The Beach Wade-Ins of Nineteen Sixty One
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
For decades, this famous strip of sand was for white bathers only. Black residents of Fort Lauderdale were barred from the ocean here, allowed to swim only at a segregated beach reached by boat far to the south. That changed because of two people.
On the fourth of July, nineteen sixty one, Eula Johnson, the first woman to serve as president of the Broward branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, led a group of Black swimmers straight onto this whites only beach. Beside her stood Doctor Von D. Mizell, a pioneering local surgeon.
They called it a wade in. Over the following weeks the protesters returned again and again, meeting hostile crowds and the very real threat of the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson, sensing danger before one planned wade in, telephoned federal authorities for protection.
The city struck back not with police clubs but with a lawsuit, accusing Johnson and Mizell of creating a public nuisance. They fought it in court and they won. A judge refused the city's request to stop the demonstrations, and by nineteen sixty two the beaches of Broward County were desegregated.
Years later the old segregated state park to the south was renamed to honor both Mizell and Johnson.
