From 1967 to 2021: How Florida Continues to Criminalize Black Protests
By Nadege Green
In Florida, when Black people rise up to demonstrate against systemic inequalities — denial of voting rights, unequal access to public facilities, police violence — local governments and the state quickly move to criminalize and quell their demands for change. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now with the recent passing of HB1, the anti-protest law that creates new criminal offenses for protestors and intensifies penalties for a wide range of protest activities.
There’s no question that the intent behind this law is to silence Black-led protests.
Last year’s national, statewide and local protests against the police murder of George Floyd and other acts of police violence are what ultimately brought HB1 into existence. Similarly, in 1967 when Florida enacted its first “anti-riot law,” it was Black people demanding justice that led to it being passed.
Florida’s 1967 “anti-riot law” started as a bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Rust, a former Miami police officer turned Republican Florida legislator. His bill made “participating in a riot” or “inciting a riot” felony offenses carrying up to two years in prison and hefty fines. After the bill became law, Rust admitted having a hard time getting it passed until Tampa experienced a Black-led uprising while the bill was making its way through the legislature.
The uprising in Tampa that propelled lawmakers into “action” was, unsurprisingly, a Black community protesting against police violence. Martin Chambers, a 19-year old suspected of stealing from a camera store, was shot in the back by a Tampa police officer. The officer said he shot Chambers because the young man did not follow his commands to stop running — what is now considered an illegal use of force. Chambers died from his injuries and Tampa’s Black community took to the streets. While the Black community demanded justice, lawmakers saw an opportunity to silence their cries by threatening to lock up community members.
And to be sure, when Florida was passing this legislation in 1967, lawmakers were also looking at Black rebellions happening throughout the country: Detroit, Newark, Birmingham, Chicago, New York. There were more than 100 rebellions that summer alone, nearly all of which were set off by police killing or brutalizing Black people.
Editorials from Florida’s leading newspapers at the time lauded the passing of Florida’s new “anti-riot” law, saying it would be a deterrent that would shield Florida from experiencing similar “race riots’’ happening across the country. The Tallahassee Democrat wrote, “We agree with Governor Hughes of New Jersey that these riots are led by criminals who hate America and hate God.”
The key to understanding the uprisings of 1967 was never in examining a lack of patriotism or a turning away from God. The focus all along should have been on white racism, according to The Kerner Commission report which President Lyndon Johnson commissioned to explain the 1967 unrest in the country’s major cities.
“White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II,” the report stated.
It continued: “The police are not merely a ‘spark’ factor. To some Negroes, police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a ‘double standard’ of justice and protection — one for Negroes and one for whites.”
When Florida lawmakers passed HB1, the 2021 version of repressing resistance to police killing Black people, Governor Ron DeSantis and other lawmakers focused on demonstrations happening across the country, just as in 1967.
“We made a promise to Floridians,” said House Speaker Chris Sprowls, a Republican. “The promise was that we were not gonna allow Florida to become Seattle. We were not going to allow Florida to become Portland.”
We don’t need another Kerner report to reveal the cause of the protests of 2020. The original report’s findings, particularly around policing, remain true more than 50 years later. They are underscored by the actions of Florida legislators who deliberately used the same tactics from an admittedly racist era to silence Black resistance.
Read more about the lawsuit challenging HB1 here.
A Sample of Criminalized Black-Led Protests In Florida Pre-1980
1956
Rudolph Reid, a Black teenager, refused to move to the back of the bus in Miami-Dade County in protest of the local segregation laws that only allowed whites to sit up front on Miami Transit. He was arrested for breach of peace.
1960
Black students, mostly from Florida A&M University staged a sit-in at a segregated Tallahassee lunch counter. Mayor Hugh Williams ordered them arrested. White customers cheered on the police as they placed students in handcuffs. Eleven of the students were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. (Miami News, Feb. 21, 1960)
1961
In Fort Lauderdale, the local NAACP and some of its members including Eula Johnson and Dr. Von Mizell led wade-ins to desegregate the public beach. These wade-ins led to arrests with charges for “disturbing the peace.” The City of Fort Lauderdale was so incensed that Black residents demanded equal treatment, the city sued protesters, describing them as “a public nuisance and a danger to inhabitants of the city” and for “inciting chaos.” ( Fort Lauderdale News July 11, 1961)
1963
Black and white young adults picketed Florida Theater in Tallahassee demanding that the theater integrate. As a result of these anti-segregation protests, the court issued an injunction that limited protests to no more than 18 people. When hundreds of FAMU students arrived at the same theater to protest in September 1963, 107 students were arrested. Nearly all were charged with contempt of court and disturbing the peace. Many of the students said they hadn’t even heard about the injunction issued months earlier.
1966
A white grocery store owner in Pompano Beach slapped a young Black boy. When Black residents heard of the slapping, they descended on the store to protest and demand accountability for the assault on a child. Protesters were met with a heavy police presence and growling police dogs. Twenty-seven Black protesters were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly.
1968
Four days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, a group of Black and white mourners in Gainesville sat in a busy traffic intersection to protest what they described “a racist city.”
Fifteen people were arrested by Gainesville police and charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing the flow of traffic. The intersection where they protested was declared “an unlawful assembly area” by law enforcement.
1971
Black students attempted to deliver a demand letter to the University of Florida’s president asking for more Black faculty members and more Black students to be accepted into the school. The university called the police on their students and ordered them to be put out of the office. Sixty-six students were arrested, and fire hoses and tear gas were used to break up their protest.
1975
In Pensacola, more than 50 protesters were arrested for protesting the shooting of a Black man shot and killed by a white deputy. Thirteen school-age children were also arrested at the protest. Nearly all of the protesters were charged with unlawful assembly or obstructing justice for picketing at the local jail and blocking the entrance.
Nadege Green is the director of Community Research and Storytelling for the Community Justice Project.
Community Justice Project supports grassroots organizing for power, racial justice and human rights with innovative lawyering, research, creative strategy tools and the arts. Based in Miami, FL, Community Justice Project is deeply and unapologetically committed to Black and brown communities throughout Florida.
