The History of Florida (89 page)

damaging their cars.

World War II also created new opportunities for 500,000 black residents

of Florida. The length of World War II in contrast to the twenty months of

U.S. participation in World War I, and the resulting social and geographic

dislocation, had mobilized the black community behind racial reform in

ways the country (and state) had not seen. The war propaganda had given

many hope that racial change would be forthcoming in the wake of the

conflict. Change would not come quickly.

The state’s white political leaders did what they could to keep race rela-

tions as they had been in the prewar era. Governor Caldwell and his succes-

sors, Ful er Warren (1949–53) and Dan McCarty (1953), did what the federal

courts required of the state, but they stonewalled implementation at every

turn.

In the postwar era, local leaders and law enforcement officials, often in

cooperation with white militants, also took steps to make sure that segrega-

tion barriers remained intact. They systematical y repressed black desires

for equality and greater freedom. As an example to others in Florida, Klan

leaders and allies in Orange County murdered Harry T. Moore, state leader

proof

of the NAACP, and his wife in their home on Christmas Eve 1950 for con-

ducting a statewide campaign to register blacks to vote in Florida during

1949 and 1950. The FBI led the inquiry into Moore’s death and found that

there was a widespread network of local officials, police, and militant whites

operating throughout central Florida to suppress the rights of blacks.13

By the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, battle lines were drawn be-

tween proponents of traditional southern values and those who sought to

build a “new” Florida. Racial and social traditions were steadily eroded by

development policies embraced by political leaders. Business leaders and

residents who had come predominantly from the Northeast and Midwest

had no intention of having their interests jeopardized by a commitment to a

long-dead southern past. A series of federal court rulings and congressional

acts in the 1960s and 1970s reconfigured the state’s political power structure

racial y and geographical y, which sped up the state’s transformation into a

two-party political system.

Florida Politics · 425

Federal Actions on Civil Rights (Education, Voting,

Reapportionment) Open up the State’s Political System

With the infusion of newcomers into the state’s urban areas, pressures to in-

crease urban representation in the state legislature intensified. By 1950, the

legislature remained unreapportioned; 13.6 percent of the state’s population

elected more than one-half of the state senators, and 18 percent of the popu-

lation elected more than half the members of the House of Representatives.

It was an all-white male legislature, with no women or minorities.

Governor LeRoy Col ins (1955–61), who was elected with substantial

backing from the urban regions of the state and with especial y strong sup-

port from south Florida, made legislative reapportionment one of his top

priorities. Collins introduced reapportionment in each legislative session,

only to see it blocked by rural legislators, who dominated the senate leader-

ship and held nearly a majority of the seats in the house.14

If Collins, south Florida legislators, and residents of that region had any

hope of winning this fight, their plans were set back by the emergence of

the civil rights movement. When the Supreme Court issued its
Brown
v.

Board
of
Education
of
Topeka
edict on 17 May 1954, few in Florida were

prepared for such a decision. Pork Chop elements in the state legislature

quickly seized the lead, denouncing the decisions and drafting proposals

proof

of resistance. Representatives from south Florida also criticized the Court’s

Governor LeRoy Collins, whose

administration (1955–61) was

perhaps the most enlightened

and successful in modern Florida

history, promoted New South

values of business pragmatism,

social harmony, and governmen-

tal reform. During his first years in

office, which directly followed the

U.S. Supreme Court decision of

1954 ending racial segregation in

the nation’s schools, he adopted a

moderate stance that prevented

defiance of the court. On his death

in 1991, the state House of Repre-

sentatives unanimously named

him “Floridian of the Century.”

426 · Susan A. MacManus and David R. Colburn

pronouncement, but they found themselves and their state being led by

north Florida politicians who militantly rejected any compromise.

Locked in a struggle to win the governorship in a special election at the

time of the Court’s pronouncement, Collins announced his commitment to

segregation. As a business progressive, however, Collins was not an extrem-

ist. Col ins pursued a variety of measures that were designed to preserve

school segregation but also sought to avoid racial extremism. The governor

was able to keep the racial militants at bay so that he and Florida gained a

reputation for racial moderation, and tourists, new residents, and new busi-

nesses continued to stream into the state. Only the veto of Governor LeRoy

Col ins prevented Florida from creating a private school system to avoid

desegregation and jailing teachers who taught desegregated classes.15

The efforts by north Floridians to continue to hold on to the reins of

power in the state took on a note of desperation in the 1960s. Without the

political skil of a LeRoy Col ins in the governor’s chair and with Florida

continuing to be a seedbed of change as a result of massive population

growth, a burgeoning tourist economy, and an expanding civil rights move-

ment, Governors Farris Bryant (1961–65) and Haydon Burns (1965–67),

both of Jacksonville, together with rural, north Florida legislators, pursued

efforts to maintain the status quo. Attempts to stymie desegregation took

proof

on a harder edge. Florida’s reputation for racial moderation slipped badly

during the first half of the 1960s.16

Ironical y, as Burns fought to block school desegregation, he led a state-

wide effort in 1965 to bring the Walt Disney Corporation to Florida. Disney

and the other tourist operations that opted to follow Disney’s new theme

park in Orlando would further undermine racial extremism and the social

instability that accompanied it. Above al , these businesses insisted on a

secure environment in which to conduct their business operations.

Although the state’s economic development program steadily eroded its

commitment to a segregated past, there was no clear sign that political lead-

ers were prepared to abandon Florida’s racial heritage until the federal gov-

ernment intervened. Washington removed the civil rights issue from state

control by adopting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act

of 1965.

In 1967, in
Swann
v.
Adams
, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the reap-

portionment of Florida to reflect “one man, one vote.” Within months a new

legislature was formed that oversaw the modernization of state government,

the abandonment of segregation, and the rise of the Republican Party.17 The

world of the Pork Choppers had col apsed, and with it the southern cause

Florida Politics · 427

they had so vigorously championed. In contrast to what happened in the

Reconstruction era of nearly a century earlier, this time the federal gov-

ernment did not renege on its promises to black Americans. Although few

white leaders would have acknowledged it in the 1960s, federal officials had

done Florida an enormous favor by removing racial extremism and rural

domination from its politics.

A New State Constitution and a Legislative Shake-Up

Without race-based politics and without a legislature dominated by rural

north Florida, the state began to address important issues that had been

ignored for years in the battle over segregation and, in the process, to revisit

political loyalties that had gone unchallenged during the twentieth century.

The most immediate impact of these developments was the adoption of a

new constitution in 1968 which recognized the Court-ordered reapportion-

ment in 1967, effectively gave legislative control to south Florida, and com-

pletely overhauled the old constitution of 1885.

The new constitution strengthened the hands of the governor by al owing

him to serve two consecutive terms, consolidating the number of executive

departments, and granting budgetary responsibilities to the chief executive.

proof

At the same time, however, it formal y recognized the cabinet as a constitu-

tional body and granted certain cabinet officers authority over the consoli-

dated executive agencies. These changes, together with the Legislative Re-

organization Act of 1969, which led to annual meetings of the legislature (as

opposed to the biennial meetings) and the creation of permanent legislative

staffs, effectively counterbalanced the new powers of the governor’s office.

Structural changes were one giant step taken to modernize Florida’s govern-

ment. Their importance became even more evident as the state’s population

continued to explode.

“Imported Politics”: A Two-Party State Begins to Take Shape

In 1960, Florida was the nation’s tenth-most-populous state; by 1980, it

ranked seventh; and by 1990, it was fourth.18 Projections are that it will

become the nation’s third-largest state by 2020. By the beginning of the

twenty-first century, Florida had become a microcosm of the United States

at large—a state whose politics was “imported” from other parts of the U.S.

and from Latin and South America (see table 22.1).

As the state’s population exploded, Florida’s economy became increasingly

428 · Susan A. MacManus and David R. Colburn

Table 22.1. Florida’s Racial and Ethnic Composition: A Comparison with the

United States

Race

Percentage of population

Florida 2010 (%)

U.S. 2010 (%)

White

75.0

72.4

Non-Hispanic White

57.9

63.7

Hispanic/Latino

22.5

16.3

African American

16.0

12.6

Asian

2.4

4.8

Native American

0.4

0.9

Pacific Islander

0.1

0.2

Some other race

3.6

6.2

Two or more races

2.5

2.9

Source
: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010 Census.

dependent on housing construction, high-technology manufacturing, and

tourism, although agriculture and, to a lesser extent, the phosphate industry

and cattle ranching still played prominent roles. The state’s urban and sub-

urban areas boomed. By the 2010 Census, more than 94 percent of Florida

residents lived in one of the state’s metropolitan statistical areas—one of the

highest metropolitanization rates in the nation.19

proof

The state’s population center shifted from the Panhandle to central and

south Florida. The state’s centroid (exact population center) was in Jefferson

County in 1830, but by 2005, it was in southwestern Polk County.20 Political

power in Florida shifted from the less-populated, rural north Florida coun-

ties to the urban centers in central Florida (Orlando, Daytona, Titusvil e,

and the Space Center), Southwest Florida (from the Tampa–St. Petersburg–

Clearwater area to Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples), and southeast Flori-

da’s “Gold Coast” (Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami).21

The infusion of new residents transformed Florida into a true “melt-

ing pot,” prompting a change in the state’s party, racial/ethnic, and gender

makeup of its executive, legislative, and judicial officeholders. Redistricting,

term limits enacted in 2000, and party recruitment of women and minority

candidates helped change the faces of the state’s elected officials to reflect a

more representative picture of Florida’s increasingly diverse population.