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By BILL MAXWELL
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 28, 1999
Almost everyone knows the names of the great martyrs of the civil rights movement -- Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers. Many still remember Harry T. Moore, killed by a terrorist bomb in Florida in 1951, Emmitt Till, lynched at 14, and Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi in '64.
But some are unaware that one of the most important players in the movement is still living. Tampa native Bob Saunders, 78, did groundbreaking work in Florida during the 1950s and 1960s, one of the state's most violent periods.
Like other blacks of his generation, Saunders attended segregated schools on Tampa's west side. He suffered many inequities under Jim Crow, but few things frightened him more than the specter of white men in uniform toting guns and nightsticks.
"One time, when I was 12, I became enraged when I saw these white cops beating a black woman," Saunders said. "I ran up to them and told them to leave her alone. The cops pushed me back, and one of them said, "If you don't get away from here, we'll beat you, too.' "
Saunders was destined for a life of activism; his grandparents, Bahamian immigrants, were founding members of the Tampa Chapter of the NAACP in 1917. After serving in the Army and getting his college degree, he moved to New York, where he met future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Walter White and Roy Wilkins. In 1952 he got the dream job of Florida NAACP field director, a post he held until 1966.
Saunders was involved in every major civil rights initiative in the Sunshine State, including desegregating schools, securing salary increases for black teachers, seeking affirmative action in government contracting and college admissions, desegregating public beaches and housing, halting police brutality and registering voters.
One of his most difficult tasks was trying to free and protect Walter Irving and Charles Greenlee, the two surviving black men falsely accused of raping a white woman in Groveland. The third man, Samuel Shepherd, had been shot and killed by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall (see Page XX) in 1951. After Saunders and the NAACP demanded new investigations, all three men were exonerated and the survivors freed.
The Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations repeatedly threatened to kill Saunders during that episode. But some his most persistent enemies were government officials. Most notably, he incurred the wrath of the Johns Committee, a reactionary legislative group that undermined civil rights efforts under the pretext of eliminating "subversives" and "Communists." Saunders was no Communist, and soon the storm blew over.
After leaving the NAACP, Saunders supervised federal civil rights programs throughout the Southeast for 10 years. He returned to Tampa in 1976 as an assistant county administrator working on minority business and fair housing issues. He retired in 1988, but when the Tampa NAACP was falling apart, Saunders was recruited to reorganize it.
He continues to speak out on the issues that inspired his life's work.
"I need to go back to a meeting we had with Thurgood Marshall in 1955 regarding the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka," Saunders said. "Thurgood made this comment: "There are going to be ups and downs. There are going to be enemies fighting us. But you can't give up. Remember, when you're driving a car up a hill and you take your foot off the accelerator, the car slows down. You've got to continue to apply the gas.'
"Given the things that are happening now in Florida with Ward Connerly and all the rest, we're at the point now where the fight for justice is just beginning."
Bill Maxwell is a Times editorial writer.