Explore the Artifacts

[Students walking in a line across Apalachee Parkway. This photo is taken from afar, showing the Parkway stretching off to the East. Traffic is stopped in either direction as the protesters are marched to jail.]

Student protesters by the hundreds were arrested for their involvement with the Florida Theatre and State Theatre protests for integration. They were made to walk from Monroe Street to Gaines Street to the county jail for processing and holding. Many chose to serve out their jail sentences rather than pay the bonds for their release. Some, like Patricia Stephens, served three or fourth month terms, often resulting in interruptions to their schooling and late starts to careers.  

[Image of the Lewis State Bank Building on a street corner downtown. Several cars from the 1950s are parked outside. The building is two stories tall, rectangular, with windows regularly spaced along either visual elevations. There is some decorative molding at the cornice top of the building.]

The Lewis State Bank, first established in the mid-1800s by Benjamin Cheever Lewis, operated in Tallahassee for over one hundred years. George Lewis II worked at his family’s bank from his teenage years until retirement, becoming President of the Bank in the 1950s.

The Lewis State Bank was known for having a large African American customer base at a time when many financial institutions would not lend to that community. Many turned to the bank for help during the theatre and lunch counter sit-ins for financial support. A cash-strapped CORE received a large donation under the cover of night from George Lewis and James Shaw, another local activist in the movement.

The Little Gallery, which would eventually lead to the gallery at LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts, began in the lobby of the Lewis State Bank.

[The black and white photo of the jail shows a building with a symmetrical facade with an Art Deco entrance. The wings of the building go off to either side of the structure. There are no trees in the foreground, and only a couple of automobiles are parked outside of the building. It looks more like a movie theatre than a jail.]

Clifton Lewis vividly recalled seeing the first of the Tallahassee downtown theatre protests for integration. She was at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monroe Street when the crowds gathered. Students marched with signs for integration and fair treatment while some white men approached, holding baseball bats.

The protesters were arrested and sent to the Leon County Jail, on Gaines Street at the time. Clifton and others came to visit the students to offer comfort and moral support. After a short while, they were not admitted in for visitation at all. So Clifton and others stood outside the jail and sang uplifting hymns for the demonstrators locked inside.

[The next object is a document entitled “The Bi-Racial Committee as a Response to Racial Tensions in Southern Cities” by Lewis Killian and Charles Grigg. There are no images in the document, only text.]

Clifton and George were members of several interracial groups attempting to make progress in segregated Tallahassee. While participating in the Tallahassee Council on Human Relations, George acted as treasurer until the position passed to James Shaw. Shortly thereafter, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, also known as the Johns Committee, confiscated the groups’ records looking for evidence of “unAmerican,” communist activities.

This report by FSU sociology professor Lewis Killian and FAMU professor Charles M. Grigg details how these types of biracial committees were received by their communities. Killian was another white supporter in the civil rights movement in Tallahassee alongside Clifton and George.

[Photo shows a group of protesters walking in front of Tallahassee City Hall. Their signs read: “Open the Pools, Who Will Drown Next?, Why No Pools? and My Bathtub is Not Big Enough.” There are three men and one woman marching to the left.]

In 1965, Tallahassee closed its three public pools, citing a lack of funding and thereby avoiding their integration. Locals like Clifton appealed to the city commissioners to reopen the facilities, especially after the tragic drowning of a local youth during their closure.

“As a citizen and an Episcopalian,” Clifton was “tired of helping to pay $20,000 a year for a pool property that was depreciating every day.” She added that “swimming was not a recreation, but a life-and-death matter-- a ‘life saving program.’” Unfortunately, the pools remained closed until 1969.