Bob was the Keynote Speaker at the C.K. Steele Luncheon

Leon County Commissioner Bob Rackleff has long been committed to racial justice in this community. He marched with Rev. C. K. Steele from Quincy to Tallahassee in 1972 to demand that Governor Reubin Askew protect the voting rights of African-Americans in Gadsden, Jefferson and Leon Counties. Inspired by the quiet strength of Rev. Steele, he put his commitment to racial justice to work as Executive Director of the Florida Commission on Human Relations until he moved to Washington DC in 1974.

Rackleff there served as speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, after working for U.S. Sen. Edmond Muskie, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, and Labor Secretary Ray Marshall. In 1981, he moved to New York City to be chief speechwriter at Time Inc., before returning to Tallahassee to continue his career as a consulting speechwriter for numerous corporate clients, such as Time Warner, Allstate Insurance, the Business Roundtable, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

He was elected Leon County Commissioner, District 5, in 1998 and re-elected twice. He recently received the President’s Volunteer Service Award for traveling several times to New Orleans’s Ninth Ward in 2006 to repair flooded homes and bring families back to that stricken city. Rackleff continues to believe that racial justice is attainable and works toward that goal.

Rackleff earned a bachelor's and master's degree in history at Florida State University, where he also completed all requirements but a dissertation for a doctorate in history. He is a retired Naval Intelligence officer. He is married to Esther Moring, a senior nurse with Doctors Without Borders, and is the father of three grown children.

Remarks by Commissioner Bob Rackleff at the
Rev. C. K. Steele Scholarship Foundation Annual Luncheon
Tallahassee, Florida
February 24, 2007

Thank you for the kind introduction. It’s a great pleasure be here to help honor the memory of this great man – one the giants of this community and of the Civil Rights Movement.

Four decades ago, I knew and was inspired by Reverend Steele. I learned from him just about everything I needed to know about courage and commitment. I’m still trying to live up to the standard he set – and falling short far too often.

Reverend Steele was lion-hearted, but he wasn’t alone in his courage – and this is important to remember.

There were thousands of black and white citizens here who followed his leadership – from the bus boycotts of the 1950s – the integration of lunch counters, movie theaters, and public schools in the 1960s – and voting rights and economic rights well into the 1970s. Some of you are here today, and I want to thank you.

My best memory of working with Reverend Steele was in 1972, when black citizens of Gadsden County faced decades-old barriers to full citizenship. Only a small percentage of black residents were registered to vote. In a majority-black county, there were no black elected officials, and no prospect of them ever being elected. They were excluded by a combination of subtly racist policies – such as very restricted hours at the supervisor of elections office – and overt intimidation, even violence.

With local leaders there like John Hutley and the late Fred Youmans and others, the NAACP and SCLC organized a voter registration drive in Gadsden County in 1972 that I took part in.

After several weeks of frustrated attempts to register black voters – stymied by the resistance of the white leadership of Gadsden County – we marched on U.S. 90 from Quincy to the Capitol building in Tallahassee to draw attention to this injustice and demand opening up the voter books to black citizens. Needless to say, it was a long walk.

Reverend Steele was at the head of the column the whole way – and after we reached the Capitol, he spoke forcefully and eloquently to a crowd of hundreds. Fortunately, Gov. Reubin Askew was listening, because in a matter of days, the voter books were moved to the downtown fire station in Quincy, and the hours were extended, including Saturday mornings.

Within months, we registered thousands of new voters and began a string of electoral victories for black candidates in Gadsden County that continues today.

One of the results of my involvement was that later that year I became the Executive Director of the Florida Commission on Human Relations later that year – where I could implement some of Reverend Steele’s agenda as state policy under Governor Reubin Askew.

I could go on about these experiences, but I’m not here only to reminisce.

I want instead to take the rest of my time to describe two aspects of black history that don’t get enough attention – the slave economy and its legacy – and the racial intolerance that reigned supreme here until just a few years ago. I’m speaking both as an elected official but also as a historian – just a dissertation shy of a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Florida State University.

First, the slave economy.

Most Americans think of slavery, if at all, as only part of our antebellum economy – and relatively unimportant to the rest of the North American continent.

To open your eyes to that myth, let me recommend that you read Prof. David Brion Davis’s book, Inhuman Bondage, a history of slavery in North America. He establishes that slavery was not just part of the American economy – it was the American economy – which he documents with overwhelming evidence.

Well, I think you get my point: Slavery was the central reality of 19^th-century America.

Make no mistake, slavery was also the reason for the Civil War. The South was a slave empire which demanded the right to expand ever-westward to prevent being overwhelmed by faster-growing free states. Southern leaders even openly discussed invading and annexing Cuba to expand American slavery.

And when it was clear that the national tide had turned against slavery, the South launched our nation’s greatest catastrophe – the Civil War – to protect the institution that underpinned the Southern economy and society.

Let me repeat: Slavery was the reason for the Civil War. The historical record is overwhelming and damning – Congressional and state legislative debates, newspapers and correspondence, the records of the Secession Commission – all these records openly declared that the South went to war to save slavery.

It was only after defeat that Southern leaders changed their tune and made the preposterous claim that they began the way to preserve liberty – a claim that falls victim to the simple question: Whose liberty?

Because of that history, when a private organization came to the Leon County Commission two years ago for a resolution honoring Confederate veterans, Bill Proctor and I spoke out against it, and our colleagues joined with us to deny that request.

I said that they are welcome to celebrate the service of Confederate veterans privately all they want. But our county government has no business in the 21^st century sanctioning a celebration of the defenders of slavery. Likewise, our state government has no business issuing a Confederate battle flag license plate.

Slavery not only provided the South – and much of the nation – with its antebellum prosperity – even today we each benefit in some way from the labor of those slaves.

I came here this morning on streets originally built by black slave labor. I passed by antebellum buildings built by skilled and unskilled slave labor – using lumber, mortar and bricks produced nearby in mills operated by slaves. When I hear the CSX train rumble through town, I know that the tracks were laid by slaves rented out by their owners to the railroad company – its rail bed carved out of clay hills by hand. The going rate paid to their owners was $120 to $150 a year per slave.

We all know the role George Proctor played in designing and building several signature homes here in the 1830s and 40s. Less well known are the oppressive state and local laws that denied him the right to vote or to conduct his business or own property freely. These laws pushed him and other free blacks to the margins of society. These laws ultimately forced Proctor to leave for California, where he later disappeared from historical records.

In other words, slavery is all around us today. It should remind us of injustice and suffering – and debts still to be repaid.

But more important, it should remind us of the many achievements and contributions that slaves were able to accomplish. More often than not, individually and collectively, the long-ago slaves of our community overcame unimaginable challenges to assert their humanity and creativity. To me, that was the real legacy of slavery.

The struggles and abilities of black slaves here created the beginnings of Tallahassee and Leon County. Their labors were largely responsible for what grew out of a Spanish colonial backwater into the most populous county in Florida in 1860. After all, they comprised 60 percent of the population of this region and provided most of its physical labor. They created a heritage of achievement that belongs to everyone today – and we all owe them our gratitude and admiration.

We should also not forget that the peaceful quest for racial justice since then was met time and again by violence, intimidation, and oppression that persisted until recently – so recently that some of us here could either experience it directly or observe it firsthand.

I want to turn to that briefly.

Nothing illustrates this better than the experiences of the man I knew and whom we honor today – Rev. C. K. Steele. The physical dangers and emotional and financial hardships he endured would have deterred almost anyone – but not him.

He faced the constant danger of assassination – of sharing the same fate as Florida’s T. Harry Moore and wife slain in 1951, or Mississippi’s Medgar Evers in 1963, or numerous others assassinated by white terrorists. This was years before the nation seemed to care about Southern white violence against black leaders.

Reverend Steele’s home here was a target for cross burnings, rocks thrown through windows and gunshots fired in the night. I remember visiting his parsonage in 1972 and seeing the bullet holes still there. He once said, “I would put my car up [at night], expecting a bullet to whiz out of the cemetery. But, I had surrendered,” he said. “I was utterly surrendered to live or die. I’m in His cause. I’m in His hands, what do I have to fear?”

Beyond the physical danger, there was constant harassment for him and his followers.

The Florida Senate operated the notorious Johns Committee – chaired by Sen. Charlie Johns – formed to root out and expose Communism in Florida. Failing that, the committee quickly degenerated into harassing civil rights organizations or entrapping the occasional gay state employee. The Johns Committee demanded membership lists and financial records from the NAACP, SCLC, CORE, ICC and others – and threatened contempt citations if they refused. State employees were prohibited from being members of the NAACP.

This was also during FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s secret campaign to discredit civil rights leaders – convinced that Communists had infiltrated the movement thoroughly and were using it to benefit the Soviet Union.

Much of our local white leadership participated willingly in this harassment. Our police chief and sheriff arrested peaceful demonstrators but stood by while white toughs physically assaulted these demonstrators. City Judge John Rudd routinely jailed and fined civil rights activists on trumped-up charges. He and other judges helped target leaders and organizations with false criminal charges or civil damage suits.

Retaliation came from the private sector, as well, against Reverend Steele and his family.

His wife, Lois, was blacklisted for years from a public school teaching job here, despite her excellent qualifications, and had to settle for part time jobs with black employers. She even briefly took a teaching job in Brooklyn, New York, out of desperation.

Despite an unblemished credit record, Reverend Steele could not get a home mortgage until 1972 – and then only after supporters told the Sun Federal president that they would picket his bank if he failed to grant the mortgage request. With few exceptions, white business leaders either supported this or did nothing to stop it.

Then there were the daily reminders of white supremacy that all black citizens endured – the segregated waiting rooms, swimming pools, schools, hospitals, even blood banks – blood banks! – the “white” and “colored” drinking water fountains in front of our courthouse. Remember the gas station rest rooms that came in threes – “men,” “women” and “colored”? White real estate lawyers routinely inserted “whites only” deed restrictions to keep blacks out of their residential neighborhoods.

Threatened by the possibility of racial integration, Tallahassee’s public golf course became the Capital City Country Club in the 1950s rather than allow blacks to play there. The city sold this public facility to this whites-only private club for one dollar – and it remains private today. The legal documents were drafted by the late G. Harold Carswell, who in his brief career as federal judge repeatedly denied justice to black citizens by his rulings.

Segregation here was every bit as pervasive, punitive, and fiercely defended as the Apartheid regime in South Africa. There was no aspect of daily life too trivial to overlook as an opportunity to rob black people of their dignity. I saw it firsthand.

Fortunately, there were exceptions back then, albeit rare.

Governor LeRoy Collins ennobled us all as a voice of reason and justice – most notably with a speech on statewide television in 1960 in which he called racial segregation immoral and unjust – and established a statewide biracial committee to come up with solutions. He followed that by service as head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Relations Service to help defuse explosive racial confrontations, particularly in Selma, Alabama.

I knew Governor Collins and drew inspiration from him for years. I’m especially proud that we named our public library for him – the LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library.

But he also paid a high price for his decency – when he lost the 1968 election for U.S. Senate to a Republican who used Governor Collins’s enlightened policies against him in openly racial appeals to white voters. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of that opponent in 1968. But, you know what, he wasn’t important.

Perhaps that’s the great reward for the courage and commitment of the men and women we honor during this month – that we remember them – and forget the cowards and thugs.

Long after those cowards and thugs have passed into obscurity, we keep alive the memory of our heroes – men and women who lived their faith, who sacrificed greatly, who walked in the light. That is the greatest reward we can bestow on them. And part of that is what we are doing today.

Let me leave you with this concluding thought: We owe men and women like Rev. C. K. Steele much more than attending annual events like this.

We truly honor him only if we live our lives like he did – by taking risks for justice, by sacrificing our comforts to take needed action, by personally taking on the many unmet challenges that lie ahead, by living our faith as he did.

That is the true lesson of this event – the true lesson of Black History Month – and the charge to us for leading our daily lives in this and the other 11 months of the year.

Let’s live that lesson.

Thank you for being such a good audience – and for helping to make our community a better and more just one.