Florida is now the most "northern" of the southern states. However, in the Civil War, it was a stolid slave state and the third to secede. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it still was fiercely Southern. And like much of the South, to its shame, deeply embraced Jim Crow. It wasn't just separate water fountains and restrooms. From 1918 to 1927 alone, 416 blacks were lynched nationwide. Of those murders, 47 were in Florida. Florida also was the site of a massacre and innumerable miscarriages of justice. The Civil Rights movement clashed with Florida's critical tourist-friendly image. It could have been uglier. But it was ugly enough.
Eliot Kleinberg, a former reporter at The Palm Beach Post for over 33 years, has written extensively about Florida's history, authoring more than a dozen books, including Black Cloud and Weird Florida. He runs a blog on writing and is an active lecturer and member of several historical societies in Florida.
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