The next day a letter from MacKinlay Kantor appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He described a recent dream in which he had encountered a young Negro boy who was once his yardman. This was "odd," he wrote, "because the boy had been dead more than 12 years." As they discussed the changes that had occurred in Sarasota, the young boy said that he had heard that there was now a "colored folks' beach." No, Kantor had to tell him, he was mistaken about that. People had been talking about it but had not been able to bring it about yet. The young man reacted in surprise: "But they were talking about it before I left." Kantor and the boy went on to discuss several other issues-property, education, and segregation-revealing that not much had changed about any of those, either. Finally Kantor told his young friend that he was getting too "uppity" and he needed to get back to the United States Military Cemetery in northern France, where he belonged. With his points made, Kantor signed off.

It's likely that this letter was composed prior to the Commission's action. Though its intention was unmistakable, its tone was more prodding than punishing. But Kantor did not stop with this letter. The next day, he sent a telegram to the commissioners, calling their decision to reject the Siesta site an act of "political and ethical cowardice." At a press conference, Kantor threatened to write an article for a national magazine entitled, "Sarasota Cheats Its Black Children." Kantor stressed he was not some "starry-eyed Yankee" calling for integration. He supported a segregated beach and called the lack of one a "grave injustice." When asked whether his threats could be called blackmail, Kantor replied, "Make the most of it."

Kantor's stand provided rich fodder for letters to the editor over the next several days. Some letter writers congratulated him, while others criticized his grandstanding as "not helpful." One writer asked if Kantor ever let his young black friend swim at his house after a hard day of working in his yard. It is notable that there were no critiques for his implied stand against integration. That shift in society had yet to occur.

In early October of 1956, the city announced plans for a Newtown swimming pool, and the county revisited an ingenious idea that seemed designed to avoid offending any potential neighbors: dredging Big Pass between Lido and Siesta Key to form an island that could serve as a black beach. The pool was completed and opened the following year, but no black beach, whether on an island or the mainland, materialized.

The first all-Republican Sarasota County Commission came to an end with the 1956 elections, as Leach and Jacob Baumgartner chose not to run and were replaced by Democrats. Only Edwin F. McCann, who died in office in 1960, ever sought re-election. Corson and Nelson served out their second terms. Nelson moved on to politics at the state level; Corson retired altogether. All of them gladly put the "Negro beach issue" behind them.

Though not officially sanctioned, eventually a beach just south of Venice became the de facto destination for Negro beachgoers. Today known as Caspersen Beach, it sits adjacent to the Venice airport and, at that time, also shared space with a City of Venice sewage treatment plant.

Current City Commissioner Fredd Atkins, who became the first black mayor of Sarasota in 1986, remembers his childhood trips with a favorite aunt. "She loved to go to the beach," he recalls. "She'd pack breakfast, lunch and dinner because if you got to go that far, you might as well stay all day." The round trip from Newtown was more than 40 miles. Later on, when integration of the beaches was no longer a point of contention, not much changed. Atkins says, "Basically, once we were allowed to go, we really didn't want to. We knew we weren't really wanted out there."

If there is a hero in this tale, it is Neil Humphrey. Born in Plant City, Fla., in 1910, Humphrey moved to Sarasota in 1935. After serving in the Navy in World War II, he operated Humphrey's Drugstore in Newtown until retirement and died in November of 2000 at the age of 90. Even in tranquil little Sarasota, this black man-who had a wife, two children, and a business he had struggled to build-was putting everything at risk in taking such a public stand. This past January, a family member described Humphrey as "a man small in stature but huge in heart, who wanted everyone to get along, black and white." If there is justice in this city, someday on Lido Key, the children of Sarasota will run and play between the "jelly fish and stingrays" on Neil Humphrey Beach.