Recollections of the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: A Companion Book to: the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: a Case Study in Cooperation and Communication, 1951-1971

By Fred Altensee

This work is designed to be a companion piece to The Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: A Case Study in Communication and Cooperation, 1951-1971. It is the author's hope that these works together will assist the scholar and layperson alike in developing a better understanding of the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement and a firm ap

• Language: English
• Publisher: The JAMMIN Shop, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781943333097

Book preview

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ORLANDO, FLORIDA, CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

A COMPANION BOOK TO:

THE ORLANDO, FLORIDA, CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: A CASE STUDY IN COOPERATION AND COMMUNICATION,

1951–1971

by

Fred Altensee, M.A.

Praise for Mr. Altensee’s Previous Works:

The civil rights movement is certainly one of those broad and vital periods of our American past. To truly understand it we have needed to tell the story as it has emerged in different areas of the country…To Mr. Altensee’s credit, he was aware that the story of the civil rights movement in Orlando had not yet been told. He has achieved important historical insight by focusing on African-American police officers who played a critical role in the integration of the Orlando police department…his work adds a new and vital local study to our understanding of the African-American civil rights movement. The history of Orlando is not simply defined by Walt Disney. Instead the cooperation and communication that existed between the white and black communities there between the 1950s and early 1970s is a critical story and Mr. Altensee has told it well.

—Mark D. Bowles, Ph.D. Professor of History,

American Public University System

Front Cover photo: A 1956 photograph of the trailblazing Orlando African-American police officers. Back Cover photo: the Swearing In of Belvin Perry, Sr. and Richard Arthur Jones (from left) by Orlando Mayor William Beardall, January 3, 1951.

JAMMIN! Publications, Cocoa, FL 2016.

Printed in the USA

©Copyright 2016 by Fred Altensee. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any format including digital or electronic without the express and written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-9433330-9-7 (e-book)

DEDICATION

In completing my master’s thesis on the Orlando, Florida Civil Rights Movement, a number of resources were critical to bringing the thesis to a successful conclusion. Chief among these resources were the oral interviews graciously provided by African-American community members. Each interviewee was very frank and forthcoming in their interviews, and each gave permission to use any and all of their interviews in furtherance of conducting research and publishing my work. After considerable revision and exceptional assistance from my advisors, the thesis was completed and was extremely well-received. The aforementioned interviews were integral to the success of the thesis. I am very gratified that the thesis formed the framework for my subsequently published monograph, The Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: A Case Study in Communication and Cooperation, 1951-1971. The monograph is available on Amazon and numerous other online retailers, the Orange County Regional History Center, as well as the Orlando Public Library and other institutions as reference material.

As noted above, the oral interviews were integral to the success of my master’s thesis. However, the parameters of the thesis by necessity dictated that many observations and insights offered in the interviews were excluded. It is my hope that this work will bring to light the full spectrum of amazing insights of the interviewees and thus more firmly and broadly preserve an important oral history of the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement. I should also mention that the audio recordings of the interviews are available in their entirety for those who wish to listen to them. The links to the interviews are provided The Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: A Case Study in Communication and Cooperation, 1951-1971 and this work.

This work is designed to be a companion piece to The Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: A Case Study in Communication and Cooperation, 1951-1971. It is my hope that these works together will assist the scholar and layperson alike in developing a better understanding of the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement and a firm appreciation for those with the courage to positively change their community, especially the pioneering first African-American police officers with the Orlando Police Department. Their courage and service under immensely difficult conditions proved instrumental in furthering the Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement, as prominently noted in the interviews contained herein.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Afterword

Bibliography

Appendix A

Appendix B

About the Author

Interview with

Vicki Jones Brooks

On May 3, 2013, the author conducted an interview with Vicki Jones Brooks. The interview took place at Lake Eola, a lake formerly off limits to African-Americans, and within sight of a Confederate States of America monument erected in 1911. The significance of our meeting location was not lost upon Brooks as she observed that, as an African-American female and a white male, we would have both had a problem for even meeting in public in Orlando not too many years ago.

Brooks is the daughter of the city of Orlando’s first African-American police officer, Arthur Jones. She is a former Orange County schoolteacher and principal and, prior to her retirement, administered Orange County’s Title I program for many years. In the following interview, she talked about the personal legacy her father left her, the legacy of Orlando’s first African-American police officers within the African-American community and in central Florida, the legacy of these officers in the context of the ongoing struggle for civil rights and equality, and the realities of growing up in segregated Orlando.

Brooks was born at her parent’s residence in the Parramore area of Orlando in 1948. Her birth took place at home by midwife as the downtown hospital, later to become Orlando Regional Medical Center, refused to admit African-Americans. She was three years old when her father became a police officer. According to Brooks, the hiring of her father and other African-Americans as police officer was not happenchance or random. The Orlando African-American community pressured the city of Orlando for years to begin integration and the NAACP also threatened to sue to effect the change.

Brooks noted that the selection process for the officers began well before they were hired. It was abundantly clear the men would face tremendous pressure and resistance from outside the black community. In the case of her father, a waiter at Orlando County Club prior to being hired, Brooks stated, The timing was just great. There was a search for just the right people and they chose my father first. He had a military background and they chose him for his size.

Size, however, was not the only consideration. Arthur Jones had the support of the powerful and influential white members of the Orlando County Club as well as the temperament to handle the challenges ahead. Brooks stated, He had developed an incredibly great reputation within the Orlando Country Club as a waiter. He had served in the Army . . . so he had trained.

Likening the process and knowledge of the ordeal that lie ahead to what Jackie Robinson underwent in becoming major league baseball’s first African-American player, Brooks noted her father being told, You’ve got to have the guts to take it and that the same mantra was repeated when she and others began civil rights protests in Orlando in the early 1960s. Brooks recollected, It was the way we were all trained through the civil rights movement. It was always, always, always . . . and when I marched . . . and when I participated . . . it was always—you’re going to hear ugly terms, do not react . . . you are going to be spit at, thrown at, whatever . . . but it (our response) was always nonviolent. We were trained to be strong, resilient and to take as much as we can . . . yes, that was part of his training as well.

According to Brooks, her father and family received an overwhelming degree of support from within Orlando’s African-American community as ministers, community leaders, and individuals from all occupations frequently telephoned or came by the family’s residence to offer encouragement. The African-American community understood the significance of Orlando’s first African-American police officers. If Arthur Jones and his partner, Belvin Perry, Sr., did not persevere, other positions with Orlando city government, as well as hiring of other African-American officers, would be forestalled or denied outright.

The significance of what Arthur Jones represented was not lost upon those outside the community either. Threats came in person and via telephone. Brooks stated, There were threats . . . there were always threats . . . he would hear ugly things, there would be phone in threats and "Sometimes it would be when we picked up the phone,