Representatives of the Citizens Committee for Better Education went to Washington, D.C. to seek Federal assistance with regard to the segregated and inadequate condition of Duval County Schools. As a result, a meeting was held in Jacksonville in March of 1966 involving Federal officials and Mayor Lou Ritter, as well as representatives from the Florida Department of Education, the Duval County School Board and members of the Citizens Committee for Better Education. Out of the meeting, Mayor Ritter sought City Council support for the creation of a new Community Relations Commission to address black concerns. Another boycott in October of 1966 resulted in 19,700 black students remaining at home. The Duval County School Board petitioned the courts to stop any promotion of the boycott by black leaders. The case was dismissed by Judge Roger J. Waybright who also ruled that state law requiring attendance in segregated schools was unconstitutional. Developing a statewide reputation as a champion for civil rights, Pearson was elected in 1962 as State Vice President of the Florida State Conference of NAACP Branches, becoming President in 1964. He was also elected as Chairman of the Southeast Regional NAACP in 1965 and nominated and elected for a three year term in January of 1966 as one of the sixty members of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP where he also served on the fifteen member executive committee. In 1965, Pearson was appointed to the Florida Advisory Council to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

NAACP youth demonstrating at May-Cohens. Images from the Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Papers

After resigning from his teaching post in August of 1966 due to continued school board pressure, Pearson went to work for the Laundry, Dry Cleaners and Dye House Workers International Union, Local # 218. In September of 1966, the local branch of the NAACP sponsored a march of 125 participants through downtown to the New York Laundry on North Liberty Street in Springfield in support of striking workers seeking a wage of $5.80 a day. Pearson continued to receive hate mail and threats with one in January of 1967 stating he would not live to see the end of the year. While traveling on union business, Rutledge was killed in a car wreck on May 1, 1967 six miles outside of Waynesboro, Tennessee. According to a Tennessee State Trooper, Pearson may have been traveling 80 miles per hour based on tire marks when he skidded off the wet road, hit a bridge abutment and rolled over into the creek. However, the tragic car wreck was considered by some as occurring under very suspicious circumstances.

Approximately 5,000 people were in attendance at his funeral service held at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church that included speeches by 37 ministers followed by burial at Mount Olive Cemetery. In his obituary, Rutledge Pearson was described as a “straightforward, militant and fearless leader” His death occurred during the 1967 election causing Sallye Mathis to comment on the tragic loss of Pearson saying, “My main source of strength is gone. We all wondered what would happen. Rutledge was the glue, the inspirational leader. But we decided this was something we shared together – that what we were doing was bigger than the life or death of one person.”

Pearson’s influence on the local civil rights campaign continued for years after his death. Many of his fellow civil rights activists went on to hold public office including Earl Johnson, Jr., at-large member of the City Council, Sallye Mathis, along with Mary Singleton, served as the first women and first blacks since 1907 to serve on the City Council, and Dr. Arnett Girardeau, the first black in Jacksonville to serve in the Florida Senate. Some of his former students at Isaiah Blocker Jr. High School and later at Darnell Cookman Jr. High School included former U.S. Congresswoman, Corrine Brown, U.S. Postmaster of Atlanta, Marjorie Meeks Brown, Henry Gardner, City Manager of Oakland, California, pediatrician, Dr. Charles B. Simmons and former City Council member and author, Rodney L. Hurst, Sr. In 1977, Rutledge Pearson’s civil rights legacy was honored and immortalized with the naming of a new bridge where Moncrief Road goes over the Ribault River. On January 30, 1992, he posthumously received the first Mary L. Singleton Award for Social Harmony sponsored by the Mary L. Singleton Memorial Education Foundation, Inc. Jacksonville NAACP Branch established the Rutledge Pearson Freedom Award for outstanding civic work. In 1994, the Sherwood Forest Elementary School was renamed in his honor. Governor Rick Scott in 2016 chose Earl Johnson and Rutledge Henry Pearson to enter the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame. In an April 30, 1964, JET Magazine article, Pearson summarized being a civil rights leader in the following statement, “it’s just like skimming off hot grounders at third, but without the glove, what counts is your determination and throwing arm”. In 1964, he described himself in the following way, “I may be looked on as in a hurry. I’m in a hurry to be completely free”.

Lloyd Nash Pearson, Jr.

Lloyd Nash Pearson, Jr. Image courtesy of the Jacksonville Free Press.

The residence at 1478 McConihe Street was also the childhood home of Lloyd Nash Pearson Jr. who was born in 1921. Like his younger brother, Lloyd N. Pearson Jr. was also a noted civil right activist in Jacksonville, particularly in the critical area of voter registration. After attending Old Stanton High School and Edward Waters College, Lloyd Pearson went on to have a 35 year career with the postal service following in the footsteps of his father, Lloyd N. Pearson, Sr. He is a life- long member of Woodlawn Presbyterian Church (Laura Street Presbyterian Church) where he served in a variety of positions including, Elder, Superintendent of the Sunday school, a Sunday school teacher and member of the Board of Trustees.

It was Lloyd Pearson’s long and active membership in the Jacksonville Chapter of the NAACP that got him involved in the local civil rights movement. As a NAACP member, he participated with 35 other black and white Jacksonville residents in the March on Washington in 1963 and was able to return for the 50th anniversary of the march. Lloyd Pearson was involved in numerous civil rights campaigns including the desegregation of local schools, integration of segregated lunch counters in downtown and overcoming discrimination in the work place. He took an active role in opening up more management and professional jobs in the City of Jacksonville for blacks that for the most part had been concentrated in low-paying and dead end jobs usually as laborers or in domestic work. In addition he was part of meetings with hospital leaders at the Duval Medical Center and St. Luke’s Hospital on the use and condition of segregated wards and employment discrimination.

Lloyd Pearson attended school at Old Stanton High School in LaVilla. Image courtesy of Kyriaki Karalis.

However, it was his strong belief that voting was the most significant route to bring about social change and to improve the lives of African Americans. Through the encouragement of Sallye Mathis, chair of the NAACP’s Political Actions Committee, Lloyd Pearson headed up numerous voter registration drives over many decades. Starting in 1964, he led drives that have resulted in the registering or renewal of registration for 65,000 black voters, with him personally registering 35,000 new voters. Sometimes involving twelve hour days in front of supermarkets, drug stores, hospitals and state social service offices, Lloyd and his associates were able to register 11,000 voters in 1983, 13,000 in 1984 and 12,000 in 1985. Much of the white leadership was well aware of the success of these drives to increase the number of black voters. Lloyd Pearson stated that the strong support of blacks in Jacksonville and elsewhere in the state for Robert King High of Miami against the incumbent Governor Burns angered and disturbed many local whites. With voting following racial lines in the spring election of 1966, many qualified black candidates on the local level ran unsuccessfully for political office but with many running very competitive campaigns.

Realizing that black women would be less threatening and thus more acceptable candidates to white voters, many black leaders including Rutledge Pearson convinced Sallye Mathis to run for City Council in Ward III with another group convincing Mary Singleton to run in Ward II in the 1967 election. Both Mathis and Singleton won in their representative districts becoming the first women elected to the City Council and the first blacks since 1907.

Sponsored and mostly funded by the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP, these voter registration drives also involved dividing the city into zones served by block captains who coordinated registrations on a more personal level. The block captains compared the voter registration records for their particular areas against names in the city street directories to see which residents were not registered. In addition to some financial assistance from the Southeast Regional Office of the NAACP in Birmingham, the drives were also supported by the local Long Shore men’s Union that provided both money and volunteers. Serving as the Voter Registration Coordinator for the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP, Lloyd Pearson was identified as the “point man for the whole city” by Fred Matthews, Voter Registration Coordinator for the Florida Conference of NAACP Branches.

The former Purcell’s store on North Laura Street.

In 1941, Lloyd Pearson married Mildred Odessa Meriedy who was able to overcome job discrimination to be moved by her supervisor, Bob Myers, from the receiving department to a cashier position at the front counter of the popular Purcell’s Clothing Store. This promotion was a vote of confidence in her abilities by Myers as well as his belief in making the right and fair decision even at the expense of losing some white customers and angering some of her co-workers. After eleven years at Purcell’s, she moved on to a successful retail career at Sears & Roebuck Company.

In 1984, Lloyd Pearson was named as Citizen of the Year by the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity for his outstanding work in voter registration and was also recognized as a stable presence in the local branch of the NAACP after the death of Rutledge Pearson. As one of two vice presidents in the local branch, he served as interim president with the resignation of the president in 1984.

Article text is an excerpt from the Pearson Residence landmark designation report prepared by the Jacksonville Planning and Development Department.