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or-fight laws.
“Quickly, it became evident that wartime ‘work or fight’
laws targeted African-Americans,” Mormino wrote. “The
sheriff of Martin County announced, ‘It is going to be the
policy of this office to cooperate with farmers, saw-mill men
and others doing essential work to see that they get all the
help available.’ ”
Caldwell’s handling of a 1945 lynching in a rural north
Florida county, in which he defended the officials involved
and contended the crime was a murder but not a lynching,
brought widespread criticism from the northern press and
large Florida newspapers.
“The Northern press lampooned an embattled Southern
governor who refused to dismiss officials who seemed, at
best, insensitive and incompetent, and at worst, bigots,” Mormino
wrote. “Florida’s most prominent newspapers criticized
Caldwell’s handling of the incident, branding the governor as
stubborn, tone deaf and even embarrassing.”
MANY RACIAL ISSUES
Caldwell also defended the white primary, which barred
African Americans from voting in the primaries and registering
as members of the Democratic Party, even though the U.S.
Supreme Court had ruled against this practice.
“I look at the primary as being similar to a club,” Caldwell
said. “I feel in the primaries each party has the right to determine
its own membership.”
Racial issues also clouded major league baseball’s spring
training in Florida, which resumed after a wartime hiatus.
Controversy arose when the Brooklyn Dodgers announced
they had signed African American shortstop Jackie Robinson
in 1947.
“Never before in this state or any other Southern state has
a Negro played with whites in organized baseball,” The New
York Times reported. Robinson somehow survived the spring
of discontent, locked parks and protests, Mormino wrote.
In 1948, Dodgers owner Branch Rickey hammered out a
sweetheart deal with the city of Vero Beach to acquire the old
Naval Air Station for a dollar a year as a permanent training
facility for the team.
“For the shrewd Rickey the deal was not only profitable
but it allowed ‘the Mahatma’ to integrate his team quietly
and under the supportive cloak of Dodgertown and the small
city of Vero Beach,” Mormino said.
Three months later, Caldwell threw out a first-pitch ceremonial
ball.
Mormino drew heavily from Caldwell’s papers, official
records, interviews with journalists and others who knew
Caldwell. He also found a wealth of information in archives
of newspapers, whose headlines alone are worth a look:
“Gainesville Jammed with Students, Vets and Babies,” from
the Tampa Morning Tribune, Sept. 11, 1946; “North and South
Florida Fight Renewed,” St. Petersburg Times, June 2, 1945;
Orlando Tells Tallahassee It Doesn’t Want Capital,” Tampa
Morning Tribune,” July 12, 1945, and others, many about issues
long resolved or forgotten.
The author weaves it all together to present an interesting
biography of a Southern politician and the times in which
he lived, and his failure to adjust to increasing calls for racial
equality.
“He was an exemplary figure, a man of his times, but the
times changed, and he was incapable or unwilling to accept
and adjust to new ideas, laws and attitudes,” Mormino wrote.
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