Leon Jackson (left) and Freddie Crawford were proud to be police officers but bristled at the discrimination they faced.
BY JEFFREY ZANKER
NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – When police officers Leon Jackson and Freddie Crawford patrolled in the early 1960s, they were always alert and ready for trouble. They broke up fights, confronted offenders and seized weapons.
But because they were black, Jackson and Crawford could patrol only black neighborhoods and arrest only black people. If they caught a white suspect, they had to wait for a white officer to come and make the arrest.
Some black residents considered them “half-police officers” – sellouts to a racist police department – and showed them little respect, said Jackson, now 74. “They said we only did half of our job, and they were telling the truth.”
So in 1965, 12 black police officers filed a lawsuit in federal district court, accusing the department of discrimination and seeking the same rights as white officers.
It took three years, but when a federal appeals upheld their challenge, it did more than halt discrimination. It set in motion changes that made it possible for St. Petersburg to have two black chiefs of police – Goliath Davis in 1997-2001 and Tony Holloway, who became chief last year.
It also earned the 12 officers a place in St. Petersburg history as the “Courageous 12.”
Only two of the 12, Jackson and Crawford, are still alive. Last month they were honored at a ceremony at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Museum, where they heard praise from Mayor Rick Kriseman, state Rep. Darryl Rouson and two of the current black officers who are beneficiaries of their trailblazing – Holloway and Assistant Chief Luke Williams.
“Those guys paved the way for us,” said Holloway. “I’d like to thank them for opening the doors for where we are today.”
St. Petersburg did not hire its first black police officers until 1949. Segregation and discrimination were still a way of life, and many black people viewed police as agents of white supremacy and hate.
Growing up in the city, Jackson and Crawford said, they never wanted to become officers. But black cops such as James King, who was known as “The Recruiter,” persuaded them to take the tests and undergo the training that made them officers.
Most of the Courageous 12 had known each other for years. Ten of them were graduates of Gibbs High School and several had been teammates on the Gibbs football team. As officers, they would play football and poker in their off-hours.
“We were all good friends,” said Crawford, now 77.
Then as now, police work was demanding and sometimes dangerous. The bars and night clubs in the city’s black neighborhoods could be volatile, and the black officers knew that their main job was “to keep the black areas in check,” said Jackson.
Crawford said he rarely carried a gun on duty. “I had a gun but wasn’t going to hurt anybody,” he said. “I wasn’t scared. I knew everybody.”
The black officers were “proud of our jobs,” Jackson said, but bristled at the discrimination they faced. At the police station, they used the same bathrooms, showers and water fountains as the white officers, but their patrol and arrest authority was limited and the patrol car they drove was marked C for “colored.” There was only one black supervisor, a sergeant, and his duties were limited to oversight of black neighborhoods and black officers.
Before filing their lawsuit, the officers twice met with Chief Harold Smith to discuss their grievances. He promised to investigate, but nothing changed and he declined to meet with them again.
“It became clear that something needed to be done,” Crawford said. “We wanted justice; it was as simple as that.”
The group hired lawyers James Sanderlin and Frank Peterman Sr. to represent them. Some of them had to take out bank loans to pay the legal costs.
“We paid out of our own pockets,” said Jackson. “We were taking a gamble. We had families. But we sacrificed ourselves for what we believed was right.”
The lawsuit was titled Baker v. The City of St. Petersburg after Adam Baker, the officer whose name came first alphabetically. “But it was a joint effort,” Crawford said.
In the suit, the officers asked for the same rights as white officers in their duties and in opportunities for promotion.
At the ceremony in their honor, Leon Jackson (left) and Freddie Crawford (middle) were joined by Rufus Lewis, one of four black officers in Tampa who filed a similar discrimination complaint against their superiors in 1974. Two years later, their complaint was upheld.
In 1966, when they presented their case in federal district court in Tampa, the city of St. Petersburg denied discriminating, arguing that black officers controlled black areas better than white officers could. The judge dismissed the lawsuit.
“We were upset because we had a good case,” said Jackson.
The officers said they didn’t have enough money to appeal, but Sanderlin arranged for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to file it. And in 1968, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the officers’ favor.
“They deserve only what they seek – equality,” the court said.
The next year Jackson became the first black officer to patrol an all-white area in St. Petersburg. He left the police department in 1972 to work in machinery and appliances. He is retired and lives in the Midtown area.
“I made my mark and I am proud of what I did,” he said.
Crawford left the department in 1969 and joined the U.S. Department of Justice as a federal mediator for the Community Relations Service. He later became a director of corrections for three facilities in Miami-Dade County from 1981 until 2009. He now lives in Miami.
“I was a good police officer and still am,” he said. He and Jackson often speak to police departments and churches about their experiences.
The Courageous 12’s lawsuit reverberated beyond St. Petersburg.
Eventually, black officers in police departments elsewhere in Florida and the South prevailed in similar challenges. In Tampa, four black officers won a discrimination complaint against their department in 1976.
One of those officers, Rufus Lewis, was in St. Petersburg to help honor Crawford and Jackson.
Information from the Tampa Bay Times and historian and journalist Jon Wilson was used in this report.
The officers and the courts
The officers who filed the lawsuit were Adam Baker, Freddie Crawford, Raymond DeLoach, Charles Holland, Leon Jackson, Robert Keys, Primus Killen, James King, Johnnie B. Lewis, Horace Nero, Jerry Styles and Nathaniel Wooten.
To read the rulings of the federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals see:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12963154890893706626&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8573935906515472789&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholar