Player and his friends began testing other restaurants in Gainesville to see who would serve them. With the encouragement of his pastor, Player and his friends organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council in a direct effort to integrate restaurants and movie theaters.<\/p>\n
Player as a teenager worked at the Florida Theatre, a whites-only theater in Gainesville. White audiences would often throw popcorn at him while cleaning isles. In 1963, two Black men were denied tickets to the same theater and refused to leave, which resulted in picketing. Player said the demonstration was met with venom, but not violence.<\/p>\n
After continued picketing, particularly at the Florida Theatre, the city of Gainesville formed a biracial committee in the summer of 1963.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat committee negotiated the integration of the movie theaters and the restaurants here in the city. And that\u2019s how everything got started,\u201d Player, 81, said.<\/p>\n
Dan Harmeling, a white student, started at UF in Fall 1962, a semester when the school\u00a0admitted only seven Black students<\/a>. He and his brother, Jim Harmeling, would later become prominent activists in the Civil Rights Movement. In the summer of \u201863, they heard about the demonstration at the Florida Theatre on the radio. That evening, they went to the NAACP Youth Chapter meeting and signed up to picket at segregated restaurants around Gainesville.<\/p>\n Dan Harmeling later joined UF\u2019s Student Group for Equal Rights and would picket the College Inn, a restaurant known for denying service to Black people that once stood where Social, located at 1728 W University Ave., now stands.<\/p>\n Dan Harmeling recalled that he was usually only joined by about 25 people when picketing.<\/p>\n Now, as the university and the city of Gainesville has grown, so too has its activism. Some 60 years later, the students and faculty at the university continue to advocate for the fair treatment of Black people.<\/p>\n In 1962, there were just a handful of Black students at UF. Harmeling estimates there were around 10,000 to 15,000 students attending, making the population of Black students far less than 1%.<\/p>\n Today, UF\u2019s population of Black students is at 6.7%, well below the statewide Black population of 17%.<\/p>\n Player, however, was not allowed to attend UF in 1957. After growing up in Gainesville, he had to leave his hometown to attend college. UF wasn\u2019t accepting Black students at the time, so Player graduated from Howard University. He would later return to Gainesville as a faculty member at UF.<\/p>\n \u201cThe irony was that when I graduated high school, I wasn\u2019t allowed to attend the University of Florida,\u201d Player said. \u201cWe were allowed to take the test, the entrance exam, but we weren\u2019t allowed to attend the University of Florida, so I ended up going to Howard University in Washington D.C., and came back and got a job on the faculty. So, I find a little irony in that.\u201d<\/p>\n The university did not begin admitting Black students until over a century after its founding. Dan Harmeling said the administration saw UF\u2019s desegregation efforts as an experiment.<\/p>\n \u201cMy attitude about the administration \u2014 this was J. Wayne Reitz and Lester Hale and Dean Grinter, and all these names you hear all the time, and O\u2019Connell,\u201d Harmeling said. \u201cAs far as they were concerned, it was an experiment, and it seemed like they were \u2026 hoping that it would fail.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshall B. Jones, a former UF assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology, discusses his difficulties with UF\u2019s administration as a white activist in a memoir titled \u201cBerkeley of the South: A History of the Student Movement at the University of Florida, 1963-1968.\u201d<\/p>\n In the book, he shares how Reitz denied his tenure after Jones\u2019 own department had already approved it. There was a subsequent trial before the Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1968, with Stephen C. O\u2019Connell, Reitz\u2019s predecessor, who continued to deny tenure.<\/p>\n Jones wrote that he was seen by O\u2019Connell and Reitz as a \u201cradical\u201d with too much influence on UF\u2019s student body. He originated the Student Group for Equal Rights and was a published author advocating for the resistance against the treatment of Black people in the 1960s.<\/p>\n According to Jones\u2019 memoir, the administration cited an article he wrote for an academic journal advocating for resistance as the reason for his denial of tenure.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration regarded my presence on campus as a threat to the institution as it was constituted, and Reitz \u2026 had the forthrightness to say so,\u201d Jones wrote.<\/p>\n However, during Jones\u2019 trial, Reitz stated Jones encouraged students at every chance to confront authority. In the memoir, Jones reflects on a specific trip to St. Augustine, where he and other students protested for Black rights. Many students, including Harmeling and Jones, were arrested.<\/p>\n In the end, Jones was not afforded tenure in a 3-2 decision siding with UF\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n The New Faces of Activism<\/b><\/p>\n This past summer, over 1,000 people marched against police brutality in multiple organized marches in Gainesville.<\/p>\n Tiffany Pennamon, 26, is a graduate student and journalist at UF\u2019s Smathers Libraries, Special and Area Studies Collections. Pennamon is studying African American literature and cultural studies and has documented community protests. She helped curate a historical display in the George A. Smathers Libraries and participated in some of the marches during summer 2020.<\/p>\n Despite the major difference in size between today\u2019s activism, Pennamon said she sees some parallels between now and the past. For example, she said she noticed a mix of student and community-based involvement during last summer\u2019s marches.<\/p>\n Pennamon said she noticed another difference between the movements \u2014 during last summer\u2019s marches, there was support for a wider spectrum of people. For example, she said she saw a protestor holding a sign that said \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d in American Sign Language.<\/p>\n \u201cThat also reminded me of just the accessibility and the range of people that are participating in this movement,\u201d Pennamon said. \u201cSometimes we forget that there\u2019s sub-movements within larger movements.\u201d<\/p>\n She said the attention given toward the different identities and groups within the Black community \u2014 such as Black women, queer and trans folks, or disabled people \u2014 helps raise awareness for those who are oppressed or marginalized in more than one way.<\/p>\n But for Pennamon, some of the parallels are also disheartening.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sad because we still are fighting the same fight that our elders have had to fight before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Protestors in Gainesville, FL who protested with the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd\u2019s death in 2020. (Photo: Victoria Regan)<\/p>\n The City of Gainesville\u2019s local government has undergone a significant transition in the past three years. It\u2019s seen a number of new city positions filled by people of color, particularly women of color. This is a historic turn from just five years prior, when many positions of power were only held by white men. In almost all levels of local public office, a person of color now holds a major position.<\/p>\n In 2018, Gail Johnson and Gigi Simmons were\u00a0elected\u00a0<\/a>to Gainesville\u2019s City Commission. It was the first time in the city\u2019s history that two Black women would serve on the commission. Johnson was recently reelected, but Simmons was beat out by Desmon Duncan-Walker, another Black woman, for the District 1 seat. The seat includes much of East Gainesville and\u00a0the Porters community<\/a>\u00a0and has not won a second term in nearly 10 years.<\/p>\n In Gainesville\u2019s court system, Meshon Rawls and Gloria Walker, two Black women, were\u00a0elected\u00a0<\/a>to the area\u2019s judicial seats in 2019. This was the first time in the area\u2019s history that two Black women would serve as judges at the same time. On a larger scale, Clovis Watson Jr. was elected as the first Black sheriff of Alachua County in August 2020, three months after George Floyd\u2019s murder. Watson ran on a policy of reform, suggesting the use of diversion programs and more reflection on police practices.<\/p>\n Education equity has been an ongoing conversation in Gainesville. In 1970, Lincoln High School, Gainesville\u2019s high school for Black students, was closed. This closure led to more integration within other Gainesville high schools, especially Gainesville High. Tensions were still high between the groups, and on March 26, 1970, a riot broke out at Gainesville High School after a group of white students raised a confederate flag on the victory pole.<\/p>\n The achievement gap between Black and white students is one of the ways racial disparities in Alachua County are measured. This gap, which is based on factors such as reading performance and economic status,\u00a0was found to have widened<\/a>\u00a0in recent years.<\/p>\n In 2019, the Alachua County School Board\u00a0outlined plans<\/a>\u00a0to close this gap. The school board plans to close the achievement gap by 2028, through specific goals like \u201cstudent achievement,\u201d \u201cadvanced coursework,\u201d \u201cdiversity in the workforce\u201d and more. This plan comes just one year after Alachua County placed two\u00a0Black women<\/a>\u00a0on its school board for the first time in its history. In 2020, after Diyonne McGraw\u00a0won\u00a0<\/a>a seat on the Alachua County School board, it marked the first time in Alachua history that three Black women held a majority on the board.<\/p>\n Activism Moving Forward<\/b><\/p>\n In the 1960s, inclusivity was not a goal of UF. It wasn\u2019t until 2018, nearly 60 years later, that UF hired its first chief diversity officer, Antonio Farias, and created the Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA) Network, a major step toward promoting inclusivity on the campus.<\/p>\n Farias resigned from his role in mid-March, prompting the university to search for a new officer. Mary Watt, a member of the IDEA network and associate Dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), is on the search committee for a new chief diversity officer.<\/p>\n Like other colleges at the university, CLAS has its own diversity and inclusion committee called the Steering Committee. CLAS created the committee in 2016 and works with each department, overseeing best policies and initiatives for inclusivity and diversity.<\/p>\n The Steering Committee and other diversity, equity and inclusion college representatives at UF expressed their inability to recruit students of color, despite their own efforts of outreach and inclusion.<\/p>\n Lawrence Ukeiley, a member of the IDEA Network for the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, said the university handles undergraduate recruitment, not an individual college. The Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering can, however, control their graduate recruitment, and make the undergraduate students in its program feel welcome.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re starting some new undergraduate research fellowships for under-represented groups with the hopes of trying to engage some more of our undergraduates in those groups who do want to go to graduate school and become professors,\u201d Ukeiley said. \u201cThat\u2019s more of the knob that we feel that we can\u2026 turn to try to adjust.\u201d<\/p>\n Watt said CLAS is actively looking to recruit more faculty of color.<\/p>\n CLAS is working to make African American studies, currently an undergraduate major, into a department. The college is doing what\u2019s called a \u201ccluster hire,\u201d hiring five new professors in African American studies. The hope is that the cluster hire will create a community both scholarly and socially.<\/p>\n As these institutional changes are slowly but surely implemented, certain social practices have allowed instances of inequality to be brought to the forefront of mainstream conversation.<\/p>\n Dr. Zoharah Simmons, a retired UF professor of religion, said she thinks the prevalence of social media has allowed issues of social justice to spread more widely than what was possible during the Civil Rights era.<\/p>\n \u201cI think these platforms and posting and exchanging, I think it\u2019s very important,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cAnd I think we saw what it can do after the George Floyd murder. I mean, they say those were the largest demonstrations that have ever been held in this country. And so they were made possible by social media, and it wouldn\u2019t have happened otherwise. So I think that is a big part of the new toolbox.\u201d<\/p>\n For others, the use of social media seems to muddle the true efforts of certain movements.<\/p>\n \u201cInstagram activism really annoys me,\u201d said Anthony Hester, a philosophy major at UF who attended the Black Lives Matter protests. \u201cThere\u2019s one thing about getting your message out, but there\u2019s another thing about like, centering yourself around the message, which I feel like is a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The legacy of activism in Gainesville has continued for the past 60 years, but Twanna Hodge, UF\u2019s first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Librarian, said it\u2019s an effort that will go far into the future. Hodge said activists are working toward a world that doesn\u2019t currently exist, and it\u2019ll take work and time.<\/p>\n \u201cSome things are going to happen incrementally, and some things are going to happen like a flash fire,\u201d Hodge said. \u201cBut, you know we don\u2019t get an opt out. Time for opting out is, it\u2019s been passed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Gainesville, over 1,000 community members came together to march through the city last summer. Many of them were students at the University of Florida, carrying on Gainesville\u2019s significant legacy of student activism, dating back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and \u201860s. Since the Civil Rights Movement, groups of UF students and Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[133,52,5,6,920,59,51,1,182],"tags":[1088,25,1131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16677"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16680,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16677\/revisions\/16680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ci4.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/MhFYEw4g8t1v2v29RSAi2dlRlLDI0YwXFUxACOd0Y6kyBWKTzZkZgHzkW1FZIyvtkGcbtIz5gBLqr_XsKgtjzAMGvHPawWObwAHMAJZdN2E=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/www.wuft.org\/news\/files\/2021\/05\/College-Inn-Photo.jpg\")
Peaceful protest against discrimination outside College Inn across from the University of Florida campus. (Photo: Carolyn and Samuel Johnston)<\/p>\nThe University Through the Years<\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ci4.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/dxbFm97TtsvfROoJQSS6HpBXfCbV3k0qBF_ds9T9NfonYXwt7NBxk5hKESGUYmZn9eA1kwZ8zfUPAdDJB-5dqaN-OiHdE7H3ZxpfgF5J=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/www.wuft.org\/news\/files\/2021\/05\/IMG_5021-scaled.jpg\")
Dan Harmeling, along with other students from UF, traveled to Tallahassee to meet up with students from Florida A&M. It was during one of the demonstrations in Tallahassee that Harmeling was arrested along with 348 other students. (Michaela Mulligan\/WUFT News)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ci3.googleusercontent.com\/proxy\/_ih2wC7v5SgshvbImlfEVWIyksZg_fPLQNpwcSY_huV4aY3-uXlpiFqBGxsvLax6OC8FfuEGuTlf2986uCnNwr2soZ0aOGTgKL0pqzvI=s0-d-e1-ft#https:\/\/www.wuft.org\/news\/files\/2021\/05\/IMG_0817-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGainesville\u2019s Progress<\/b><\/h3>\n