CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

St. Petersburg is portrayed as a monolithic white American community in its Chamber of Commerce's glossy brochure. Pictures of well tanned prosperous looking white Americans combined with photos of the Barnett Tower, the city's signature building, and aerial shots of the sea coast invite snow bound residents and businesses of the North to come, live in, and enjoy this beautiful tropical waterfront community on the west coast of Florida.

The brochure to which I refer, projects the Chamber of Commerce's image of St. Petersburg. This business organization suggests that this city is "a strong business community that has a quality of life that is second to none and its residents have it all." The Chamber concludes, "St. Petersburg is enjoying a pace of economic investment of historic proportions and it is a city that means business."

There is another view of St. Petersburg that slick brochures do not reveal. The 1990 United States Census data indicate that over 80 percent of the residents who live in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown are African Americans and do not have a quality of life that is second to none. Their income is low. The median income for St. Petersburg during the 1990 census was $27,577. However, one of the neighborhood just west of downtown St. Petersburg had a median earning of $5,500. Figures show that these taxpayers do not have access to "everything that is needed to succeed and enjoy life at its best" as the Chamber's literature suggests.

The economic status of African Americans portrays one dimension in their life. Another aspect of their existence is their unexplored heritage in St. Petersburg. The invisibility of African Americans is poignant in the city's development and tourism policies. Although African Americans geographically are located at the core of St. Petersburg, public officials view them figuratively as peripheral to the growth of the city. Policy makers fear that exposure of this other side of St. Petersburg threatens development and tarnishes the city's tourist image.

The African American community developed in relation to the settlement of St. Petersburg and its tourist trade. Anna Germain and John Donaldson were the first African Americans who settled in St. Petersburg. In 1868, these formerly enslaved African Americans accompanied their employer, Louis Bell, to this coastal area. These descendants married, and raised eleven children. They were later joined by a sizable number of other African American settlers who came during the late 1 800s primarily to help build the city's infrastructure. They laid railroad tracks, built piers and paved streets during that period. Between 1920 and 1930 their migration reached a level that has not been surpassed. During this period, the African American population increased 208.86 percent (St. Petersburg Planning Board: 1955). It rose from 7,393 to 11,980 residents. As St. Petersburg became a winter resort for northern tourists, African Americans arrived to fill a demand for bellhops, waiters, and maids in the hotel and restaurant industries.

Many African Americans made St. Petersburg their permanent homes. They created downtown neighborhoods near the Seaboard train depot and their jobs. Their communities became known as Gas Plant, Little Egypt, Pepper Town and Methodist Town. None of the original neighborhoods have survived. They have been displaced, demolished and are listed in the annals of St. Petersburg's public policy. These areas and the relationships created through them were sacrificed for St. Petersburg's urban redevelopment and tourism projects.

Life in St. Petersburg created, restricted, and challenged African Americans' sense of community. Racism, segregation and other legal policies constricted the community psychologically and physically. A common sense of community was born out of segregation. However, such restrictions limited individual development and self expression. Sit-ins, sanitation strikes, and marches were used by the African American community to challenge segregation during late 1960s and early 1970s. These protests led to the subsequent desegregation of schools and neighborhoods, and in the process the changes altered the community.

By the 1 980s, ten years after desegregation, new types of problems affected the African American community. The City designated three of the oldest African American settlements contiguous to downtown as blighted slums to attract a baseball team and upscale tourists. This action included an initiation of the City's downtown redevelopment plan that removed over 2,000 African American families from downtown neighborhoods. Also, during this period, growing numbers of African American youths in St. Petersburg became involved with crack cocaine. The Pinellas County medical examiner reports that during 1988, African Americans under eighteen years of age comprised 28.5% of the homicides in St. Petersburg and surrounding communities (Bedore 1991). This ethnic group included only 9.16 percent of the county residents during that period (Juvenile Welfare Board 1988). Law enforcement reports indicate that 1,266 African American adolescents in St. Petersburg under 18 years old were arrested in 1987 during a 9 month period (Florida Department of Law Enforcement 1988). African American neighborhoods are so disrupted by youth violence, that many leaders in the community conclude that African Americans youths in St. Petersburg are destroying the gains that were acquired during the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties. Little more than a century after African Americans settled in St. Petersburg, they wrestle with how to save their children, instill them with African American values, and preserve their ethnic neighborhoods. All the while, the City struggles to distance its image from its darker residents.

Ahistorical approaches such as "Just Say No" campaigns and incarceration are among the methods used to resolve problems facing African American juveniles in St. Petersburg. Many African Americans and program developers have assumed that youths have created the social chaos. Few citizens have considered the teenagers' status as a reflection of historical conditions. The steps taken seldom have included historical analyses of the political economy that influenced the world views of the youths and their elders.

Political economy is defined as a paradigmatic formula for examining how the nexus of economics, ideologies, and politics affect social processes and relationships in society. Known as historical determinism, political economy emphasizes the forces of production and locates the economy at the temporal intersection of a synchronic dimension of historical process and change (Reed 1988:34). Marvin Harris (1979:53) argues that political economy is an organization of reproduction, production, exchange, and consumption within and between states. He asserts that an exploration of urban hierarchies, political organizations, education, police control, corporations, division of labor, enculturation, and classes permit an understanding of the political economy of a culture (Harris 1979:53). Economic and political systems are determinants of the social structure, and the social structure in turn reinforces the political and economic system (Sherman 1987: 50-51). Political economy mediates relationships and controls reproduction and production between groups within a society (Applebaum 1987).

Cultural values, beliefs, and world views are influenced by the need to survive psychologically and physically in a social structure that is molded by economic and political systems which are intertwined in modern societies (Clark 1991 :19). Harris (1979) defines the theoretical underpinnings of political economy as cultural materialism. He suggests that a synthesis of economics and politics determines human behavior (Harris 1979:80). Drawing on the theoretical assumptions of Malinowski's functionalism and Marxism, Harris (1979:80) argues that "the mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life...." He concludes that social existence determines people's consciousness.

Harris (1979:53) proposes that political economy exists in a tripartite scheme -- infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. He classifies political economy under the rubric of structure. However, he acknowledges that it is supported by the infrastructure which is driven by subsistence needs of humans and the ideological and mental goals and values of the superstructure. Therefore, it is assumed that political economy cannot exist without the incorporation of human needs and ideological beliefs. Conversely, political economy shapes human needs and values, beliefs and goals.

Race undergirds the political economy among African Americans in St. Petersburg. Racism forms the base of economic schemes that deliberately retard the development of the African American community physically and psychosocially. Promoted through segregation, then desegregation, tourism and urban redevelopment, such construct creates blight and contributes to the destruction of families and neighborhoods -- the preservers of values, customs, and other intangible elements of culture. The pervasive influence of racism undermines a sense of self, devalues the cultural heritage of African Americans, and encourages self destructive behaviors such as drug abuse and violence among young African Americans in St. Petersburg. The political economy of St. Petersburg effectively maintains a culture embedded with racism that influences the world views of African Americans.

The capacity of African Americans to overcome racism and to ameliorate the negative effects of the political economy in St. Petersburg depends not only upon creating laws, but also on African Americans understanding their cultural heritage and collective worth. It is necessary that African Americans know who they are, comprehend the forces which shape their existence, and realize their ability to mobilize themselves politically and economically. Recognizing and using the power of ethnicity are acts of determination for disfranchised groups. Ethnicity is an internal dimension that provides groups with a sense of belonging to a collective, reinforced through values, beliefs, and customs to ensure their physical and psychological survival (Barth 1969; DeVos 1975; Roosens 1989). An acknowledgement and an embrace of African American ethnicity place them in a proactive position and at the center of their world.

The basic premise of my dissertation is that knowledge of an ethnohistorical context of the political economy of ethnicity among African Americans is needed for them to understand their cultural heritage and the power that lies therein. This document incorporates an understanding African American values, beliefs, and customs in the context of the changing conditions which shape them. This study implies that ethnicity among African Americans does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, the conditions which African Americans confront mold their ethnic identity.

Four major processes shape this dissertation: (a.) a documentation of the historical conditions that structure African American ethnicity in St. Petersburg; (b.) an exploration of how the dialectics of progress and development between African Americans and policy makers in St. Petersburg affect self identity; (c.) a revelation of which problems confront contemporary African Americans, and the implications of those problems for the youngsters; and (d.) an emphasis of efforts used to reduce inter-generational discontinuities and to teach ethnic heritage to the younger generation of African Americans in St. Petersburg. If we understand of how African Americans in St. Petersburg respond to the ecological and economic exigencies, then we are better able to suggest ways which may strengthen and guide their collective futures.