With leadership lacking and buck-passing accelerating, ignoring the problem wasn't working, either, as Herald-Tribune readers learned the next day, when the paper reported on a third caravan to Lido Beach. The caravan had now grown to 19 cars and more than 100 blacks. Police chief Robert Wilson reported that four police vehicles were on the scene in case of incidents, but that all was "peaceful and quiet."

A Newtown drugstore owner and head of the Sarasota County NAACP, Neil Humphrey, was identified as the leader of the beach campaign. Humphrey, a veteran of World War II who was now in his mid-40s, emphasized that the taxes of both white and black citizens supported the beaches. Then he threw out this challenge: "When we met with the commissioners last June they said to us, 'Help us find a beach for you'-well, we've found one."

The impact of those words on white Sarasota was tremendous. Consider that the Supreme Court's final Brown decision, the event now often cited as the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, had just been issued in May, about two weeks before the County Commission offered Newtown its own swimming pool.

Rosa Parks would be arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat in another two months, in December 1955; and very few people outside of Montgomery, Ala., had yet heard of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the spiritual leader behind the bus boycott that followed Parks' arrest. So in many ways, the small community of Sarasota and its beach controversy were ahead of the historical curve.

It was a harassed chairman Corson that week who promised the "colored people" something definite in the way of a Gulf beach "within the next month." Later, ignoring the results of the previous summer's special beach committee, Corson appointed a new group, a coalition of city and county officials and "white and colored residents." As Corson attempted to build consensus to resolve the issue, Mayor Hopkins and the City Commission closed that week's meeting with a resolution of their own. It contained four points: (1) Continued use of Lido Key beach by the Negro population was not in the best interest of anyone due to the economics of the tourist trade. (2) Both white and colored populations prefer segregated beaches when given a choice. (3) There were still $97,000 in the county's beach bond issue fund. And (4) these resolutions serve "the purpose of recording the ideas, feelings, and position of the City Commission" for the people of Sarasota and not to criticize or reflect upon the judgment of the County Commission.

Much was made at this time of the County Commission being the first all-Republican one in the history of Sarasota. The City Commission members, however, were Democrats. Mayor Hopkins, a local car dealer, was a proud Florida "Cracker" with pre-World War II ties to Sarasota. The County Commission Republicans were all post-war arrivals with Northern roots. It was both a political struggle and a struggle more familiar today: long-time resident versus newcomer. The "Yankees" were making a mess of things, and the "old boys" wanted no part of it.

Corson surprised the new beach committee at its first meeting by proposing a "beach tract, less than three miles from the New Pass Bridge on Longboat Key" for black citizens. The black members of the group were asked to call a Newtown meeting to determine whether the site was acceptable. In return for Corson's pledge that the tract would be purchased, committee member Neil Humphrey agreed to stop the Sunday caravans to Lido Key, which a representative from the Chamber of Commerce claimed had already given Sarasota adverse publicity in the Northern press.

But in a surprise twist the next week, as Longboat property owners met to plan a fight against the Negro beach, 500 members of the Newtown community, encouraged by NAACP leaders from Tampa, voted overwhelmingly to reject the segregated Longboat beach and ask instead for the integration of all county beaches. Meanwhile, unaware of this change, a speaker at the Longboat meeting claimed that the land cited by Corson would not accommodate "the Sarasota blacks and those expected to flock there from neighboring counties by the thousands."

After the vote for integration, Sarasota NAACP leader Humphrey declared, "The time has come for us to assert our claim for equal rights. As citizens, we will assert those rights to attend any public beach available." Suddenly, Sarasota was on the front lines of the burgeoning national battle over civil rights.