The History of Florida (98 page)

exhibitor, and the prizes offered will be open to al .”19

Notes

1.
Jacksonvil e Evening Metropolis
, October 18, 23, 1905.

2.
Indianapolis Freeman
, December 21, 1901.

3. Canter Brown Jr.,
Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867–1924
(Tuscaloosa: University

of Alabama Press, 1998), 51.

4. Zora Neale Hurston, “Lawrence of the River,”
Saturday Evening Post
, September 5,

1942, 18.

5.
New York Age
, January 21, 1888;
Salisbury
(N.C.)
Star of Zion
, August 23, 1894. See

also Canter Brown Jr., “‘Money was growing on trees . . . and here I come!’: African Ameri-

can Pioneers of Florida’s Citrus Industry,”
Florida Frontier Gazette
5 (Winter 2006):5–7.

6. Maxine D. Jones, “The African-American Experience in Twentieth-Century Flor-

ida,” in
The New History of Florida
, ed. Michael Gannon (Gainesville: University Press of

Florida, 1996), 386.

7. Samuel Proctor,
Napoleon Bonaparte Broward: Florida’s Fighting Democrat
(Gaines-

ville: University of Florida Press, 1950), 252, 296.

8. David H. Jackson Jr.,
Booker T. Washington and the Struggle Against White Suprem-

acy: The Southern Educational Tours, 1908–1912
(New York: Palgrave MacMil an, 2008),

162, 172–73.

468 · Larry Eugene Rivers

9. Emmet J. Scott,
Negro Migration during the War
(New York: Oxford University Press,

1920), 63.

10. Wayne Flynt,
Cracker Messiah: Governor Sidney J. Catts of Florida
(Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 46, 190–91.

11. Herbert Hil , “The Tragedy of the Florida Farm Worker,”
Crisis
79 (December

1963):601.

12. Edward D. Davis,
A Half Century of Struggle for Freedom in Florida
(Orlando:

Drake’s, 1981), 70–71.

13.
Chicago Defender
, November 6, 1920.

14. Ibid., March 28, 1925.

15. Canter Brown Jr.,
In the Midst of Al That Makes Life Worth Living: Polk County,

Florida, to 1940
(Tal ahassee: Sentry Press, 2001), 295.

16. Walter W. Manley II and Canter Brown Jr.,
The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917–1972

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 139–40.

17.
Chicago Defender
, June 8, 1929.

18. Marvin Dunn,
Black Miami in the Twentieth Century
(Gainesville: University Press

of Florida, 1997), 195.

19.
Jacksonvil e Evening Metropolis
, October 25, 1901.

Bibliography

Bartley, Abel A.
Keeping
the
Faith:
Race,
Politics,
and
Social
Development
in
Jacksonvil e,
Florida,
1940–1970
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

proof

Brady, Rowena Ferrel .
Things
Remembered:
An
Album
of
African
Americans
in
Tampa
.

Tampa: University of Tampa Press, 1997.

Brown, Canter, Jr.
Florida’s
Black
Public
Officials,
1867–1924.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.

Colburn, David R., and Jane L. Landers, eds.
The
African
American
Heritage
of
Florida
.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.

Davis, Edward D.
A
Half
Century
of
Struggle
for
Freedom
in
Florida
. Orlando: privately published, 1981.

Dunn, Marvin.
Black
Miami
in
the
Twentieth
Century
. Gainesvil e: University Press of Florida, 1997.

Green, Ben.
Before
His
Time:
The
Untold
Story
of
Harry
T.
Moore,
America’s
First
Civil
Rights
Martyr
. New York: Free Press, 1999.

Jones, Maxine D., and Kevin McCarthy.
African
Americans
in
Florida
. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1993.

Manley, Walter W., II, and Canter Brown Jr.
The
Supreme
Court
of
Florida,
1917–1972.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.

McCarthy, Kevin M.
African
American
Sites
in
Florida
. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 2007.

McDonogh, Gary W.
The
Florida
Negro:
A
Federal
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Project
Legacy
. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

Florida’s African American Experience: The Twentieth Century and Beyond · 469

Newton, Michael.
The
Invisible
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The
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. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.

Neyland, Leedel W.
Twelve
Black
Floridians
. Tal ahassee: Florida Agricultural and Me-

chanical University Foundation, Inc., 1970.

Ortiz, Paul.
Emancipation
Betrayed:
The
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of
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. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Porter, Gilbert, and Leedell W. Neyland.
History
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Bridging
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. Tampa: University of Tampa Press, 2000.

Scott, J. Irving.
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. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1974.

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proof

24

Immigration and Ethnicity

in Florida History

Raymond A. Mohl and George E. Pozzetta

Powerful forces of transforming change buffeted the state of Florida

throughout the twentieth century, none more important than rapid demo-

graphic growth. The fourth-largest state as early as the 1980s, and with a

population surpassing 18.8 million in 2010, the year of the most recent U.S.

census, Florida has been shaped in innumerable ways by internal migration

proof

and foreign immigration. Immigrant streams from Cuba and the Bahamas

in the late nineteenth century provided a hint of things to come. By the late

twentieth century, major concentrations of Caribbean, Latin American, and

Asian immigrants had settled in al of the state’s major metropolitan ar-

eas, as well as in some primarily rural central Florida agricultural counties.

The census of 2010 reported almost 20 percent of Florida’s population as

foreign-born, more than three-fourths of whom came from Latin America.

Perhaps surprisingly, in 2010 almost half (48.5 percent) of Florida’s 3.7 mil-

lion immigrants had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Florida remained

the “Sunshine State” in the popular mind, but increasingly the state became

identified as a significant center of new immigration.

It was not always so. Although blessed with abundant natural resources

and available land, Florida struggled through its early history to attract peo-

ple to its borders. As late as 1860, Florida had a population of only 140,423

(including 77,746 whites, 61,745 slaves, and 932 free blacks). These residents

were clustered heavily in a thin band of settlement along the northern tier

of the state. Until late in the nineteenth century, in fact, most of Florida ex-

isted in a frontier-like condition of virgin wilderness. The development of

the state’s lands, industries, and urban centers accordingly lagged far behind

· 47

· 4 0 ·

7

Immigration and Ethnicity in Florida History · 471

other sections of the nation, a fact that many residents linked to a lack of

immigration.

Contemporary Florida responds to very different sets of population

problems. Present-day residents of the state now debate proposals to limit

population growth and discuss various strategies to curtail resource con-

sumption. Increasingly burdened by the costs associated with refugee and

immigrant influxes from the Caribbean and Latin America, and concerned

about the social tensions engendered by multiculturalism and undocu-

mented immigration, the state no longer worries about attracting newcom-

ers. Rather, policymakers anxiously question whether Florida should con-

tinue to welcome new arrivals at al .

To understand how Florida has fluctuated to such curious extremes, it

is necessary to comprehend the state’s multifaceted encounter with migra-

tion, immigration, and settlement. A scrutiny of this history reveals that the

many efforts to stimulate population movement to the state—and occasion-

al y to repel it—varied over time and represented vastly different interests.

Large landowners, for example, frequently devised schemes to populate un-

used land with settlers. Employers sought through various means to ensure

an adequate and appropriate labor supply. Civic boosters similarly produced

lavish plans to procure productive citizens for their communities. Superim-

proof

posed over all of these initiatives were the strategies of ordinary migrants

themselves, who often ignored the grand schemes of others and fol owed

their own paths to a better future.

Vast acreages of undeveloped land and the need for resourceful settlers

provided the two great motivating forces behind early human migration

to Florida. The celebrated, if il -fated, New Smyrna colonization experi-

ment begun in 1768 represented an early such effort to settle productive

immigrants on the land. Bolstered by a 20,000-acre land grant, a visionary

London physician named Dr. Andrew Turnbul boldly transported 1,500

Greek, Italian, and Minorcan indentured servants to a site along the Atlantic

coast of Florida to clear virgin forest for an indigo plantation. Within several

years, mismanagement and disease undermined this colonization endeavor;

the settlers drifted away, and Turnbul moved to Charleston to practice

medicine. Both the Spanish and British governments made generous land

grants to other individuals during their colonial administrations, hoping to

stimulate substantial migration. These schemes general y produced results

no better than the New Smyrna venture.

During the early years of statehood, Floridians became absorbed with the

problems of the emerging sectional controversy and slavery, pushing aside

472 · Raymond A. Mohl and George E. Pozzetta

concerns over immigration and new settlement. As the Civil War unfolded,

Florida devoted its energies to the urgent demands of the conflict, leav-

ing little opportunity for other initiatives. However, the immense human

and economic dislocations that followed in the wake of war forced Florida’s

political and business leaders to focus on population growth. As one agri-

cultural publication put it in 1881, “Unquestionably Florida’s greatest need

is immigration; next to immigration we need capital.”1 In fact, Florida had

by far the fewest residents of any of the former Confederate states. In 1900,

for example, Florida counted slightly more than a half million inhabitants,

while Georgia and Alabama totaled 2,216,000 and 1,829,000, respectively.

Such a small population in relationship to the state’s vast land area meant

a pronounced lack of development as defined by urbanization, industry,

transportation facilities, and cultural amenities. Many Floridians believed

that the state’s deficiencies could most easily be erased by acquiring a class

of industrious immigrants to populate unused lands, provide a stable labor

force, and infuse the state with new ideas, enterprise, and energy.

Adding urgency to the desire for immigrants during this period was a

pervasive white discontent with the black labor available in the state. In the

years after the Civil War, many employers worried about the frequency with

which former slaves exercised their new rights to mobility and deserted

proof

white-owned plantations and farms. Other Floridians reflected the racist

attitudes of the time by claiming that without the coercive powers of the

slave system, even those blacks wil ing to remain on the job would be unreli-

able and unproductive. The
Tal ahassee
Semi-Weekly
Floridian
, for example,