Before the civil rights cause awakened much of the country, a unique clash over segregation and integration played out right here in Sarasota. At the center of the story were a brave black war veteran and a famous local author. To many readers, the language and tone used in this story may seem biased and even shocking. It's important to remember that the Sarasota of 50 years ago was very much a part of the Jim Crow-segregated South, and this story draws on newspaper accounts and quotations of that day. This is the way that it was.

County Commissioner Albert D. Corson could read people. As a salesman, he had been a student of body language all his life; and he could tell this meeting on Friday, June 17, 1955, was not going well. County architect William Zimmerman had just spent half an hour explaining the plans for the proposed Negro pool and recreation area, and reactions from the crowd had been nonexistent-just deadpan black faces, staring straight back at the speaker.

The 125 people in the audience were representatives of Newtown, Sarasota's black community. Corson and his fellow commissioners hoped to get their approval for the proposed pool and put an end to a problem once and for all. As chairman of the meeting, Corson took over when Zimmerman finished, but despite his enthusiastic effort, his request for questions was met with a continued and deafening silence. After several awkward moments passed, Corson said, "I take it you people are not interested in the pool." Almost in unison, all 125 assured him he was right.

Now the meeting came to life, as one by one, resolutions were read revealing what the Newtown residents really wanted. Each speaker reminded the commissioners that the money they were trying to spend on the pool came from a beach and recreation bond issue passed four years earlier in 1951. And, as they had been promised at that time, they wanted their share of that money spent on purchasing a public beach for the Newtown community.

As the head of the beach and recreation committee, Commissioner Glenn R. Leach defended the county position, declaring, "I didn't come out here to ram a swimming pool down your throats. But we just felt you would be more satisfied with a swimming pool, where you don't have to be worrying about jellyfish and stingrays." At that, a member of the black community stood up and drew the first laughter of the evening by responding, "If you white folks can put up with those jellyfish and stingrays, I think maybe we people can put up with them, too."

Although no vote was taken, opposition to the swimming pool appeared to be unanimous. Leach then invited the audience to help the commission in locating a beach site. But many said finding a site was the commissioners' job. Several even suggested that if no site were available, a white beach should be turned over for black use. As that request hung in the air, the commissioners indicated that they weren't sure what they would do next, but they promised they would not let the matter drop. But since this was the South in 1955, everybody in the room knew that not letting it drop was not the same as getting it done.

Not letting the issue drop meant that another hot Florida summer passed while a commission-appointed beach committee searched for a "suitable site"; eventually, they settled on one near Midnight Pass on Siesta Key, a recommendation that was never taken up by the commission or acted upon. That October, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune opened a series of articles dedicated to what they called the "Negro beach issue" by looking across Florida to examine how other communities had dealt with the matter. They found that less than two miles of Florida's coastline were officially "set aside for Negro use," and therefore, not much history on the issue existed.

Sarasota's black community knew all about that history, and some members began to press for some changes in their own way. On the following Thursday, the Herald-Tribune reported, "Six carloads of Negroes were reported to have driven to Franklin Drive on Lido Beach yesterday afternoon and to have gone swimming." An editorial the following Monday morning warned that Sarasota had best come up with a segregated Negro beach now or face dealing with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and fully integrated beaches in the near future. The editorial also called for the city and county commissions to quit passing the buck, as "one of the main troubles is the lack of leadership on both sides." On cue, City of Sarasota Mayor Ben H. Hopkins spoke up, calling the whole thing "a county problem."