Ax Handle Saturday

Ax Handle Saturday: Jacksonville’s Darkest Day Thesis By Brett Morgan In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Bachelor of Arts of History University of Florida Gainesville, Florida (Submitted April 20, 2016) 2 © 2016 Brett Morgan 3 Abstract In the grim and turbulent civil rights history of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, August 27, 1960 – Ax Handle Saturday – was the darkest day. On that day hundreds of white men armed with baseball bats and ax handles viciously attacked a group of high school African- American students as the students staged a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in a downtown five-and-dime. Notwithstanding that Ax Handle Saturday is widely regarded as the turning point in Jacksonville’s race relations it has been largely forgotten in the collective memory of the city. Attempts to commemorate the events of August 27, 1960 have been met with a singular lack of enthusiasm by both white and African-American community leaders. This paper examines the events preceding Ax Handle Saturday; the events of that day; and the aftermath of the event. This paper concludes that Ax Handle Saturday forced a reluctant Jacksonville to address its racial inequities by focusing national media attention on Jacksonville and forcing a response from city officials. 4 Table of Contents AX HANDLE SATURDAY: ........................................................................... 1 JACKSONVILLE’S DARKEST DAY ............................................................ 2 CHAPTER 1: THE INTRODUCTION ........................................................ 6 CHAPTER 2: JACKSONVILLE PRIOR TO AX HANDLE SATURDAY ..... 9 CHAPTER 3: SITUATING AX HANDLE SATURDAY IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ................................................................................ 13 CHAPTER 4: AX HANDLE OF SATURDAY ........................................... 17 CHAPTER 5: THE AFTERMATH OF AX HANDLE SATURDAY ....... 25 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS ................................................................... 37 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................... 41 5 Chapter 1: The Introduction Hemming Park, downtown Jacksonville, Florida Alton Yates was doing what he knew was right as he walked into the Woolworth’s Department store in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. Along with other members of the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP Youth Council, Yates had come to participate in a sit-in at Woolworth’s all white segregated lunch counter. The year was 1960 and Yates, in conjunction with thousands of other African-American youth across the country were protesting their treatment as second-class citizens. Once they had completed their sit-in, Yates and his companions got up and calmly walked towards the store’s exit. Just as Yates walked out of the department store’s doors, he was knocked to the ground by a crushing blow to the head. As Yate’s head began to bleed, from what he would later discover was a blow from an ax handle, he watched as his companions received the same devastating 6 injuries he did. Yates and his fellow protestors had been attacked and beaten by a white mob incensed by their audacity to try and force the integration of lunch counters. Defenseless and in fear of their lives, Yates and his fellow protestors headed to the Laura Street Presbyterian Youth Center and safety.1 Their targets gone, the mob turned their anger towards innocent African-American men, women, and children simply out enjoying a day’s shopping. However, Stinson Williams, a bartender at the Seminole Club, later recalled that African-American individuals who were wearing white suits were left alone by the white mob because they were ‘in service’ and considered to be respectable African-Americans. The Seminole Club, founded in Jacksonville in 1887, was the quintessential white elitist country club.2 Thus, while the white mob attacked most individuals at random, they did exercise some discretion in those they attacked. Innocent African-Americans fled to the safety of Ashley and Davis Streets in the predominantly black ‘La Villa’ community on the north side. As innocent shoppers were beaten by the mob, the Jacksonville police were conspicuous by their absence and lack of concern about the incident. This prompted a black gang called the Boomerangs, made up of African-American youth, to join the fray in an attempt to defend innocent African-Americans. The Boomerangs were a notorious gang of African-Americans teens consisting of mainly high school drops outs that operated in the black community.3 They were widely regarded in the black community as individuals that should not be confronted. The Boomerangs engaged the white mob and met violence with 1 Rodney Hurst, It Was Never about a hot dog and a Coke!, (California: Wingspan Press, 2008), 77. 2 Max Marbut, “What’s the story on that old house?,” Jax Daily Record, 1. 3 Magistrate Leatrice Walton, interview with author, April 4, 2016. 7 violence. The ensuing hostility resulted in injuries to at least fifty people.4 By this point, downtown Jacksonville more closely resembled a war zone than a civilized metropolitan city. When the city’s police department finally arrived on scene, only after reports of black men beating up whites, they began to arrest those participating in the violence, mainly targeting the African Americans. In total, the police arrested sixty-two individuals for their involvement in what became known as Ax Handle Saturday. Of the individuals arrested a majority were African-American. The members of the white mob were largely left untouched by the police. The racially motivated arrests by the police department did not stop the racial violence. Throughout the evening of August 27, 1960 hostilities between blacks and whites continued to break out across the city. The next day millions of Americans opened their papers and read about Jacksonville’s ongoing racial problems and the violence associated with it. Over the course of the next few days, Americans would continue to read about Jacksonville as sporadic instances of racial violence continued to occur throughout the city. Most shocking to readers was that these incidents were not occurring in Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama, instead happening in the tourist destination of Florida. To many, Florida was the Sunshine State, a place for fun in the sun, a place to get away from the realities of the world, but to countless African-Americans living in Florida, the state typified the Jim Crow South. Over sixty years after Ax Handle Saturday, the memory of that day has faded from the collective memory of Jacksonville’s residents. There exists only one memorial to the racial violence that occurred in Jacksonville, a small plaque in the city’s downtown 4 Marisa Carbone and John Finotti, Insiders’ Guide Jacksonville, (Connecticut: The Globe Pequout Press), 142. 8 Hemming Plaza. The city’s local schools do not teach students about Ax Handle Saturday, nor are there regular events commemorating the day. Instead, it seems that Jacksonville is content with letting its dark past be lost to the annals of time. To understand why Ax Handle Saturday occurred, how it affected the city’s segregationist policies, and why it has largely been forgotten, the history of Jacksonville must first be understood. Chapter 2: Jacksonville Prior to Ax Handle Saturday Location of Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville lies on the banks of the St. Johns River in northeast Florida. A port city with numerous white-collar businesses, Jacksonville was in 1960 and remains, one of 9 Florida’s largest cities. It has long been home to one of Florida’s largest African-American populations. Founded by the British in 1791 as Cowford, the city adopted its modern name in 1831 in honor of Andrew Jackson, whom had forced Spain to cede the territory of Florida to the United States in 1821. After Florida seceded from the union in 1861, the Confederacy received strong support from the residents of Jacksonville, who were sympathetic to confederate cause.5 Union forces occupied Jacksonville for most of the war, viewing the city as vital to victory in Florida due to its strategic access to the sea. Following the war, Jacksonville was subject to Reconstruction, which aimed to rebuild the ravaged South with the use of federal troops to ensure the rights of newly freed African-American slaves. With the official end of Reconstruction, federal troops departed the city and white residents of Jacksonville began to construct a white dominated society and strip African-Americans of their newly gained rights. One major method of accomplishing this was by systematically disenfranchising the city’s black voters. Matthew Corrigan states in his book Race, Religion, and Economic Change in the Republican South, “through a combination of purging African Americans from voting lists, poll taxes, and unusual voting practices, black political influence in the city almost disappeared by 1910.”6 Like countless cities and towns across the south, Jacksonville instituted laws that marginalized black voters and left all political power in the hands of whites. According to census data, by 1910 Jacksonville’s population had reached 55,134, of which 25,841 were white and 29,293 were black, leaving African Americans as the city’s majority population 5 Matthew Corrigan, Race, Religion, and Economic Changes in the Republican South, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007), 19. 6 Ibid, 28. 10 but without any real political representation.7 Over the course

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