Florida Archives - The Race Card Project

DON’T FORGET ABOUT OUR “AMERICAN” PAST

October 16, 2023 Don't Forget, Florida, Jayla, LA, law, New Orleans, past

Jayla,
New Orleans, LA

My reasoning behind choosing those six words leads me to address Gov Ron DeSantis “STOP WOKE” law that undoubtedly will erase and leave patches of the history of slavery, Pre-slavery and topics about gender. This law being put in place can negatively alter a child’s academic development when the haven’t learned about the past. it can also be harmful to the extent when one culture has an encounter with the other encounter and they both have no knowledge of each others past.

We’ll stop traveling to Florida now.

November 21, 2022November 21, 2022 Allentown, Carolyn Anderson, FL, Florida, law, PA, stand your ground, travel

Carolyn Anderson
Allentown, PA

Why would anyone want to visit any state having the “stand your ground” law?

Only black culture holds blacks back.

March 10, 2022March 10, 2022 black culture, blacks, David O'Neil, FL, Florida, Greenacres, hold back

David O’Neil
Greenacres, FL

Great project long overdue

Don’t speak Spanish to white relatives.

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015 bilingual, Cubans, don't speak, Florida, fluent, German, Italians, Max Lazzara, Minneapolis, MN, Polish, Spaniards, Spanish, white relatives

Max Lazzara,
Minneapolis, MN.

Bilingual when I learned to talk, raised among my father’s Floridian family of Spaniards, Italians, and Cubans, I was just as Hispanic as I was white; but moved by divorce, I joined my mother’s German-Polish Minnesotan family. The message quickly became clear: don’t speak Spanish to white relatives. In a fully English-speaking home in a majority-white town, I had nowhere to speak it anymore. It wasn’t until age fourteen that I began to relearn Spanish, and I was not fluent until age seventeen.

Then: legally integrated, socially segregated. Now?

April 24, 2014 FL, Florida, integrated, Joan Goldbach, mandate, school, School USA, segregated, Tampa, USA, Winter Park

Joan Goldbach
Winter Park, FL

When I was in high school, the classrooms were integrated. The cafeteria, though, was segregated – by choice, not school mandate. Please tell me that this isn’t the case anymore.

Florida is the new Sun City

July 30, 2013 Canada, FL, Florida, Judith Rudd, Sun City

Judith Rudd
Canada

But, Sir, I’m the victim here.

July 16, 2013 AL, criminal, driving while, FL, Florida, Mexican, Montevallo, Roberta Leichnitz, victim

Roberta Leichnitz
Montevallo, AL

The events in Florida have brought back so many memories of the things that would happen to my son and his friends in San Antonio when he was in high school. Stopped for “driving while Mexican” in the “wrong” neighborhood, among others. The icing on the cake was when he was the victim of a hit and run and when the police finally arrived he was thrown in the back of the police car because the office thought he recognized him. Yes, he did know my son. My son was the waiter who waited on him NOT a criminal.

I am more than my race.

July 15, 2013 1966, 1967, Cestau Clark, FL, Florida, interracial marriage, KY, law, Louisville, More, Race

Cestau Clark
Louisville, KY

It was against the law for my parents to be married in 1966. I was born in 1967. Florida was unkind to us then. But somehow, I still believe people are generally good. Race was a card I had to deal with everyday. Everyone wanted to know what I was…Well, I’m just me. I call myself “generic” now. I can look like several races of people. It really doesn’t matter now like it did then. I’m happy and that is what matters. I don’t answer race questions anymore on applications etc…I want it to be excluded. My heritage matters to my family. My color is just a reflection of DNA from many different people. Each one my children are a different hue, different eye color (same dad). I raised them to be good people and that is what matters.

White girl. Black school. Called “slave owner.”

May 20, 2013March 14, 2022 AK, Barling, Erin Murphy, Florida, Miami, neighborhood, racial slur, school, slave-owner, White girl

Erin Murphy
Barling, AK

I grew up in a mostly African American neighborhood outside Miami, Florida. My friends never made me feel out of place but the other 60% of the students at the schools I attended sure did. My great-grandparents were immigrants -on one side of the family I was third generation American. That didn’t matter because my skin was pale. Automatically I had to have had something to do with slavery in America. To many people that didn’t bother to get to know me I was just “white girl” or even worse,(to a 15 year old kid) mistaken for a teacher. There was always a “cracker day” coming up when light-skinned Hispanic kids and the two or three other Anglo kids at the school would get beaten or attacked. One school administrator told me “if you didn’t want to get your white ass jumped, you should have stayed home.” When kids did shout out slurs and say I was a slave owner I thought it would be great to explain to them that there was no way I could be a slave owner because slavery in the U.S. was abolished over 100 years before I was born. I never said it out loud because I figured a smart-ass comment would just get me into more trouble.

when will we just see people

March 1, 2013 color-blind, FL, Florida, Margate, People, Race, Robert Williamson, See

Robert Williamson
Margate, FL

I was a white boy born in southwest Florida but left there at 5, came back at 11 in 1970. Had a black friend up north, had no real awareness of race until I came back south. My mother grew up in southeast Florida, she witnessed lynchings and all the racial bigotry of the day. I had a lot of problems in school with black kids picking on me, the hatred between blacks and whites was an incredible shock to me and I learned to fear. 43 years later I’ve raised 4 color blind children. I pray for the day the only “race” we see is the human race and the different colors and shapes are seen as variety, gods gift to us, to keep things interesting. I find that some of the most beautiful people I’ve seen come from “mixed” marriages. My hope is that my children’s children will get there.