pennsylvania Railroad’s re- cruiting of several hundred blacks from Jacksonville, Florida, in early 1916, the “great migration” took more than a half million Negroes out of the South to northern industrial cities. They came from the southern rural regions where there had always been a large labor surplus. Now the massive exodus began to alarm turpentine, lumber, and agricultural producers, and caused glaring contradictions in the attitudes of white Southerners toward their black neighbors. Between early 1916 and 1920 about 40,000 blacks left the northern Florida counties. 1 Some migrated to Miami and other south Florida locations, but most left for New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and other northern states. Migration studies show that the largest proportional movements of blacks from the entire South occurred from west Florida, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Because of its location as a transportation center, Jacksonville became the major focus of the movement. With a Negro population of 35,000, the city lost more than 6,000 of them. About 14,000 more assembled there from adjacent rural * Mr. Shofner is professor of history at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, and president of the Florida Historical Society. 1. United States Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Abstract, Florida (Washington, 1913), 590-99; Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States 1920, Population, Florida (Washington, 1922), 192-94. [267] 268 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY areas for transportation out of the state. Tampa was also an important assembly point from which nearly 5,000 blacks mi- grated. Others went directly from their rural homes. From tiny Capitola just east of Tallahassee, most of the black residents left for Jacksonville and other Florida locations as well as northern cities. A sizable group of Leon County blacks went to Connecti- cut to work in the tobacco fields. It was estimated that the areas adjacent to Apalachicola, Gainesville, and Ocala lost about twenty to twenty-five per cent of their blacks. About half the blacks of Palatka and DeLand left, while Orlando and Lakeland lost ap- proximately a fourth of their black populations. In a few cases, entire communities, including pastors of local churches, left as groups for northern points. Live Oak and Dunnellon, among others, were starting places for such movements. By late summer 1916 so many blacks had left northern Florida that it was claimed that “the more stable classes of negroes became unsettled.“ 2 There were good reasons for Negroes to move, especially from northern Florida. The arrival of the boll weevil had added to the heavy burden of the crop lien system. Tenancy as an agri- cultural system was no longer able to support that part of the population which had depended on it. The turpentine camps and timber operations required laborers to work under adverse conditions for inadequate wages. When the Pennsylvania, Erie, and New York Central railroads, the iron and steel manufacturers, and others sent recruiting agents into the South offering six or seven dollars a day in wages to people who were working for a dollar or less, they found many blacks willing to leave. There were other reasons also. All of the state legislatures of the South and most southern communities had enacted an ex- tensive list of Jim Crow laws requiring complete separation of the races except where blacks were subservient to whites. These legal sanctions were accompanied by increasing violence against blacks. Beatings, petty abuse, and insults were commonplace, lynchings were all too frequent, and harassment by law enforce- ment officials, especially in the towns and cities, was extensive. The Pennsylvania Railroad began recruiting blacks in Jack- sonville in early 1916. The New York Central hired 500 men out 2. Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration During the War (New York, 1969), 62-63. FLORIDA AND THE BLACK MIGRATION 269 of the city about June of that year and a total of 1,500 during the next several months. The Indianapolis Freeman reported that over 10,000 Floridians had departed the state for northern points between September and November that year. 3 Jacksonville was a major lumber and naval stores center and the home of the influential Georgia-Florida Sawmill Association whose members employed thousands of blacks. Over the years the city’s white business and political leaders had maintained fairly good rela- tions with their black counterparts. Now they realized the need to deal with the black exodus. First to act were Mayor John E. T. Bowden, John Ball, F. C. Groover, P. L. Sutherland, and Arthur G. Cummer of the Chamber of Commerce. They