The Darker Side of Jim Crow Florida

by Mike Miller
(Naples, Florida)

Gus was one of the best men I ever knew. He worked for me on one of the soil testing drill rigs that I ran out of Tampa Florida shortly after I graduated from the University of Florida in 1966.

He was a driller helper, and although a small man, did heavy labor all day long without complaint. He received minimum hourly wage and I was never able to get him a raise in the year that we worked together.

My boss said the job was worth no more than minimum wage. Gus was getting close to retirement age, and although he couldn't read and write, his wife was a well educated woman. She was the principal of a black school in Tampa.

I managed the drilling department of an engineering testing company. We had three truck mounted drill rigs that made test borings at sites all over the state. The borings were to determine the quality and strength of soil to be used in design of building foundations or pavement sections.

Each drill rig had a white driller, and two black driller helpers. Gus was the most senior of all the drillers and helpers.

Athough the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was on the books, not everybody in Florida was on board with the new laws regarding equal opportunities in jobs, housing and other areas of society.

In those days, many hotels and motels would not accept black guests even though the new laws prohibited discrimination. This meant that my black driller helpers could not share a room with the drillers, and presented a housing problem for which a solution had long existed.

Every Florida town had a boarding house or motel that catered exclusively to black customers. These were not advertised as such, but any black person in a town could direct us to the appropriate place where Gus and the others could rest after a heavy day's work.

The picture above is not of Gus, but it was taken in 1959 in a southern courthouse. Things had not changed in Florida much by 1966, but those bad old days are just ancient history now, except to the people who lived them.