Last summer, Reveal host Al Letson returned home to Jacksonville, Florida, to find a changed state. The Republican Legislature had passed a slate of laws targeting minority groups. Educators could now face criminal penalties over the material they teach regarding gender and sexuality, and schools across the state were banning books about queer families, transgender youth and Black history. There were also repeated instances of racist and anti-Semitic speech, including Nazis waving swastikas in front of Disney World. All of this contributed to the NAACP issuing a rare travel advisory stating that “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.” Then on Aug. 26, a White supremacist killed three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville.
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attended a vigil for the victims, he was met with boos and mourners shouting, “Your policies caused this.”
In this episode, Letson digs into the policies DeSantis and the Legislature have passed in recent years and their effects on Black Floridians and other people of color. He speaks with a history teacher who says the new laws have made it harder to educate students, as well as a mother who describes books being removed from her daughter’s classroom and rules barring students from sharing books with friends at school. Letson also interviews state Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican who championed many of the new policies, including the Stop WOKE Act, which restricts how racism and history are taught in schools.
In the final segment, Letson examines redistricting in the state. In 2022, DeSantis vetoed maps drawn by the Republican Legislature, and the governor’s office instead drew new maps that got rid of two Black-dominated districts and increased the number of Republican-leaning districts. Those maps, which were subsequently passed by lawmakers, are now being battled over in both state and federal court. To understand the debate, Letson speaks with reporter Andrew Pantazi of the Jacksonville news organization The Tributary, as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Fine defends the new maps, saying they’re designed to challenge Florida’s Constitution, which he argues requires “racial gerrymandering.” Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon says the new maps violate Florida’s constitutional protections of racial minorities and their ability to “elect representatives of their choice.”
Photos
Dig Deeper
Read: How Ron DeSantis Blew Up Black-Held Congressional Districts and May Have Broken Florida Law (ProPublica)
Read: ‘The point in intimidation’: Florida teachers besieged by draconian laws (The Guardian)
Listen: Ungerrymandering Florida (Planet Money)
Watch: “Ax Handle Saturday: 50 Years Later” (Bill Retherford, Jacksonville Historical Society)
Credits
Reporter and host: Al Letson | Producer: Ashley Cleek | Editor: Brett Myers | Fact checker: Nikki Frick | General counsel: Victoria Baranetsky | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Special thanks: WJCT’s Hope McMath, Stacy Bennett, David Luckin and Heather Schatz
Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Park Foundation.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Al Letson: | From The Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Recently after a long battle with cancer, my best friend passed away and I felt called to come back home to just be close to the place where we became men to together. In the summer of 2023, I went back to my hometown Jacksonville, Florida. I feel like the St. John’s River that cuts through the city runs in my bloodstream. It’s home. When I was younger I just wanted to get as far away from the city as I could. As a Black kid growing up in the South, I was surrounded by Confederate flags schools named after White supremacists and all the gentle and not so gentle reminders to stay in your place. I left, but home is like a gravity well, and no matter how far I got from it always pulled me back when I was younger I didn’t know what to call it, but I do now. It’s love. I spent the summer in Jacksonville. |
| I’m Al Letson. You’re listening to First Coast Connect and we are going to have a robust conversation today. Today… And while I was there I picked up a part-time gig at the local NPR affiliate WJCT, my home station as the interim host of their call-in show. And we got Frances in Springfield. Frances, how are you this morning? | |
| Speaker 2: | I’m fine Al, how are you? |
| Al Letson: | I’m good. Thanks for calling. |
| Speaker 2: | That’s good. The comment that I wanted to make is that we have to make sure that people understand prejudice and what racism, what it looks like, what it feels like… |
| Al Letson: | I know my city and state and like everywhere, it’s got its problems and on the morning show we talked about it, everything from changes in education- |
| Speaker 3: | And I am terrified too for the teachers because a teacher is there to teach, right? A teacher is there to teach facts. |
| Al Letson: | To the debate over Confederate monuments. |
| Speaker 4: | You got people, man, around here talking about they want to pass a law and spend money to keep someone from taking down monuments and want to bring back those racist monuments. |
| Al Letson: | A lot of times we hit on racism and some listeners weren’t too happy. And Vicki emailed, seems like every conversation is now about race and discrimination. I hate this station has become one-sided. Interesting comment, Vicki, interesting comment. And as much as I love my home, it’s an honest love because sometimes it can feel like the place I love so much doesn’t love me back. |
| Speaker 5: | Flyers with hate speech found outside of local homes on Jacksonville’s South side. |
| Al Letson: | Over the past few years there have been repeated almost regular instances of racist and anti-Semitic speech across Florida. Nazis have stood in front of Disney World waving swastikas and there have been multiple demonstrations in Jacksonville. |
| Speaker 6: | An anti-Semitic group took to the overpass on I-95 near university Boulevard yesterday to share words of hate. |
| Al Letson: | Each racist act building to the next. |
| Speaker 7: | Just yesterday, take a look right there, anti-Semitic messages were projected on the outside wall of this Jacksonville, Florida stadium during- |
| Al Letson: | In May 2023, the NAACP issued a warning that Black, LGBTQ, and people of color should not travel to Florida. It wasn’t safe. And then three months later. |
| Speaker 8: | I want to get you breaking news now out of Jacksonville. A shooting there on the city’s west side has now resulted in a number of fatalities. That’s according to Jacksonville mayor- |
| Al Letson: | August 26, 2023, a White supremacist murders, three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville. By now many people won’t even remember it. It’s just another day. Another mass shooting. Time can move so fast, but for me that day, I can’t let it go. |
| Speaker 9: | Police say the shooter left three different manifestos detailing his hate toward Black people. |
| Al Letson: | The names of the victims, Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, Angela Michelle Carr, and AJ Laguerre Jr. |
| Sheriff T.K. Waters: | Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people. |
| Al Letson: | During a press conference, the sheriff quoted from the shooter’s manifesto, which included a racial slur. |
| Sheriff T.K. Waters: | He wanted to kill (bleep), that’s one and only time, I’ll use that word. |
| Speaker 11: | The emotion here in this predominantly African-American community is still pretty raw. Some people are fearful, a lot of people are angry and many people feel as if their community here in Jacksonville is being terrorized. |
| Al Letson: | This tragedy is a deadly manifestation of a growing problem in the state. Like I said, I’ve seen my share of racism and hatred in Florida, but what’s been happening recently, it feels different, more targeted, more intense. In the past I’ve always had clarity. There were places and parts of town I just didn’t go to because I knew I wasn’t welcome there. But when a racist mass shooter drives to a Black neighborhood to kill Black people or when Nazis show up at Disney World, whatever clarity I had is gone. There’s nowhere that’s safe. I want to understand what’s driving this change because this is my city, my state, my heart, and as I try to figure it out, I want to take you along with me. In the wake of the murders, people wanted to do something to be close to each other for support, vigils, prayer circles, protests were happening all over the city. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came to Jacksonville to attend one of these gatherings. |
| Speaker 12: | Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is here. We’re going to ask the governor if he would come down and bring remarks. |
| Al Letson: | In a video DeSantis with his wife by his side walks to the mic. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | Well, thank you for doing this. I want to just say to the councilwoman. Councilwoman, councilwoman, I got you. Don’t worry about it. We’ve already- |
| Al Letson: | The crowd is circled around him an almost immediately people start to boo. The shouts drown out the governor who looks increasingly uncomfortable, someone yells out your policies caused this- |
| Speaker 32: | Your policies caused this. [inaudible 00:06:29] |
| Ju’Coby Pittman: | Okay, listen y’all, let me tell you, we finna put parties aside. |
| Al Letson: | At this point, city councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman comes to DeSantis rescue. She quiets the crowd, admonishes them, and thanks the governor for the money he’s promising the community and welcomes him to finish his speech. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | The fact of the matter is you had a major league scumbag come from Clay County up here and- |
| Al Letson: | A major league scumbag. What strikes me about that is that even in this setting, a vigil for three people who were gunned down by a White supremacist just the day before, DeSantis doesn’t call it what it is, racist violence against Black people. It’s not unique that a politician visits the site of a tragedy and gets booed, but this time I felt like I had a front-row seat to the anger and frustration that led to those boos, some of which is deeply rooted in Jacksonville’s history and the way that history is reverberating in the present. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | Thank you all for praying for us and praying for the families. |
| Al Letson: | One day after the shooting, community leaders gather in a local church. Everyone is in black. People’s faces look tired and drawn, exhausted. State representative Angie Nixon who represents the district where the shooting took place, speaks to the crowd. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | My heart goes out to the families, my heart goes out to the entire community. |
| Al Letson: | Nixon was also at the other vigil where people booed Governor DeSantis. In fact, she was standing behind him as he spoke, giving him the side eye. The two politicians have history, their agendas and vision for Florida are diametrically opposed. On this morning in the church, Nixon talks about the mass shooting in the context of civil rights. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | Tomorrow will be the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington and we are still continuing to fight the same oppressive fights, the same bigotry that my mama had to fight, that my grandmother had to fight. |
| Al Letson: | And she specifically connects it to the long history of racism here in Jacksonville. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | It is not lost on me that today is the anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday. |
| Al Letson: | Axe Handle Saturday. The day after the mass shooting was the anniversary of a violent infamous event in the city’s history. In the summer of 1960, in the midst of the civil rights struggle, students staged sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in downtown Jacksonville. |
| Speaker 16: | This is a southern city where department stores refuse lunch counter service to negro students. |
| Al Letson: | These young Black protesters were denied service, spat on, called racist slurs, and assaulted, but they persisted. Their protests lasted for weeks, but on August 27th of that year, local White supremacists had had enough. Over 200 White men armed with ax handles and baseball bats attacked the protesters in a violent bloody rage. Local papers barely covered the violence. When the White mayor of Jacksonville was interviewed soon after he denied that the attack even happened. |
| Speaker 17: | Mayor, were you surprised that this outbreak? In the first place that was not uncontrolled fighting that broke out, let’s get the record straight. The police were successful in placing themselves between the two groups. |
| Al Letson: | And so the story got buried deep, like so deep that I grew up in Jacksonville, lived there for decades and I didn’t hear about it until maybe 2010. It felt like it was hidden. Back at the church, less than 24 hours after the Dollar General’s shooting Representative Nixon has that buried history on her mind. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | We must be clear. It was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people. We cannot sit idly by as our history is being erased, as our lives are being devalued. |
| Al Letson: | When Representative Nixon tells the crowd our history is being erased, she’s not just talking about the cover-up of Ax Handle Saturday, she’s talking about Governor DeSantis policies in the present. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | Because let’s be clear, that is red meat, to a base of voters that is a dog whistle, that wokeness that they want to die is Black people. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | We fight the woke in the legislature, we fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die. |
| Al Letson: | Over the past few years, DeSantis and the Republican dominated legislature have passed bill after bill targeting minority groups. Those policies have all but banned books in schools about queer families, transgender youth, Black history, and criminalized what teachers can and cannot teach. And if a teacher goes against it, well, the penalty is severe. |
| Speaker 19: | The penalty that you’re dealing with in these circumstances, I think it’s like a class three felony. |
| Al Letson: | A third-degree felony for books, that’s coming up when we come back, you’re listening to Reveal. From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. After the Dollar General Massacre, it took me a while to process at all and it wasn’t just me, it was like the city suffered a wound and the community was trying to figure out how to stop the bleeding and how to prevent it from happening again. The only way to do that was to bring light to the pain, to talk about it. |
| Yasmina White: | I did tell my daughter about this shooting at the Dollar General. I felt like that’s important for her to know and be aware of and I know that if she doesn’t hear it from me, she’ll never hear it. |
| Al Letson: | Yeah. |
| Yasmina White: | Probably in 60 years. |
| Al Letson: | This is Yasmina White. She’s a mom who grew up in Jacksonville and like me, she never learned about the violent attack on civil rights protesters known as Ax Handle Saturday until she was an adult. And so she decided to take the opposite approach with her ten-year-old daughter. What do you think of Governor DeSantis visiting the community for a vigil and getting booed? |
| Yasmina White: | I thought the boo was necessary. Him visiting was, in my opinion, inappropriate because I don’t know what you’re here for. I mean I know you’re showing up because of the role you’re in, but you’re not here out of sincerity. You can’t possibly be here out of sincerity with everything that you can continue to say about African-American history. |
| Al Letson: | Yasmina is talking about a series of laws that DeSantis has championed that have changed education in the state. New teaching standards around Black history restrictions and bans around discussing sexuality and gender in schools. Yasmina follows politics and she knew about these laws, but the changes in schools have been so all-encompassing that she was still surprised. In her daughter’s fourth grade class some books were suddenly taboo. |
| Yasmina White: | If they’re sitting in the hallway in the morning waiting to be brought in from class or in between like lunch or going to extended day, they can read their own books, but they’re not allowed to share books with classmates. And my daughter has told me we’re not allowed. She’s like, “Yeah, Ms. So-and-so said I can’t share my book with my friends, just solely for me.” |
| Al Letson: | In 2022, DeSantis signed the so-called Curriculum Transparency Act. It allows parents and anyone in the community whether they have kids in that school or not, to report books they feel are inappropriate. Schools are required to hire a certified media specialist, someone to vet books and make a list of the titles that are available to students. After the law passed, school districts were left to figure out how to follow it. Some kept everything as it was, but other districts took a more cautious approach. In Duval County, where Jacksonville is, the school district decided to preemptively remove all books. |
| Yasmina White: | When you go to the library, the media center in the school, it’s in shambles. You can’t even walk in there because books are everywhere, boxes are everywhere. It’s inaccessible. |
| Al Letson: | Parents like Yasmina wondered, what was the plan like when would the books be back? Last school year, there were over 1400 instances of books being banned across the state. 1400. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury envisioned a world on fire, books burned to stop knowledge from being passed on. If Florida was tossing books into bonfires, outrage would spread across the world, but the removal of books in schools is a quieter thing. They just get packed up into boxes and disappear. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | This idea of a book ban in Florida, that somehow they don’t want books in the library, that’s a hoax. |
| Al Letson: | When Governor DeSantis says he’s not banning books, technically he’s not, but in practice the legislation he signed is. The effect of these laws is widespread fear. Educators face a third degree felony with up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for giving students anything deemed pornographic. The language is so vague, it’s often hard to know what that means. For example, the principal of one school was forced to resign after sixth graders were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David as a part of a lesson on the Renaissance. One high school teacher who teaches AP History told us that the cumulative effect of these laws is taking away knowledge, taking away resources from our kids, and not allowing them to think. She says she has three boxes of books in her classroom that she can’t show her students because they haven’t been approved by a media specialist. |
| This teacher didn’t want me to disclose her name. Like many we’ve talked to, she’s afraid of losing her job for speaking out. All of the educators we spoke to said the same thing. The teaching has changed and they’re feeling the weight. You doing all right today, man? | |
| Jorje Botello: | I’m doing a… I was going through a bit of a hard time about a week and a half, two weeks ago, and I just took some time off. Did some re-centering. |
| Al Letson: | This is Jorje Botello. He’s a civics teacher in Okeechobee, Florida, a little town in the center of the state. Jorje has been teaching American History and Civics in middle school here for 20 years. Can you give me the arc? How have things changed since when you first started teaching history to the way you have to teach history now? |
| Jorje Botello: | It is become very difficult. It’s like walking on eggshells. You have to be very careful because of just new legislation that’s been passed about how history should be taught and what should be taught. And there’s parts of it that I personally don’t agree with, so I have to find a way to properly navigate through those areas and content that I teach. |
| Al Letson: | All of this backbending that Jorje has to do is because of a 2022 Florida law called the Stop WOKE Act. This is one of DeSantis signature pieces of legislation. Of course, woke is a word that was originally created by the Black community to describe someone who was with it, paying attention, politically aware. Conservatives have co-opted this word in DeSantis bill, WOKE is an acronym for Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees. The law targets how grade school teachers teach and talk about gender and race in their classrooms. For example, it says that no student can be made to feel guilt, anguish, or psychological distress for things that were done in the past by members of their gender or race. |
| Jorje Botello: | So to make sure I’m in compliance with that law, I just make it a point to always preface every lesson, every conversation when it comes to things like that that now listen, this is not to make you feel bad, that’s not my intention. However, if we don’t learn the history, then we’re bound to repeat it again. |
| Al Letson: | After the Stop WOKE Act was signed into law, the state convened a working group to rewrite African-American history standards. And when the standards came out, there were a few sections that looked well problematic. One says that students should be taught about violence that was perpetrated against and by African Americans following the Civil War. Lots of teachers pointed this out to us because while there is no shortage of massacres of Black communities by White people, and I’m talking about the Tulsa Massacre in Oklahoma, the Draft Riots in New York City, the Camilla Massacre in Georgia, the Wilmington Massacre in North Carolina, Red Summer in Chicago, and in Florida, Rosewood, and that’s not nearly a complete list. And yet outside of rebellions led by enslaved people before the Civil War, there are no massacres of White people by African Americans. |
| It feels like the wording in the standard is at best, tricky and at worse, purposefully deceiving. And the other standards that got a lot of attention require students to be taught that slaves developed skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit. Let’s stop right here. Enslaved people who were brought here had skills. They were trafficked and sold often because of their skills. So this idea perpetuated by the state is factually wrong. | |
| Jorje Botello: | It’s very hard ethically to teach a false narrative, a narrative that is not researched, a narrative that was just made up, a narrative that just takes away from the real issues. When we talked about the Civil War, I said, “I cannot formally as a teacher come out and say the Civil War was fought because of slavery.” I said, “I cannot come out and say that, but I can say that this was a war that was fought to keep this nation of states together despite their historical, geographical, and political differences. But again, you are welcome to research this outside because this is where I have to leave you.” |
| Al Letson: | Right, so you- |
| Jorje Botello: | And the kids, they’re like, “But we want to know more”. |
| Al Letson: | Before the Stop WOKE Act, were you teaching it in the fashion of, yeah, the Civil War happened because of slavery? |
| Jorje Botello: | To the fullest. |
| Al Letson: | None of these laws address one of the fundamental problems in education in the state right now, the massive shortage of qualified teachers. Currently, according to the Florida Department of Education, the state is in need of over 8,000 teachers just to fill open positions. The educators that I’ve spoken to say these laws are making it harder, and so of course I wanted to talk to one of the people who championed these laws. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | I’m state Representative Randy Fine. I have served in the Florida Legislature for seven years, I’m in my final term. |
| Al Letson: | Randy Fine has been described by Florida newspaper as one of DeSantis top woke warriors. He fully supported the Stop WOKE Act, but before that he backed legislation that requires schools to teach about the Holocaust as well as the Ocoee Massacre, a little-known murder of Black Floridians by a White mob in the 1920s. I was curious about why Fine would back one bill that encouraged kids to learn their history and another that many teachers argue does the opposite. Our listeners are familiar with the Holocaust, but the Ocoee Massacre was in the ’20s when White citizens attacked and lynched Black residents, burned down churches, businesses, as a retribution for Black man trying to vote. You were a co-sponsor of that bill. Can you take me through what you wanted that bill to accomplish? |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Sure. Actually I was not a co-sponsor of that bill, I was the sponsor of the bill. It was my bill because this is exactly the sort of thing, the notion that Black Americans were killed for the horrific crime of trying to vote, it’s terrible and I think everyone should know about it. And so I was thrilled to add it to my bill and I’m privileged to be able to have done it. I believe people need to know history, the good and the bad. |
| Al Letson: | So you voted for that for- |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Yes, sponsored it. |
| Al Letson: | But then two years later you backed HB 7, which is known as the Stop WOKE Act, the acronym meeting Stopping Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees. I’m curious, what wrongs specifically do you think were being committed that meant we had to have an act to rectify that? |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Sure. We had a problem in our schools, and I think we do in many places in the country, where people aren’t interested in teaching history, they’re focused on preaching ideology. I want them to learn history, both the good and the bad. And I actually think teaching the bad about American History allows you to focus on the good. The story I like to tell is we are the greatest country in the history of the world. We have the greatest organizing document in the history of the world, The United States Constitution, but within that organizing document was an original sin that said the people that look like you and I can see you, even though we’re being recorded should only count as three fifths of a person. |
| But what’s also part of our history is that the bloodiest war we fought in our history was fought to fix that original sin and the overwhelming number of people who died in that war looked like me. And so to me, that’s the story of America, that we make mistakes and we need to teach them and we need to talk about them, but in many cases people are willing to stand up and fix them. That’s the history I want to teach. | |
| Al Letson: | When you say what you just said about the Civil War, the bloodiest war that Americans have done, I think what you take away from that is that we fought to correct the original sin. And what I take away from that is we did fight to correct the original sin, but the fact that it was the bloodiest war means that those feelings on both sides of it are deeply entrenched, that systemic racism is deeply entrenched in this country. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Well, I don’t know that I agree with that. I think that there are bad things that have happened in our history and I think that we need more time to teach those things and less time sort of talking about how people should feel about them. So those are the kinds of things. |
| Al Letson: | I think one thing that stands out to me that you just said is that the Stop WOKE Act is really about stopping people from telling you how you should feel about this history, but also there’s a part of the bill that’s basically saying that they don’t want White kids to feel embarrassed or bad about the history that has happened. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | I’m glad you brought that up because that is the single largest misnomer about the bill. The bill did not say you cannot teach people things that will make them feel bad. What the bill said is very simple, that people should not be instructed that they must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions in which they played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. It didn’t say you couldn’t teach bad American history. It just said you couldn’t teach slavery and then look at somebody like me and say, “And you should feel bad about it because it’s your fault.” |
| Al Letson: | But do you think that that’s actually happening in schools where schools were talking about slavery and then turning to the White kids saying, “You should feel bad about this.” |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | There were examples of it, yes, there were. I mean, do I think every teacher was doing this in every class all the time? No, but there were examples. |
| Al Letson: | Just a note here. We asked Fine’s office for these examples and they sent us a list of three books. His office claimed these books were critical race theory because they portrayed races in a negative light. All three books were written by Black women and they had nothing to do with critical race theory. Anyway, during our interview, Fine tells me that the Stop WOKE Act and the new history standards actually expanded the teaching of Black history in Florida. Let’s talk about those standards. One of the things that’s said in the standards is that instruction includes how slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit. Do you stand by that? |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | I think that’s inartfully worded is what I would say, and I wish that when this controversy came about, what was simply said was, look, no one thinks slavery was good. The fact that people got some skills while they were slaves doesn’t mean that slavery was good. |
| Al Letson: | I think we could argue that the slaves that came over had skills, that they didn’t receive those skills during slavery, that they were valuable when they came over. They had skills, they understood things and- |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Well, every person’s valuable. And look, I didn’t write the curriculum. |
| Al Letson: | I got you. I’m just saying. They weren’t written by you |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | I understand and look, I don’t think it’s a stupid sentence, so I am not going to disagree with you, but to take 1 out of a 230 page document and basically say, “Hey, we have standards that say slavery was good,” I think is cherry-picking what was in there. There’s no silver lining to slavery. None. Zero. Nothing. Zero. |
| Al Letson: | But even if Fine disagrees with the wording of one of the new history standards, even if he says it’s stupid, the effect is still there. This is what kids are going to be taught and tested on. The AP History teacher we spoke to told us, “I’m having to literally rethink everything I’m about to say because I’m afraid I’m going to offend someone.” This year in fact, she got rid of a lesson she’s long taught about a Civil Rights leader named Bayard Rustin. Rustin is credited with teaching Martin Luther King Jr. the practice of nonviolence. He helped plan the March on Washington and he was also gay. And because he was gay, his contributions have often been omitted from history. Usually at the beginning of every school year, she dives into Rustin’s life, but this year she was scared. She didn’t know her kids or their parents. What if one of them complained that the lesson wasn’t age appropriate because it mentioned Rustin’s sexuality. Because of this new legislation, she could be investigated and even lose her teaching certificate. |
| After the break Florida goes back in time like 100 years and history repeats. That’s next on Reveal. From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. | |
| Speaker 24: | From Jacksonville, Florida, please give a warm Def Poetry welcome to Mr. Al Letson. |
| Al Letson: | Before I got into journalism, I was a slam poet. For all the street ballers worldwide, shh. I was pretty good. Do you hear that that ball bouncing on asphalt, ringing in the emptiness of a small court somewhere near here? |
| But that’s not my point. I traveled all over the world with my poetry, had crazy experiences, met some amazing people, including a poet named Sekou Sundiata. Sekou was one of the most incredible writers and performers I’d ever seen. | |
| Speaker 26: | Two times peace from whence I come, from whence we come, from whence I come, from whence we come that dark woman of a land only knows so well. |
| Al Letson: | We hung out a few times and I soaked up every bit of knowledge he had to offer. Once he told me that the powers that be had broken time, I didn’t understand. But he went on to explain that if we forget the past, if we can’t look back, then in essence time is broken because if you can’t see the past, you can’t understand the present and you definitely can’t look to the future. Sekou passed away years ago, but I think of him often and in reporting this story, his concepts about breaking time kept coming to mind because as I try to understand where my city, where the state is heading, you have to look back to give context to the present or you can’t understand the issues in front of you. The problems we’re facing didn’t start today. The seeds of rising extremism have always been there and while there has been progress in many ways, it’s like the state is moving backwards. Let me show you what I mean. |
| U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek: | I’m making my rounds again today, meeting congressional leaders- |
| Al Letson: | That’s Florida Congresswoman Carrie Meek. It’s 1992. She’s from Tallahassee and the child of sharecroppers, but at this moment, she’s the incoming Florida Congresswoman. |
| U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek: | To work hard. |
| Speaker 28: | Mind if we follow along with you? |
| U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek: | I don’t mind. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t help it if I did. |
| Al Letson: | Meek is dressed in this cool red suit and she walks out of these revolving doors into a bright September morning in Washington D.C. |
| Speaker 28: | I read an article on Roll Call newspaper here in Washington and it called you the first Black woman congresswoman since Reconstruction from Florida. Is that correct? |
| U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek: | That’s true. That’s true, there hasn’t been one. The last congressperson from Florida was Josiah Walls who came here right after slavery and since then there hasn’t been any Black congressperson, male or female from Florida. |
| Al Letson: | In 1992, there were almost 2 million Black Floridians, but the state hadn’t had a Black representative in Congress for over 100 years. It’d be unbelievable if it weren’t true. Carrie Meek isn’t here by chance or accident. It all has to do with redistricting, which in Florida is being fought over again right now. |
| Andrew Pantazi: | I think a lot of reporters rely on what people say and redistricting stories across the country end up becoming he said, she said. Republicans say this map is good. Democrats say this map is bad. |
| Al Letson: | This is my friend reporter, Andrew Pantazi, founder of a news site in Jacksonville called the Tributary of which I’m a board member. Andrew is obsessed with redistricting, his words not mine, because it’s not about feelings and opinions, it’s about data. |
| Andrew Pantazi: | Redistricting more than almost any other story that we can cover as a public policy is a very knowable thing. You can know what they are doing with the map and with the districts, and I think being very clear with people about what a map does, what a district does is really important. |
| Al Letson: | Really important because depending on how you draw a district, what neighborhoods and towns are included or excluded can make a district lean republican or Democrat. A map can spread out minorities so much that they don’t have any political power at all or it can mean a district has a fighting shot at electing minority representation. That’s what happened with Carrie Meek in 1992 and 30 years later in twenty-Twenty-two, Andrew says Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature drew up a pretty good map. |
| Andrew Pantazi: | Republicans were drawing up very fair maps. Democrats for political reasons wanted to denounce the party in power and acts like they were gerrymandered maps. But the facts were those were fair maps that closely aligned with the principles in the state constitution. |
| Al Letson: | And they sent it on to the governor Ron DeSantis. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | I’m here to announce that prior to coming into this press conference, I officially vetoed the congressional redistricting map as I said that I would. |
| Al Letson: | In fact, he tweeted that the legislature’s map was DOA, dead on arrival. DeSantis was clear about what he wanted and he did something no other Florida governor has ever done. He presented legislators with another map, a map drawn by his office. DeSantis’ map got rid of two of the state’s, Black-dominated districts. He zeroed in on one congressional district in north Florida, a long skinny slice of the state that meanders from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. It was specifically created in the ’90s to gather enough Black Floridians to give them a fighting chance of electing a Black representative to Congress and for DeSantis, this is the problem. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | It will though have North Florida drawn in a race-neutral manner. I mean, we are not going to have a two-hundred-mile gerrymander that divvies up people based on the color of their skin. |
| Al Letson: | Race-neutral. Because according to DeSantis, taking race into account is racist. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | And that is wrong, that is not the way we’ve governed in the state of Florida. And so that will be that, and obviously that will be litigated. |
| Al Letson: | And it is being litigated because Florida’s Constitution specifically protects districts like this one. It requires that whenever the legislature draws new congressional maps that they don’t take away minority community’s ability to elect “Representatives of their choice.” DeSantis map seems to ignore this. In fact, his map means that minority communities will likely lose political power. Previously, the state had four districts with enough Black voters to swing an election, but DeSantis map cuts that in half, spreading Black Floridians out into two different districts, diluting their numbers and their power. In the spring of 2022 DeSantis calls a special session so that the legislature can vote on the map his office has proposed. |
| Speaker 30: | Members, the house will come to order. Members please take your seats. |
| Al Letson: | To be clear, everyone pretty much knows this map is going to pass. Republicans have a supermajority in Florida and they’re rallying behind the Governor, but that doesn’t stop Democrats from registering their opposition. |
| Sen. Tracie Davis: | As you all know, I represent the city of Jacksonville and the city of Jacksonville has had a long exhaustive history when it comes to race. |
| Al Letson: | This is state Senator Tracie Davis. She’s a Democrat and a Black woman. |
| Sen. Tracie Davis: | I was born during a time when Jacksonville still has segregated schools, and it was not until 2018 that the City of Jacksonville officially recognized the terrible events that took place on Ax Handles Saturday. Colleagues, my community is angry. |
| Al Letson: | Davis represents the neighborhood where the Dollar General shooting happened. |
| Sen. Tracie Davis: | You hate when we use the word disenfranchisement. You turn your back, you look the other way. But you have to realize that is exactly what this is. You know this is unconstitutional and you know this is unacceptable and you know that it’s offensive. |
| Al Letson: | Take me through the day of the vote on DeSantis maps. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | I mean, we had spoke out against it and things like that. We debated it and I was so nervous. |
| Al Letson: | This again is state representative Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | I got up, pulled one of the shirts off that I had and revealed a shirt that said, stop the Black attacks and started saying, “When democracy is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.” |
| Speaker 33: | The time has- |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | When votes are under attack, what do we do? We stand up, we fight back. |
| Al Letson: | Nixon and a few other Black legislators walk down the center aisle and sit on this thick carpet that has the seal of the state on it. They’re live-streaming their protests, chanting. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | And we kind of caused the process to stop. |
| Speaker 34: | We are in formal recess |
| Speaker 30: | Members, we are back in session. The clerk will unlock the machine and members will proceed to vote. |
| Rep. Angie Nixon: | And they voted to pass some unconstitutional maps that stripped Black minority representation here in our state. |
| Speaker 30: | 68 yays, 38 nays, Mr. Speaker, show the bill passes. |
| Al Letson: | The map passes and has some immediate effects. It’s a boon for Republicans during the 2022 midterm elections. Florida elects four more Republicans to Congress, the largest partisan increase in any state, including that district in North Florida that DeSantis is so focused on. It elects a Republican to Congress for the first time in 30 years. The other effect one that everyone knew was going to happen, that map becomes the focus of multiple lawsuits in both the state and Federal Court. Are you trying to challenge the Florida Constitution? I mean, is that the goal of this map? |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | Well, I’m not doing anything, but yes, that was the goal of the map. |
| Al Letson: | Again, this is Representative Randy Fine who I spoke to earlier about the Stop WOKE Act. He was also instrumental in passing this new redistricting map. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | The Florida constitution requires us to racially gerrymander. The districts had to be gerrymandered, legally had to be gerrymandered in order to make sure that certain minority groups could elect the “candidate of their choice.” And so that’s why there was a district that literally stretched hundreds and hundreds of miles, it looked like a snake. |
| Al Letson: | Right, but Florida had not elected an African-American to Congress from Reconstruction until the 1990s. So the map’s specific purpose was to right that wrong and the Florida Constitution solidified that in the rule. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | The Florida Constitution required racial gerrymandering and that’s the debate. I understand the argument. I believe that all gerrymandering is bad, but I believe that, I don’t think racism is good in any form or fashion in saying I have to come up with a way to make 35% of the people be able to elect the candidate that they want, means that the other 65% don’t get a vote. And that is what the amendment required. And I understand your argument. Your argument is, look, I want to make sure a Black person is in Congress from Florida and that’s a noble enterprise. |
| Al Letson: | Let me just say this and please correct me if I’m wrong, but I just want to be clear. You’re calling a correction to racist policies, you’re saying that that correction is racist. |
| Rep. Randy Fine: | I’d like to believe that we live in a world where we don’t have to engage in racial preferencing in order to try to remedy the past. I think that we should draw the districts and let the chips fall where they may. |
| Al Letson: | But we know where the chips fall and we know exactly how they land. After this nation’s bloody Civil War a new day dawned on America, Reconstruction. A time of hope for the formerly enslaved people who built this country but were robbed of the fruits of their labor. Black folks across the nation began to take part in politics and have their voice heard, including Josiah Walls, Florida’s first Black congressman. Representative Walls was elected to three terms in Washington, but every time his victories were contested and he was eventually unseated by a former Confederate general. It would be more than 100 years before the next Black representative from Florida Carrie Meek would be sworn in. That’s history. This is now. |
| Gov. Ron DeSantis: | And you know what else we did? We required teaching stories of inspiration regarding Floridians, but particularly African-Americans. And I think that’s a better way to lift people up, showcase people that have defied the odds and have made great contributions. Don’t tell somebody that you’re oppressed and you have no chance in life. Why would you work hard if you don’t have a chance to be able to do? So it’s a positive view and I think that is the way we need to be doing it, rather than always trying to say that the country’s bad and all that stuff. |
| Al Letson: | Breaking time doesn’t sound like glass shattering, it sounds like this like polite, seemingly hopeful conversation that conveniently doesn’t take history into account. Ron DeSantis says he wants to highlight what Black Americans have overcome, but his policies obscure what we actually overcame. It’s like celebrating Representative Meek for being elected but not explaining why her election was so monumental. Without that context, you might believe that we are living in a post-racial society, but the massacre at the Dollar General is a reminder that we are not. The past is not behind us, it lives and breathes and demands to be taken into account whether we like it or not. Being at home in Jacksonville, watching all of this play out from the rise of extremism to changes in education to redistricting efforts, it’s a lot. And yet folks in the Black community and the allies I’ve talked to were steadfast and believed that change was possible. And I got to be honest with you, I wasn’t so sure, but a couple weeks ago something happened. |
| Speaker 35: | I think it’s going to happen. |
| Al Letson: | The last monument to the Confederacy in Jacksonville came down. |
| Speaker 35: | Oh, yes the- |
| Al Letson: | Now, if you don’t live in the South, you might not understand what kind of struggle it’s been. At times it felt like those statues would forever be a part of this city, lording over public spaces. Watching videos of the removal I remember what it was like being a Black boy growing up in a city with these monuments, Confederate flags, and schools named after White supremacists erected to remind me and people who look like me to stay in our place. |
| Speaker 36: | Let it go. |
| Speaker 37: | Activism works. |
| Speaker 36: | No, this is for all of us. |
| Speaker 37: | This is for the entire community of Jacksonville. |
| Speaker 35: | It’s moving, its moving. |
| Speaker 37: | We have worked so hard for this. |
| Speaker 35: | Crank it up. |
| Al Letson: | I never imagined it would change but it did. |
| Speaker 38: | [inaudible 00:48:35] |
| Al Letson: | Our lead producer for this week’s show is Ashley Cleek. Brett Myers edited the show. Special thanks to Stacey Bennett, David Luckin, Heather Schatz, and the entire staff at WJCT. Also, Hope McMath. Nikki Frick is our fact-checker. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production managers are the Wonder Twins, Steven Rascon and Zulema Cobb. Score and sound designed by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando, my man yo, Arruda. Our CEO is Robert Rosenthal. Our COO is Maria Feldman. Our interim executive producers are Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis. Our theme music is by Kamarado, Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Reveal is a co-production of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember there is always more to the story. |
Black in the Sunshine State is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
