The Racist History of Fort Myers, Florida
Last December 10, 2021, I spoke about Mayfield, Kentucky and how several tornadoes and severe weather caused major damage in that city, with Blacks living there being most affected, but the media did not cover the devastation that happened with the Blacks, but focused on what happened to the white people in the city. I spoke about how Mayfield, Ky had a long history of racism and even to this day, the city is segregated, with 64% whites living in and around the city, while the 12% black population are living in one area of the city.
So now, we see that the city of Fort Myers was hit directly by Hurricane Ian, which basically wiped the city off the map with devastating floods and winds. So you know what I did….I looked up the history of Fort Myers, Florida, and lo and behold, their racist history is worse than Mayfield, Kentucky’s!
On September 30, 2022, Hurricane Ian hit Fort Myers in full force, a Category 4 (up to 120mph winds), and it devastated the city’s marina, its boats strewn about and cement slabs ripped from the water and dropped onto land. Arial footage showed debris and vacant lots where homes and other buildings had been swept away in Fort Myers Beach. This was reported on all news networks and outlets the last two days. Almost all of the reporting, interviews and coverage was about what had happened to WHITE PEOPLE in Ft. Myers, Florida.
“White” Fort Myers, Florida
Meanwhile, in the Black section of Fort Myers, it seemed that there was nary a report, no help, or even a care as to what happened in these neighborhoods. In Dunbar, the historically Black area of Fort Myers, the people who live there stated that whenever storms or hurricanes knock out power or when there is damage, they are the last ones to get electricity and help. Black residents of Dunbar said they fear the aftermath of Hurricane Ian will be no different, saying the city’s wealthier, majority-white neighborhoods typically have better power grids and get power back sooner.
“That’s going to be No. 1 priority. Anything where it’s majority people of color, it’s going to be last,” said Dunbar resident Shannon Tolbert, a dental assistant.
So what is the history of Fort Myers, Florida? Well it is located in Robert E. Lee County, so that gives you a huge clue. The city took its name from a fort built in that area during the Seminole Wars of the 1830s. The fort in turn, took its name from Colonel Abraham Myers in 1850; Myers served in the United States Army, mostly the Quartermaster Department, in various posts from 1833-1861 and was the quartermaster general of the Confederate States Army from 1861–1864.
During the American Civil War, Confederate blockade runners and cattle ranchers were based in Fort Myers. These settlers prospered through trading with the Seminole and Union soldiers. In April 1864, Companies D and I of the 2nd United States Colored Infantry Regiment were transferred from Key West to Fort Myers, and remained at the fort until it was abandoned after the war. The presence of the black soldiers, who made up the majority of troops used in raids into Confederate territory, played on Confederate fears of armed blacks. It was reported that the Union General “took pleasure in placing a prickly pear of cactus under the Confederate saddle” when they saw armed Blacks fighting against them. The Battle of Fort Myers was fought on February 20, 1865, in Lee County, Florida, during the last months of the American Civil War. This small engagement is known as the “southernmost land battle of the Civil War.”
The Fort Myers community was founded after the American Civil War by Captain Manuel A. Gonzalez on February 21, 1866. Captain Gonzalez, a naturalized citizen originally from Spain, was familiar with the area as a result of his years of service delivering mail and supplies to the Union Army at the fort during the Seminole Indian Wars and Civil War. When the U.S. government abandoned the fort following the Civil War, Gonzalez sailed from Key West to found the community. Gonzalez is known as the “Father of Fort Myers, Florida.” Over the next thirty years, Fort Myers grew into a thriving small city.
On May 10, 1904, access to the Fort Myers area was greatly improved with the opening of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, connecting Punta Gorda to Fort Myers. This route provided Lee County both passenger and freight railroad service. The arrival of the railroad, however, also led to greater segregation in Fort Myers. With the railroad came the need for more unskilled labor. The arrival of a more uneducated workforce, compared to many African Americans who had already resided in town, some of whom had been tradespersons, vendors, and landowners, began to squeeze out established black businesses and labor. These established middle-class black citizens, as well as the new African-American laborers, were increasingly pressured to move to the segregated area that would become known as Safety Hill (it was called Safety Hill because after sundown, if you were black and you were in Fort Myers, bad things could happen to you). This area of town had a lower quality of houses and street surfaces. The area, now known as Dunbar, is still highly segregated from the rest of Fort Myers.
Lynchings in Fort Myers, Florida
According to Janine Zeitlin, who wrote about the lynching history in Fort Myers in 2014, on Sunday, May 25, 1924 two black teenagers, R.J. Johnson, 14, and Milton Wilson, 15, were spotted by a passerby swimming with two white girls on the outskirts of Fort Myers, then a segregated city of about 3,600 people. Robert E. Lee County was home to about 15,000 people at that time. “The lynchings happened after R.J. and Milton went swimming at a pond with two white girls on the outskirts of town,” according to the Zeitlin article.
The two boys and girls lived near each other, were long familiar and played with each other as children, states Zeitlin. The swimming was reported by someone as a rape. The 1924 account simply states that the boys “attacked two young Fort Myers school girls.” In the Zeitlin account, Johnson, who was only 14, was taken to a tree along Edison Avenue, hanged and shot. According to the 1924 account “his body was riddled with bullets and dragged through the streets to the Safety Hill section.” Wilson was found the next morning by a railroad foreman, hiding in a railroad box car on a northbound train. He was taken from the box car, hanged, castrated and shot multiple times. His body was then dragged down Cranford Avenue by a Model T.
The next afternoon edition of the Fort Myers News-Press was headlined “Negroes Pay Penalty for Horrible Crime Committed Yesterday.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/21/fort-myers-lynchings-1924/9397183/
On the same day a jury convened and absolved the sheriff, attributing the lynchings to “parties unknown.”
And on May 11, 1926, dozens of white residents of LaBelle, Florida, lynched of a young African American man named Henry Patterson. Locals at the time believed Patterson assaulted a young white woman named Hattie Crawford. This claim, however, proved to be false.
So while Fort Myers, Florida, located in Robert E. Lee County, is getting continuous news coverage because of what Hurricane Ian has done to it, keep in mind that all you are seeing on the news are WHITE PEOPLE sufferings (and wealthy ones at that….lower and middle class folk don’t own yachts), while 34% of Fort Myers black population remains invisible to the news outlets. Also keep in mind the sordid racist history of this city. Although empathy should be shown to all people in their hour of need, empathy should not be given exclusively only to the wealthy, white sufferers (as the news media is portraying).
Sources:
https://www.flmd.uscourts.gov/separate-and-unequal-fort-myers
https://news.wgcu.org/show/gulf-coast-life/2014-05-21/90th-anniversary-of-fort-myers-lynching
The Historical Memory Recovery Channel 