Righting the past: Rev. L. B. Croom, civil rights activist, dies at 73

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Editor's note: This is the second in a series of historical obituaries rewritten today to honor the men and women of the past who were denied the honor at the time of their because of discrimination due to their race and/or gender.

Rev. London B. Croom, a longtime resident of this city who challenged the 1905 ordinance segregating Pensacola streetcars, died on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1923, following a battle with kidney disease.

Born in 1849, Croom was the third of Wright and Hardie Croom’s nine children. The family lived near Tallahassee, Florida, and, after the Civil War, leased 150 acres of Leon County farmland through the Freedman’s Bureau. London married Hagar Mosely in 1876, and they briefly lived in Jacksonville before moving to Pensacola around 1891. He served as an elder in several Escambia County Primitive Baptist churches over the years, including Zion Hope in Pensacola and Smyrna in Warrington.

The death certificate for Rev. London B. Croom, a longtime resident of this city who challenged the 1905 ordinance segregating Pensacola streetcars, who died on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1923, following a battle with kidney disease.
The death certificate for Rev. London B. Croom, a longtime resident of this city who challenged the 1905 ordinance segregating Pensacola streetcars, who died on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1923, following a battle with kidney disease.

Croom was a proud member of the Republican Party — which at that time opposed Jim Crow laws and fought for African American voting rights — and served on numerous statewide delegations. A consummate politician, he formed a strong relationship with Sen. Wilkinson Call, a moderate Democrat. When newspapers published correspondence showing Call had recommended Croom for a $2-a-day night watchman position at the local customs house, Call’s enemies within the Democratic Party (which included W. D. Chipley) accused him of favoring a “Fat, Sleek, Negro Preacher” over “Worthy Democratic White Men.” This cause célèbre helped to force Call out of office in 1897, but Chipley’s race-baiting campaign to replace him failed after Call threw his support behind Stephen Mallory, who ultimately won the seat.

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White supremacist rhetoric defined Pensacola politics at the start of the twentieth century. In 1905, the situation came to a head. First, State Rep. J. Campbell Avery of Pensacola introduced legislation to impose racial segregation on all Florida streetcars, which easily became law. Then, the Pensacola mayoral campaign became a referendum on whether to implement a “white primary” that would disenfranchise Black voters, who comprised nearly half of the city’s population, in local elections.

Croom joined thousands of African Americans across the state in the fight against the Jim Crow law by boycotting the streetcar system. He also chaired a political organization, the Good Government League, that opposed the white primary movement and its mayoral candidate Charles Bliss.

Streetcars on South Palafox Street, taken in the early 20th century.
Streetcars on South Palafox Street, taken in the early 20th century.

Bliss won a landslide victory that June, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Florida v. Patterson that the Avery-drafted segregation law was unconstitutional. The justices took issue with a provision specifying that “colored nurses having the care of white children or sick persons” could sit in the white portion of a streetcar, thus “abridging the rights and privileges of citizens” in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Chief Justice R. Fenwick Taylor wrote, “It gives to the Caucassian [sic] mistress the right to have her child attended in the Caucassian department of the car by its African nurse, and withholds the right from the African mistress the equal right to have her child attended in the African department of the car by its Caucassian nurse.”

Barely a week after the ruling, Pensacola Alderman P. K. Yonge introduced a city ordinance with slightly modified language, stipulating that “nothing in this ordinance shall be construed to apply to nurses attending children, or invalids, of the other race.” Mayor Bliss vetoed the ordinance over concerns it would also be found unconstitutional, but a unanimous city council passed it regardless. After it went into effect, Rev. Croom volunteered to violate the streetcar ordinance to test its constitutionality in the courts. On Oct. 14, he was arrested after refusing to vacate a seat in the front portion of a streetcar. Represented locally by attorney George W. Parker, Croom was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in the city jail.

In his willingness to be arrested, tried and convicted by a racist criminal justice system, Croom showed the same bravery and indomitable spirit that Rosa Parks would demonstrate five decades later in Montgomery, Alabama. His case was appealed by Lawrence Purcell of the firm Wetmore & Purcell, which had won the Patterson case. When Crooms v. Schad went before the Florida Supreme Court in 1906, the same justices who had found Avery’s language unconstitutional found no objection to Yonge’s ordinance. Thus was Jim Crow further strengthened in Florida. Yonge rewarded himself later that year when he introduced and voted to approve an ordinance renaming Job Street to Yonge Street.

The story that appeared in the Pensacola News Journal focused on Rev. London B. Croom, a longtime resident of this city who challenged the 1905 ordinance segregating Pensacola streetcars.
The story that appeared in the Pensacola News Journal focused on Rev. London B. Croom, a longtime resident of this city who challenged the 1905 ordinance segregating Pensacola streetcars.

Elder Croom remained active in the National Convention of Colored Primitive Baptists and, in 1908, helped dedicate land for a national memorial home in Nashville. He participated in Zion Hope Primitive Baptist Church services up to the year before his death. He was predeceased by most members of his family, including his beloved wife, Hagar, and their daughter, Salina Croom Hilliard Williams. He was boarding at Carrie Shops’ home on N. Hayne St. when death came to him. Morris Undertakers arranged for his burial at Zion Cemetery on Jan. 19.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Righting the past: Rev. L. B. Croom, civil rights activist, dies at 73