ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Rui Farias moved to St. Pete in the mid 1960s.

What You Need To Know

  • Rui Farias is the executive director of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and he’s giving tours of Civil Rights history in the downtown St. Pete area

  • The Trolley Tour is two hours and will take passengers to locations like Spa Beach, the site of 1955’s “Wade-Ins”

  • More On The Town stories

This is his memory.

“I remember going to Lakewood Elementary in the third grade,” Farias said. “I was sent to the principal’s office for holding Mary Campbell’s hand. And it wasn’t because Mary Campbell was a girl. It was because Mary Campbell was a Black girl.”

Farias also remembered his father’s anger was at having to leave work — not the hand holding.

Farias is the executive director of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and he’s giving tours of Civil Rights history in the downtown St. Pete area.

The Trolley Tour is two hours and will take passengers to locations like Spa Beach, the site of 1955’s “Wade-Ins.”

Protesters at that time tried to wade into the water at the beach and the nearby Spa Pool. In response to this, Farias says the city closed the beach and pool for a year. There is a picture of police officers guarding the beach.

“They finally succumbed to the pressure from the business community,” Farias said. “And in 1959 the beach was integrated.”

The beach for Black people was South Mole Beach, now Demens Landing — a trolley stop there shows how separate but not equal it really was.

But back then it was filled with out-of-service trains cars, not a long, sprawling beach leading up to a pretty, green park like Spa Beach.

“We’re a state built on tourism for our beautiful beaches,” Farias said. “And this was not a beautiful beach.”

Another major push for integration happened within Major League Baseball — at Al Lang Stadium, another trolley stop.

“St. Petersburg for 100 years was a spring training hotbed of baseball here,” Farias said.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson opened the door for Black players in Major League Baseball, but they faced major difficulties traveling here. They weren’t allowed to eat at restaurants or stay in hotels with their white teammates.

In 1962, the New York Yankees left St. Pete and other teams threatened to do so, potentially costing the city millions in lost spring training revenue.

“So pretty quickly, the hotels allowed the players to stay there, eat in restaurants, and you saw the city become more and more integrated as the '60s went on,” Farias said.

Farias says there are heroes of the Civil Rights movement and modern-day heroes as well.

“Like Gwendolyn Reese, who oversees the African American Heritage Trail, who just keeps history alive, day-in, day out," Farias said. 'I think we need to share all the history of the state — good and bad you know — so everybody understands what we were and to make sure that we never head back in that direction again.”