BOOKS
BROKEN BONDS
History of desegregation in 20th century
Vero Beach revisited
BY JANIE GOULD
A longtime certified financial planner in Vero Beach
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recently earned a master’s degree, but not in anything
related to finance, at least not in the traditional sense of
the word.
Guy Bassini, 65, a Brooklyn, New York, native who has
owned Treasure Coast Financial Planning since 1995, has
a passionate interest in history. He dedicated many nights
and weekends during the past several years researching and
writing a book-length thesis for an online master’s degree
in history from the University of Nebraska. The title is: We
Have Been the Most Patient of People: From Jackie Robinson to Joe
Idlette. Desegregation in Vero Beach, Florida, 1941-74.
Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, training
with the team in Vero Beach as the first black player in major
league baseball. Gifford native Idlette fought successfully
to integrate Indian River County public schools and later
became the first black member of the county school board.
Bassini doesn’t watch TV and is not interested in sports,
but is interested in the history of France and other European
countries, as well as the history of World War II and the Cold
War. A dedicated Francophile, he speaks French well and has
read hundreds of books in French.
Some of his ancestors wrote books, including tomes about
voice instruction by Carlo Bassini, a 19th century opera singer.
Carlo Bassini, who was Bassini’s great-great-grandfather,
emigrated from northern Italy to America by way of Brazil,
where he directed that country’s national symphony. In New
York, he became a renowned voice instructor for stars of the
Metropolitan Opera. Another ancestor wrote, in French, a history
of the 1791 Haitian Revolution, which Bassini has read.
His parents wanted him to become a doctor, but he had no
affinity for science courses.
“When I was in high school, I thought I would be a history
teacher,” he said. “I loved academics. I just have zero interest
in biology. I like history. I like writing. I like reading. I like
commentary.”
400 YEARS AGO
To tell the story of segregation in Florida, Bassini goes back
four centuries, to the 21 years in which Great Britain ruled its
East Florida colony, which stretched from the St. Marys River
on the north to the Apalachicola River on the west, with the
capital at St. Augustine. The Spaniards had discovered gold
in Latin America, but the British weren’t as lucky in Florida.
The British had ample land in East Florida, but not enough
labor to make farming profitable. Their solution was to bring
in slaves from Africa to work the fields, producing cash crops
to export to England. Bassini said the English also introduced
their bloody codes that imposed harsh penalties for minor
property crimes.
Financial planner Guy Bassini has published his master’s degree thesis on
desegration in Vero Beach from 1941 to 1974.
“In my opinion, the British exported the lynching culture to
the New World,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that wherever you
have a legacy of British slavery, you have a history of violence.”
Bassini shows that even though slavery ended officially
with the Civil War, a system of agricultural peonage remained
in force in Florida for another century. After Reconstruction,
state political leaders crafted a new constitution
that guaranteed the state would continue to have an underclass
of poorly educated blacks to work in white owners’
fields and homes. The 1885 constitution made school segregation
the law in Florida. The state’s all-black schools remained
substandard, providing few resources to prepare their
students for higher education.
“The 1885 constitution used education to turn black
citizens into a permanent peasant class,” Bassini said. “The
purpose of segregated education was to replace slavery with
indentured servitude.”
Bassini studied Vero Beach Press Journal archives to illustrate
the differences between a school for white students that was
built around the same time as a school for blacks in 1928. The
all-white school was constructed of tile and stucco on land
provided by the school board. The all-black Gifford School,
funded largely by the Chicago-based Rosenwald Fund on
land donated by a Gifford resident, was a frame building
costing about $10,000, the newspaper reported. No price was
reported for the other school.
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