Biloxi Wade-ins were part of a national movement. A virtual panel will tell the story.
During the civil rights movement, Biloxians were far from the only Americans who protested for equal access to beaches.
They joined Black people in southern cities like Miami and St. Augustine, and northern towns like Madison, Connecticut, to demand— and win — the right to visit their local beaches.
That national history, and Biloxi’s critical role in the story, is the topic of a virtual panel on Monday evening, organized by the Black Archives History & Research Foundation of South Florida, “Still Waters Run Deep: The Fight for Beach Access Across America” will bring together historians, curators, and Biloxi wade-in participant Bishop James Black.
The conversation will cover how and why segregated beaches were created around the country, and how activists like Dr. Gilbert Mason Sr. in Biloxi organized to win integration of these public spaces.
Kamila E. Pritchett, operations and programming manager for the foundation, said the beach protests are one of many threads in the story of the civil rights movement that deserve more recognition. Names like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Selma, Alabama, are familiar to most Americans, while Dr. Mason and Biloxi, for example, are not.
But their legacy lives on in events like the “die-ins” held in Missouri malls and around the country to protest the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri, police.
“This type of peaceful protesting, and maybe they’re patterning it after sit-ins, but this is something that without them even knowing it, they’re repeating history,” she said.
The virtual conversation starts at 6 p.m. Central on Monday and is free to attend. Register on Eventbrite.
Remembering Biloxi Wade-ins
In Biloxi, the wade-ins are commemorated every year. The 2020 event centered the young people of today, who honored the wade-in participants who had been teenagers or even younger when they went to the beaches and were beaten by a violent white mob or arrested by police.
There were three wade-in protests in Biloxi from 1959 to 1963. The most violent took place in 1960, when a crowd of 125 people, mostly teens, were brutally attacked by a white mob as police stood by. A court ruling in 1968 finally ended beach segregation forever.
Pritchett said that in learning about the Biloxi wade-ins, she saw parallels with protests that desegregated beaches in Miami. A wade-in at Haulover Beach in that city in 1945 led to the creation of a beach designated for Black people, Virginia Key Beach. (The current executive director of the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust will join Monday’s panel.)
One possible reason the story of the fight to integrate the country’s beaches is not better known, Pritchett said, is that the protests took place in towns that rely on tourism.
“A lot of coastal areas are areas that want to attract people with tourism and talk about how amazing they are,” Pritchett said. “And racism does not sit pretty on the postcard with why you should come to our place.”
Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/still-waters-run-deep-the-fight-for-black-beach-access-across-america-tickets-136341279437?aff=erelexpmlt
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
