PROGRAM SUCCESS – MAY 2009
Attorney Earl Johnson
and Attorney Leander
Shaw (who became Chief
Justice of the Florida
Supreme Court) with
oversight of the NAACP
Legal Defense and Education Fund, created by
Thurgood Marshall. Mass
meetings were held at
night at various black
RHP with Roy Wilkins, Executive Director, churches such as St.
NAACP, along members of Jacksonville Branch, Stephens A.M.E. Church
and Mrs. Ruby Hurley, Regional Director, South- under the leadership of
east Region VII, (third person from the right).
Rev. J.S. Johnson. In
these meetings, you
would see and hear such nationally know civil rights leaders as Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Ruby Hurley.
If you were fortunate to attend the Jacksonville Branch NAACP
Freedom Fund Banquet in 1963, you would have heard Medgar
Evers, Field Secretary of the Mississippi State Conference NAACP.
Mr. Evers and my father met while in college. They had agreed to
speak at the banquet of each other’s branch. However, in the summer
of 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
In 1964, 1965, and 1966, together with the Ministerial Alliance,
Rutledge successfully led two-day school boycotts protesting inadequate facilities, wherein parents kept
their children home from school in support of the NAACP’s efforts to improve
education. In response, the Duval County
School Board sued the NAACP Branch.
The Courts ruled in favor of the NAACP
in 1968.
These times were marked with violence
and threats. Often, we received hate mail,
and threatening phone calls promising us
that we would not live out the year,
(despite changing our unlisted phone
number several times). During the height
of outbreaks of racial violence, my brothers and I would stay with my uncle and
Rutledge Henry Pearson
aunt, Lloyd and Mildred Pearson, Jr., with
family.
their six children, for protection.
These times did not dampen my father‘s enthusiasm and commitment to the NAACP. In 1964, the Florida State Conference of
NAACP Branches elected Rutledge as State President, after serving
as State Vice President in 1962. Because of his outstanding leadership, he was elected to serve as Chairman of the Southeast Regional
NAACP in 1965. He was further nominated for the position of “Member” to the 60-member National Board of Directors of the NAACP at
the 1965 National Convention and was elected in January 1966, to
serve a three-year term. While serving on the Board, he was appointed
to the 15-member Executive Committee of the National Board of
Directors. In 1965, he was appointed to the Florida Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
In August 1966, my father resigned his teaching position and
accepted a position with the Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Dyehouse
Workers International Union. On May 1, 1967 while traveling alone,
he met his unexpected death, which is still suspicious today, in an
automobile accident while traveling to Memphis, Tennessee to assist
striking laundry workers in their fight for better working conditions.
This was one year before the arrival of Dr. King in Memphis to assist
the striking garbage workers.
PAGE 17
As the subject of a cover story by
JET Magazine for the issue of April 30,
1964, when questioned if he liked the
life of a Florida Civil Righter, Rutledge
was quoted as saying, “It’s just like
skimming off hot grounders at third —
- but, without the glove. What counts is
your determination and throwing arm. ”
Although his life ended in 1967 at the
age of 36, his legacy has continued on
through the people he touched everyday.
It is from this time, we in Jacksonville
have been fortunate to see his co-horts
in the struggle become leaders in our
local government. I am speaking of
Rutledge Pearson
such fierce freedom fighters, as Atty.
Earl Johnson, Sr., and Sally Mathis, who were the first members of
the City Council, representing their districts and the county at large,
or Dr. Arnett Girardeau, Jacksonville‘s first black male elected to the
Florida Senate and former First Vice President of the Jacksonville
Branch, NAACP. Since they left office, many men and women of our
community have stepped forward to take up the mantle of leadership
and carry the banner for justice and freedom, such as U.S. Congresswoman Corrine Brown, retired U. S. Postmaster of Atlanta, Marjorie
Meeks Brown, or former City Manager of Oakland California, Henry
Gardner, his students at Isaiah Blocker Junior High.
His legacy lives through such citizens as Dr. Charles Simmons,
Simmons Pediatrics, and sponsor of the A-B Honor Roll Party to recognize and encourage his young patients to do well, (his student at
Darnell Cookman Junior High). And, his legacy is remembered in
words through Rodney Hurst, Sr., former Jacksonville City Councilman, now author of It Was Never About A Hot Dog And A Coke®!,
A personal account of the 1960 sit-in demonstrations in Jacksonville,
Florida and Ax Handle Saturday, (WingSpan Press, 2008), his student at Isaiah Blocker Junior High. There are many who are not
named here that have remembered his message and are carrying on
his work of community action.
2009 marks 100 years of change, since the founding of the
NAACP. It started with President Obama becoming the first African
American President; with Eric Holder becoming the first African
NAACP members marching through downtown Jacksonville.
American U.S. Attorney General; with Michael Steele, formerly
Lieutenan Ё