TAMPA, Fla. — Fred Hearns says growing up in segregated Tampa, a whole week could go by and he “would not see a white face.”
“My neighborhood was all Black. The school I attended, all the students were Black. All the teachers and staff were Black,” said Hearns, who graduated from Middleton High School in Tampa.
Hearns describes Tampa back then as “two separate worlds.” Hearns knew, as a young Black man, he wouldn’t be accepted in one of those worlds, the "white Tampa."
“You learned that when you went into that other world, there were rules as to how you should carry yourself, how you should behave, what you should and should not do,” Hearns said.
He was more at ease on Central Avenue in Tampa.
“That’s where we were accepted, that’s where we felt comfortable,” Hearns said, who is now the curator of Black history at the Tampa Bay History Center.
Central Avenue and the surrounding area offered about 100 businesses, mostly owned by Black people. It included hotels, restaurants, barber shops, legal offices, doctor offices, insurance companies and newspapers.
“There was nothing else like it in this part of the state of Florida,” Hearns said. “Pretty much everything you could buy anywhere else — except maybe a house or a car — you could buy on Central Avenue.”
Until the mid-1970s, Central Avenue served as the hub for African American business, entertainment and culture. But in 1974, the city razed most of the area, eliminating a symbol of the Segregation Era.
John Hall grew up in during the tail-end of the Segregation Era too. He lived in Dunedin, often playing basketball at an all-Black park.
Hall, a member of the Dunedin Historical Society, told Spectrum Bay News 9 his parents, grandparents and other relatives shielded him as a child from the ugliness of segregation.
“Once you get 9, 10, 12, 15 18 (years old), start to realize there is a difference. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but there’s a difference. You can feel it, you can see it,” Hall said.
Segregation ended through a series of laws and court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954, ending segregation in schools), the Civil Rights Act (1964, banned segregation in public places), the Voting Rights Act (1965, outlawed discrimination in voting) and the Fair Housing Act (1968, prohibiting discrimination in housing).
