In 1953, St. Petersburg physician Dr. Ralph M. Wimbish invited a small group of Black professionals, educators, and business leaders to his home to discuss how they might help improve the lives of the city’s African American community. The Ambassadors Club, a men’s civic association, was the result of this meeting, and its members would be on the forefront of efforts to change entrenched systemic inequities and offer meaningful cultural opportunities and support for the greater community.
“Gentlemen, let us wake up and do something to help our community.”
The 1950s are often glorified as a boom era in St. Petersburg. The city’s population exploded, its footprint expanded, and industry and tourism flourished. While truthful, this glowing description certainly isn’t the whole story. In particular, St. Pete’s Black population struggled to gain access to the resources helping make the boom a reality for others. Despite priding itself on being a “progressive” southern city, St. Petersburg held to its Jim Crow-era policies and attitudes. In 1950, most of St. Pete’s 14,000 African Americans still lived in segregated neighborhoods. Nearly every facet of life reflected strict segregation, including beaches, pools, golf courses, downtown’s green benches, lunch counters, hotels, movie theaters, schools, and a wide variety of jobs. African Americans made up about 14 percent of the city’s population but were overrepresented in St. Pete’s pool of economically disadvantaged citizens. This reality was the backdrop for Dr. Wimbish’s call for action: “Gentlemen, let us wake and do something to help our community.”
Festival Floats, Milk Funds, and Using Power for Good
One of the Ambassador Club’s first efforts is also one of its best-known. In 1954, the Club sponsored the “first Negro float” to be invited to participate in the annual Festival of States Parade. The all-Black Gibbs High School and the Sixteenth Street Junior High bands had marched in the parade in past years but always had been relegated to the end. The Ambassadors negotiated an agreement in which they were assured that “the float will not be entered near the end of the parade as most Negro units are.” Its success ensured it also was not the last parade featuring an Ambassador Club entry. In succeeding years, the popular club’s Sunshine Festival Float contest awarded lucky kids premier seats on the float as well as a chance at winning savings bonds and other prizes. The club’s efforts to help children didn’t end with parade floats. Along with their sister organization, the Ambas, the Ambassadors also sponsored annual “Milk Tea” events to raise funds to distribute milk and free lunches. As the St. Petersburg Times described in 1959, the Ambassadors always “distributed the milk indiscriminately,” which meant that year’s 16,000 cartoons of milk went to needy kids, regardless of race, at four nurseries and five elementary schools. Citing the club’s Milk Fund, along with its various cultural and civic activities, the Citizens Cooperative Committee honored the Ambassadors Club in April 1961 for its “meritorious community service” and efforts to provide “uplift.” The efforts extended to cultural events for adults, including an annual program that brought in nationally known inspirational speakers. Among them was educator and diplomat Dr. John W. Davis, who spoke in 1961 about the “need to recognize and use their power for good.”
Beaches, Buses, and Golf Courses
Sunshine floats, Milk Teas, and inspirational speakers were symbolically and pragmatically important, but the club’s impact didn’t end there; its members also directly challenged deeply entrenched systems of separation. The Ambassadors participated in boycotts and direct-action efforts such as sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. In addition, they took advantage of the legal decision to end segregation decided by the landmark 1953 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In early 1954, Dr. Wimbish spearheaded an effort to gain access to a local municipal golf course, citing both legal precedent and fairness: “We want to play on a course which our taxes aid in keeping up.” By mid-1955, desegregation efforts expanded to Spa Beach and pool, when Dr. Wimbish and another charter Ambassador Club member, Dr. Fred Alsup, headed a list of plaintiffs filing suit against the city. The two doctors were also front and center during the 1956 request for the city to integrate buses on two of the city routes and hire Black drivers for routes in predominantly Black neighborhoods. They emphasized that they were not planning a bus boycott; rather they sought “understanding and redress” as they waited for the time when “whites and Negroes are made ready (for integration) by religious and social agencies.” Their patience was continually tested. In 1961, the Ambassador Club was still petitioning the city for equal access to civil-service jobs and policymaking positions. Plus, sometimes change was indefinitely stalled, as when the golf course was sold to a private company to avoid integration. As Dr. Wimbish noted in 1960, “We are not angry … we are not violent … [but] I have waited 30 years in this town and nothing has happened yet.” Sixty years later,” it is important to remember that the struggle for equity continues.
Complete sources available on request. The Tampa Bay Times archives and research by Jon Wilson and Rosalie Peck were invaluable resources.
