Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Tampa/St. Petersburg
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Surely
- Was there an ordinance?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Sign?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Year of Greatest Interest
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
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| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 | 10534 | 945 | 263 | 281 | 722 | 668 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
From the Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Florida), May 17, 1937:
In 1937, St. Petersburgh city officials proposed purchasing a tract of land near Gulfport to serve as a beach for Black people. Gulfport city council members criticized the plan with one member calling it a ‘betrayal of the town of Gulfport.’ He continued, ‘Gulfport has never receded from the position it took when most of the men were fishing and women and children were left alone, that no negroes would be allowed within the town limits after sundown. This is not a matter of statute, it is merely a condition that no St. Petersburg negro questions.’
From an oral history interview
Interviewee 1: There were no Blacks lived in Gulfport at all, never. . . . they would bring them out here [Black workers], and they worked in the daytime. . . .
Interviewee 2: The first ones that lived out here worked . . . at Boca Ciega hotel and there were arrangements made for them to stay out here . . . .
Interviewee 1: They had to be off the street by six o’clock. They couldn’t be out.
Interviewee 2: I don’t know whether it was actually an ordinance or whether . . . I’ve heard some people say that there was a sign at the city limits not to let the sun go down on you in Gulfport if you were black. . . . You couldn’t get one to stay out here after dark. If he missed the last streetcar that’d get him out of here before dark, he’d start walking up the streetcar line to show his good intentions. But it was an unwritten law.
Interviewee 1: I think it was really an ordinance.
Interviewer: Would they throw them in jail? They must have done something to put this kind of fear into them-
Interviewee 2: Well, the word was out . . . they brought some black carpenters and masons out here to build a house a time or two. . . . they were . . . put out of town, told to leave. I don’t think that the thing actually ever came to violence but . . . there was a distinct understanding that they were not to stay and they didn’t stay.
Interviewee 1: There was a contractor or builder brought a bunch out here up near the streetcar where it curved and had a camp for them. One night the fishermen got together and went up there and burned the camp down—the tents—because they weren’t going to let them stay in Gulfport.
Interviewer: Was the KKK active in Gulfport? . . .
Interviewee 1: . . . . Well this may have put some of the fear into people, such as the blacks, not to come in. You know if you had that power around, well it could be that they just had an understanding that they didn’t go to Gulfport in the dark at all.
From a letter written in the 1970s describing experiences in Gulfport, during or after 1946:
“At that time the black people who worked in homes etc. had to be at the front of the Casino at nine o’clock to get the trolley back to St. Pete. There was a policeman there who knew all of them. Thank God that sort of thing no longer exists.”
From Our Story of Gulfport, Florida, chapter 17, about Boca Ciega Inn:
Sometime between 1922 and 1932, John Dobler [the owner of the inn, at the time called Hotel Dobler] “was pistol-whipped by local residents because he let his black employees stay in his stable attic after dark. A curfew was in effect in Gulfport at that time, and no black person was allowed to say in Gulfport from ‘sundown to sunup’. After that, Dobler never seemed to regain his strength enough to complete his plans for the hotel—his spirit was gone.”
Additional Sources:
Numerous people in the area have reported that they heard Gulfport was a sundown town, with some Black individuals being told that to be safe, they shouldn’t be there after dark. Some have reported seeing signs warning Black people to be out of town by dark.
From the article at http://cltampa.com/politicalanimal/archives/2015/01/15/once-a-sundown-town-gulfport-reaches-out-to-its-black-residents#. by Cathy Salustri, “Once a sundown town, Gulfport reaches out to its black residents,” 1/15/2015:
“Worthington, 71, grew up in a Gulfport that had signs at the city limits that read, ‘Black man, don’t let the sun set on you in Gulfport’–except when other people tell the story, they don’t use the phrase ‘black man.'”As late as 2010 a resident from Gulfport stated that it had indeed been a sundown town.
No longer sundown, according to the article.