August 27, 1960: A reminder that Florida is the opposite of the rest of the country: The further south you go, the more it's like the North, including a lot of New Yorkers in Miami; but the further north you go, the more "Southern" it gets.
Although Miami, Tampa Bay and Orlando all have more people in their respective metropolitan areas, the city in Florida with the most people within its city limits is Jacksonville. It's also the most populous city named after a President, ahead of Washington, D.C.; Madison, Wisconsin; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Jackson, Mississippi, also named after Andrew Jackson. It's in the northeast corner of the State, in Duval County, on the St. John's River, about 35 miles from the Georgia State Line.
Because of its high visibility and patronage, Hemming Park and surrounding stores were the site of numerous civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. In 1899, it was named for Charles C. Hemming, who installed a 62-foot monument to Jacksonville's Confederate veterans of the American Civil War.
Black sit-ins began 2 weeks earlier, on August 13, 1960, when students asked for service at the segregated lunch counter at W.T. Grant, Woolworth's, Morrison's Cafeteria, and other eateries. They were denied service, kicked, spat at, and addressed with racial slurs.
On August 27, a group of approximately 200 white men, some of whom were thought to have Ku Klux Klan affiliations, gathered in Hemming Park armed with baseball bats and ax handles. (Not with the blades of axes. This was not a Friday the 13th movie. But it was bad enough.) They attacked the protesters conducting sit-ins. The violence spread, and the white mob started attacking all black people in sight.
Rumors were rampant on both sides that the unrest was spreading around Duval County. Actually, the violence stayed in relatively the same location, and did not spill over into the mostly white, upper-class Cedar Hills neighborhood, for example. A black street gang called the Boomerangs came to protect the demonstrators. Police had not intervened when the protesters were attacked, but when "blacks started holding their own," and the Boomerangs and other black residents attempted to stop the beatings, the police arrested them for it.
Several white people had joined the black protesters on that day. Richard Charles Parker, a 25-year-old student attending Florida State University in Tallahassee, was among them. White protesters were the object of particular dislike by racists, so when the fracas began, Parker was hustled out of the area for his own protection. The police had been watching him and arrested him as an instigator, charging him with vagrancy, disorderly conduct and inciting a riot. After Parker stated that he was proud to be a member of the NAACP, Judge John Santora sentenced him to 90 days in jail. He was attacked there, suffering a broken jaw, after which Santora sentenced him to a road gang.
Local authorities and news media downplayed the violence. Mayor Haydon Burns flat-out lied and claimed there was no violence. Jacksonville's leading newspaper, the Florida Times-Union, buried the story on Page 15. It was covered by local Black publications, by out-of-town reporters, and in Life magazine. The Mayor alleged most rioters were not Jacksonville residents, and refused to convene a committee requested by the NAACP to address racial discrimination.
On October 18, 1960, both major-party Presidential candidates, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, gave speeches at Hemming Park, within a few hours of each other. Lunch counters in Jacksonville were desegregated in 1961.
In 2020, as a result of the Black Lives Matter protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Hemming's Confederate monument was taken down, and the park was renamed James Weldon Johnson Park, after the Jacksonville native and civil rights activist.
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August 27, 1960 was, as the name suggests, a Saturday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Indians, 7-4 and 3-0. Bill Stafford won the opener. Clete Boyer hit a home run, Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3 with 2 walks, and neither Yogi Berra nor Roger Maris played. Ralph Terry pitched a 2-hit shutout in the nightcap. Bob Cerv hit a home run, Mantle went 2-for-4, Berra went 1-for-4, and, again, Maris did not play.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams, in his last few weeks as an active player, did not play.
* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4 with an RBI.
* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-1 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Al Kaline went 2-for-4.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with an RBI.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-4 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Bob Gibson started for the Cards, but their bullpen blew the game, allowing 4 runs in the top of the 8th inning to tie the game. But, once again, Stan was The Man: In the bottom of the 9th, 39-year-old Stan Musial hit a home run. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 3-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Felipe Alou hit home runs for the Giants. Hank Aaron went 0-for-4.
* And the Cincinnati Reds and the Los Angeles Dodgers were not scheduled.
And in English soccer, Arsenal defeated Nottingham Forest, 2-0 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.
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