A Courageous Clarence Fort

Clarence Fort and Rev. A. Leon Lowry led students in a sit-in.

Courtesy: Tampa Bay Times

Courtesy: Tampa Bay Times. From left at the counter, Yvonne Fort, James Hammond, Rev. Granville Reed and Clarence Fort re-enact a sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Tampa in 1990.

From The Tampa Bay Times – August 27, 2014–As a 20-year-old barber in 1960, Clarence Fort used to listen to his customers talk about the lack of hope and fairness for Tampa’s black residents. Jobs were scarce, theaters segregated. Downtown five-and-dime stores took their money but refused to let them sit down at the lunch counter for a hamburger or a Coca-Cola.  So on Feb. 29, 1960, as the new president of the NAACP Youth Council, Fort and the Rev. A. Leon Lowry led 50 Blake and Middleton high school students in a sit-in at F.W. Woolworth’s lunch counter on Franklin Street.  It was an act of courage that still resonates after over half a century.

Courtesy: Florida Trend. The F.W. Woolworth’s building where Clarence Fort led a series of sit-ins nearly 55 years ago is still in downtown Tampa. May 27, 2015

On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, Mayor Bob Buckhorn named the new Osborne Pond and Community Trail in recognition of Fort’s role in Tampa’s civil rights movement.   At first, Woolworth’s tried to ignore the teens, close and turn off the lights. It didn’t work and the sit-ins grew. With Easter coming, there was talk of black customers boycotting the downtown five-and-dimes where they did much of their shopping.   But unlike cities that responded to sit-ins with violence, then-Mayor Julian B. Lane assigned police to escort the young protesters. And after a week or so, Lane agreed to appoint a biracial committee to look into the complaints. That September, Tampa’s lunch counters were integrated.  “There were no clashes,” said Fort, 76.