My first visit to Jacksonville was in the summer of 1985. While here I sat at the lunch counter in Woolworths, downtown, across from Hemming Park.
I enjoyed a hamburger on a toasted bun with crisp leaf lettuce, vine ripened beefsteak tomatoes and sweet Vidalia Onion slices. It was accompanied by thick steak cut french fries with just the right amount of salt, and a pickle spear on the side.
It used to be that whenever you bought a sandwich there was always a pickle spear on the side, not so much anymore.
Makes me miss the good ole days. Unfortunately, the good ole days were not always good. A lesson I was about to learn.
My server asked me if I would like a slice of apple pie and some coffee. I was just about ready to say yes please, when an elderly black gentleman sat down on the stool next to mine, he said, get a milkshake, son, you’ll thank me latter.
I love apple pie. I love coffee. I especially love apple pie and coffee together. I also love a good conversation. One look in the gentleman’s eyes coupled with the smile on his face and I knew I was about to have a great conversation.
I smiled back and said, I make it a point to never drink alone, sir. What are you having?
He half laughed, smiled again, jerked his head a little toward the server and said, Connie knows.
I looked at Connie, slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t seen “Connie” on her name tag and had simply been referring to her as “server” while writing this.
I wasn’t actually writing this, then, at least not on paper, but I’m always writing, sometimes it just takes a few days or 32 years to put it to paper.
Connie was standing there, pencil and pad in hand, a friendly smirk on her face. I finally laid down my pen and opened my mouth, may I have a strawberry milkshake, please, Connie?
You certainly may, hun, she said with a smile as she spun around. She grabbed 2 stainless steel milkshake cups, opened the lid to the counter freezer and scooped three scoops of the most beautiful strawberry ice cream I’ve ever seen into each cup.
She poured in milk and then slid each cup into a slot of the milkshake mixer. She mixed them for a good thirty seconds, stopped, added a fresh strawberry to each one and mixed some more. She poured each cup into a frosted glass, placed a large scoop of whip cream, fresh, not canned, onto each and topped them off with a strawberry on top.
She placed one in front of me and one in front of Isaac. Our conversation began with Isaac saying, a white man buying a black man a milkshake at the Woolworth lunch counter in Jacksonville, Florida. That’s a story in of itself. Let me tell another story about a young man and this lunch counter.
It was August, 1960. The young man, a black man, was Alton Yates.
Alton was one of the leaders of the NAACP Youth Council here in town. If Alton wanted a hamburger he couldn’t get one here as the counter was white’s only, same as Morrison’s Cafeteria and the majority of other stores and restaurants.
This was all legal like back then; a legal mandate segregated the lunch-counters of downtown department stores. The mayor, Haydon Burns endorsed the segregation, telling store owners not to integrate even though most were not against it, money is money.
That’s the thing, blacks could go in and buy things. Buy things and get the hell out. But they couldn’t sit down next to white folk and eat. Some places had separate areas where blacks could eat but most just didn’t serve blacks. If Alton wanted a hamburger he needed to carry his black ass back to colored town.
Alton wanted to eat here. Well, maybe he did or didn’t, but he at least wanted to be able to eat here. Alton and Rodney Hurst, Alton was Vice-President and Rodney was President of the NAACP Youth Council started to plan how to make that happen.
They sought help from the NAACP and found it in Rutledge Pearson, the local chapter leader. Pearson was a social studies teacher and he understood the power of an economic protest and started training sessions for students who wanted to stage sit-ins.
Alton, Rodney and other student activists began a campaign to sit-in at the segregated lunch counters. August 13, 1960, was the day of the first demonstration. Now they had tried various things earlier but this was their first well organized outing.
The students entered various downtown stores and made purchases at various counters around the store. They then approached the lunch counter reserved for whites and tried to order lunch.
This was done to illustrate the hypocrisy of allowing blacks to place orders at every counter except the lunch counter. The store’s action was to close the lunch counter to all customers.
The plan was to continue daily until the stores were forced to concede and allow blacks to eat at the counter or to at least begin negotiations as Alton and Rodney knew the stores would not want to continue to lose money.
This went on for a few days without much incident beyond verbal abuse and pokes with canes and sticks, usually in the back.
Store managers began a policy of only allowing two demonstrators in their stores at a time but that didn’t stop them. A demonstrator was badly beaten and all the stores closed but the demonstrators were back the next day forming a picket line outside.
Violent acts against the demonstrators began to increase and people were arrested, But it was almost always the demonstrators who were arrested.
White violence against blacks reached boiling point on Saturday August 27, 1960. A day now known as Ax Handle Saturday.
That morning ax-handles and baseball bats were passed out to a group of white agitators. The agitators, many of whom brought their own weapons, were mostly local residents, others were members of the Ku Klux Klan, local as well as from other nearby towns.
They massed in Hemming Park, awaiting the arrival of the demonstrators later in the day. They told the downtown merchants to continue segregation or suffer a white boycott of their businesses.
Small groups of demonstrators had been attacked before they even got to the park. Alton and eight to ten other activists, arrived at Woolworth’s, where men beat them as they tried to sit at the counter.
Another group of 35 to 40 demonstrators arrived at Grant’s but managers closed the counters soon after their arrival. As they left, a gang of over two hundred armed white men attacked them with ax handles and baseball bats.
The white mob began attacking any and all blacks, whether demonstrator or not.
Blacks ran to nearby churches to seek shelter. The park air was filled with screams, the ground and pavement ran with blood.
Local black gangs, unaffiliated with the demonstrators, rushed to the park to try and help. It was at that point, when blacks began to fight back, that the police started to intervene and make arrests.
The violence continued throughout the day with an estimated crowd of about 3,000 people involved. Police arrested sixty-two people, forty-eight of whom were African Americans. Among the fourteen others was a white student ally, Richard Parker.
Sunday, rumors started circulating that the Klan was planning to carry out raids on the Black community. Local gangs started planning to retaliate, and to protect the Black community using force.
The demonstrators didn’t want that. They had been devoted to nonviolence, and refused to respond to the violent force used against them with their own show of violence.
Youth Council members were able to talk all but one of the gangs down.
The violence had died down by Tuesday. but the community remained split on tactics.
On that day more than half began a boycott, while those devoted to violence began throwing firebombs into stores owned by whites, attacking four stores.
The Youth Council called for an end to violence and urged all to join the boycott.
All violence ended that night.
Alton, Rodney and the others licked their wounds and began again.
They continued their boycott and demonstrations for months and finally, Spring 1961 all lunch counters downtown agreed to integrate.
I was still absorbing all that Isaac had told me when the sound of his straw finishing the last of his shake brought me back from that terrible day.
He continued; I’m sure you realize that there is much more to the story and that it was about much more than a hamburger or a milkshake, even one as good this.
I nodded. He smiled and said, I was an old man then. I’m a really old man now. Those kids fought a fight we men should have fought. I come here, every day except Sunday. I have a milkshake and on a good day, I tell their story. Others might tell it better, that’s okay. The important thing is that we never forget.
I nodded, said, yes sir. I will never forget.
He smiled, waved at Connie, turned and walked away.
The Woolworth’s Lunch Counter has been closed for a very long time. You can’t get a burger there anymore. Worse, you can’t get a strawberry milkshake.
But stories are forever, or at least as long as they are shared. I’ve shared this one with you. Please share it with someone else.
Article was originally published by the author August 27, 2008 via examiner.com