The 1956 Tallahassee Bus Boycott: What the Official Record Says

The boycott began after two Florida A&M University students, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, were taken into custody after refusing to give up front seats on a crowded Tallahassee city bus on May 26, 1956 (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker).

The state marker on the FAMU campus says the bus was crowded and the two students sat in the only seats available, next to a white female passenger. When the driver ordered them to the back and they refused, he pulled the bus over and called the police; the two students were taken into custody and charged with “placing themselves in a position to incite a riot,” and the next night a cross was burned on their lawn (state marker). Florida Memory, the State Archives’ online program, says the driver pulled into a service station and called the police, and that Tallahassee police took Jakes and Patterson into custody (Florida Memory).

Students moved first. FAMU students, led by Student Government Association President Brodes Hartley, held a mass meeting and voted to stop riding city buses, according to the marker (state marker), and Florida Memory says the campus boycott soon spread through the city (Florida Memory). The City of Tallahassee’s own account dates the start to May 25, 1956, one day earlier than the state sources (City of Tallahassee).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, with the Jakes and Patterson marker on the state markers list, the Florida Memory boycott unit and its 1956 Inter-Civic Council telegram, the city’s Black History Month page, the About StarMetro and timeline pages, and the Park Service’s Steele profile all fetched again that day.

The Inter-Civic Council of Tallahassee ran it, with Bethel Missionary Baptist Church pastor Charles Kenzie Steele as its elected president (state marker; full name from About StarMetro).

Local religious leaders and community members in Tallahassee founded the council after the student boycott began, and it expanded the protest across the city (state marker).

The city names Robert Saunders alongside Steele as a coordinator of the boycott (City of Tallahassee). The National Park Service profile of Steele says he came to Bethel Baptist Church in Tallahassee in 1952, at age 38, and served there as minister until his death in 1980; in 1957 he helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became its vice president (National Park Service).

Most boycotters did not own cars, so supporters loaned vehicles and shared rides in a carpool system. Florida Memory reports that 21 Inter-Civic Council members were taken into custody for organizing the carpools and convicted of operating an illegal transportation system without a franchise and that the court fined the council $11,000 (Florida Memory). Steele’s slogan, quoted by the State Archives, was “I would rather walk in dignity than ride in humiliation” (Florida Memory).

Florida Memory says the effect on fare revenue was immediate: Cities Transit, the operator of Tallahassee’s buses, had to halt its whole fleet for a month because the boycott was costing it too much money (Florida Memory).

A 1956 telegram from the Inter-Civic Council to Governor LeRoy Collins, held by the State Archives of Florida, said Black riders had contributed more than 60 percent of the bus company’s income and had spent over $100,000 with Cities Transit, Inc. during 1955 (State Archives telegram). The company tried to compromise by offering to hire Black drivers on the FAMU and Frenchtown routes, and Seth Gaines, who had driven an independent taxi, became the first African American to drive buses on a regular route for Cities Transit (Florida Memory).

The City of Tallahassee bought the Tallahassee franchise of Cities Transit in 1973 and named the new city department TalTran, starting service with 21 buses; the agency was renamed StarMetro in 2005 (About StarMetro).

The boycott wound down after a November 1956 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Alabama’s segregated busing laws, a state suspension of Tallahassee bus service on January 1, 1957, and the city’s repeal of its segregated seating ordinance on January 7, 1957 (Florida Memory).

Inter-Civic Council leaders set out to learn whether Florida would honor the Supreme Court ruling. On December 24, 1956, Steele, Rev. A.C. Redd and Rev. H. McNeal Harris rode several buses sitting close to the front, while larger “front ride” demonstrations planned for December 27 were called off after threats (Florida Memory). Governor Collins then suspended bus service in Tallahassee (Florida Memory).

The repeal was not the last word. Florida Memory says the city then enacted an “assigned seating” ordinance meant to keep segregated seating while complying with the Supreme Court decision, and that city buses in Tallahassee were integrated by the summer of 1957; it quotes historians Mary Louise Ellis and William Warren Rogers that city commissioners and protesters never achieved a formal settlement (Florida Memory).

Each agency ties the end of the Tallahassee boycott to a different event, so the official record gives four end points and two start dates, set out below without choosing between them.

Sources: state marker; Florida Memory; City of Tallahassee; National Park Service. The city says the boycott ended in December 1956 after the Supreme Court ruling and the city’s repeal of its segregated seating ordinance, while Florida Memory dates that repeal to January 7, 1957; Florida Memory says the protest lasted primarily from May to December 1956 and that buses were integrated by summer 1957; the marker gives March 1957 without naming an event.

A year printed on one city page is also out of step: the StarMetro timeline says Steele led the Tallahassee Bus Boycott in 1965, while the About StarMetro page and every other source here say 1956 (StarMetro timeline; About StarMetro).

Four public sites in Tallahassee mark it: a state marker at FAMU, the Steele bus plaza, the Footsteps to Freedom memorial and a Dream Builders marker.

The central bus terminal at the corner of Tennessee and Adams streets is named for Rev. Dr. Charles Kenzie Steele, who played a pivotal role in the 1956 boycott; About StarMetro gives 1985 as its construction year (About StarMetro), while the StarMetro timeline lists it under 1986 (StarMetro timeline). StarMetro says the Southside Transit Center under construction will be the first transit center built in the community since the Steele plaza in the 1980s (About StarMetro).

The Footsteps to Freedom memorial at the corner of Monroe and Jefferson streets honors the boycott and local foot soldiers of the movement, and a documentary of the same name is free on the city’s YouTube channel (City of Tallahassee). Marker 2 of the city’s Dream Builders: Voices of the Movement project, at 524 North Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in the Frenchtown Heritage Hub, covers Steele, Bethel Missionary Baptist Church and the boycott (City of Tallahassee).

The state marker on the FAMU campus, sponsored by Florida A&M University and the Florida Department of State, calls the boycott the second major successful economic protest of the Civil Rights Movement (state marker). The Footsteps to Freedom memorial is downtown (City of Tallahassee), and the state marker stands on the FAMU campus (state marker).