The Congress of Racial Equality
IN THE SUMMER of 1964 student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) went to Gadsden County, Florida in an effort to convert the old plantation county in the heart of the Florida panhandle into a bastion of CORE's Southern civil rights crusade.(1) Before the summer ended, the students would be bombed, beaten, and arrested by white authorities and vigilantes. Despite these obstacles, CORE activists helped over 3,500 local residents register to vote and take part in the 1964 presidential campaign.(2)
Linda and Jewell Dixie, two young African Americans from the county seat of Quincy, quickly assumed leadership roles in the struggle. Linda Dixie went from competing for high-school homecoming queen to leading lunch-counter sit-ins in Quincy. In September, Jewell Dixie became the first African American to run for the post of Gadsden County sheriff in the twentieth century.
The arrival of CORE in Quincy, the elan of the students, and the activism of Linda and Jewell Dixie seem to fit neatly into standard notions regarding the "origins" of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Historians often refer to a "Black awakening in the 1960s" that spurred a younger generation of student activists to engage in political projects their parents could not have imagined.
In Simple Justice, Richard Kluger writes that in the era before Brown v. Board of Education, "The black masses were still ignorant of their rights, for the most part." Worse, "Those who were not were also the ones most likely to be better off economically and educationally--and therefore the ones least inclined to rock the boat, to risk financial reprisals and perhaps violence by the white community."(3)
Things were different in Gadsden County. Linda and Jewell Dixie's father, A.I. Dixie, is a case in point. A.I. Dixie, a day laborer on a Gadsden County tobacco plantation in the 1930s, tried to organize fellow workers in a struggle against brutal working conditions. When this effort
Linda and Jewell Dixie, two young African Americans from the county seat of Quincy, quickly assumed leadership roles in the struggle. Linda Dixie went from competing for high-school homecoming queen to leading lunch-counter sit-ins in Quincy. In September, Jewell Dixie became the first African American to run for the post of Gadsden County sheriff in the twentieth century.
The arrival of CORE in Quincy, the elan of the students, and the activism of Linda and Jewell Dixie seem to fit neatly into standard notions regarding the "origins" of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Historians often refer to a "Black awakening in the 1960s" that spurred a younger generation of student activists to engage in political projects their parents could not have imagined.
In Simple Justice, Richard Kluger writes that in the era before Brown v. Board of Education, "The black masses were still ignorant of their rights, for the most part." Worse, "Those who were not were also the ones most likely to be better off economically and educationally--and therefore the ones least inclined to rock the boat, to risk financial reprisals and perhaps violence by the white community."(3)
Things were different in Gadsden County. Linda and Jewell Dixie's father, A.I. Dixie, is a case in point. A.I. Dixie, a day laborer on a Gadsden County tobacco plantation in the 1930s, tried to organize fellow workers in a struggle against brutal working conditions. When this effort