On May 26, 1956, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, both students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), sat down in the whites-only section of a segregated bus in Tallahassee. When they refused to move, the bus driver pulled into a local service station and called the police. The Tallahassee police arrested both students, charging them with “placing themselves in a position to incite a riot.”

On Jan. 23, 1963, Patricia Stephens Due was arrested in the segregated lobby of the Florida Theater in Tallahassee for entering the whites-only section.

Although the city dropped the case, Stephens Due filed a suit against the city for their support of racial apartheid. While an agreement was made that Due would drop the suit if the city desegregated their court room, the city went back on their promise, sparking a new wave of student protests of the two movie theaters.

On April 5, 1866, a man named Robert Williams wrote this letter to the Florida Freedmen’s Bureau assistant commissioner on behalf of himself and six other Black grocers in Tallahassee. They called for an end to high taxes levied against them to support former Confederates. Bureau records do not contain a response from the assistant commissioner.

Emancipation was proclaimed in Tallahassee on May 20, 1865, 11 days after the end of the Civil War, and two years after the Proclamation first issued by President Abraham Lincoln freed those enslaved in Southern states. 

For this reason, Emancipation Day is traditionally celebrated on May 20 in Florida. 

In 1972, Ford became Tallahassee's first black mayor, the first black mayor of a state capitol city. He served subsequent terms as mayor in 1976 and 1982. In addition, he served fourteen consecutive years as a Tallahassee City Commissioner. In this office, he played a key role in establishing the Minority Business Department, the Frenchtown Area Development Authority and the Affirmative Action Office and worked to eliminate segregated practices in the city government and to secure employment for blacks.

During Reconstruction and through the Jim Crow era, Frenchtown was a hub for black owned businesses of all kinds to innovate and inspire. As the Commerce and Community marker highlights, many of these businesses were led by women as well as men, and venues such as the Capital Theater and the Red Bird Cafe were the only entertainment spots in town that were not segregated. Black musicians from across the country travelled to the Red Bird to play– including Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Ray Charles and more. While in town, many notable guests stayed at the Tookes House & Villa Motel on Virginia Street, one of the only places to accommodate African Americans in the region.

In 1884, Thomas Van Renssaler Gibbs, a Duval County educator, was elected to the Florida legislature. Although his political career ended abruptly because of the resurgence of segregation, Representative Gibbs was successful in orchestrating the passage of House Bill 133 in 1884. This bill established a white normal school in Gainesville and a school for African Americans in Jacksonville. The bill passed, creating both institutions; however, the state decided to relocate the school for African Americans to Tallahassee.

The house currently known as the Knott House was constructed in 1843, probably by George Proctor, a free Black builder. Attorney Thomas Hagner and his bride Catherine Gamble became the home's first residents the following year.

Immediately after the Civil War ended, Union Brigadier General Edward M. McCook used the house as his temporary headquarters when he occupied Tallahassee. On May 20, 1865, McCook declared the Emancipation Proclamation to be in effect, thereby announcing freedom for all enslaved persons in the greater Tallahassee region.

On July 17, the Tallahassee Community Remembrance Project gathered with EJI and community members in Cascades Park, under the oak tree at the corner of East Gaines and South Meridian Streets, to dedicate a historical marker in remembrance of Ernest Ponder, Richard Hawkins, Mick Morris, and Pierce Taylor, Black victims of racial terror violence in Leon County, Florida. The marker was placed near the site of the jail from which the four men were abducted. The historic jail was demolished recently and replaced with a new hotel.

After trained dogs found unmarked graves, 72-year-old Gloria Jefferson Anderson went home and looked into the eyes of a photograph of her dad. Then she began to cry. 

Her dad once had told her that their ancestors were buried at the now-forgotten New Hope Cemetery, but he passed away when she was a teen. Her mom had died earlier.

Ron McCoy is working to make sure the legacy of his family and neighborhood are not forgotten. 

The lifelong Tallahassee resident is leading the restoration and reopening of the Tookes Hotel, his late grandparents’ Frenchtown hotel which provided lodging for Black travelers when racial segregation was the order of the day. 

Slated to open in summer 2024, the historic building’s 11 bedrooms and three bathrooms will be rentable as Airbnbs, while the front of the building will be a small museum.