Jim Crow Lives On in Florida Bar’s Back Room

For 30 years, many people in this town of 8,000 have known about the “back room” at Perry Package Store & Lounge: a small space with a concrete floor, folding chairs, a couple of tables, a jukebox stocked with the blues--and an all-black clientele.

In the larger front lounge, the mostly white patrons sat and drank and listened to country music. Owner David Holton insists nobody deliberately planned it that way--it was the customers’ choice.

To a widening circle of critics and state investigators, however, that explanation seems ridiculous. They’ve come to believe the back room represents something much more sinister and, 35 years after the passage of America’s civil rights legislation, illegal: a brand of racism so deeply entrenched, so much a part of the fabric of life here that it remained unchallenged.

Until, that is, a recent afternoon when an out-of-town traveler stopped to buy a drink.

That potential customer was Maryland state legislator Talmadge Branch, who is black. His Feb. 3 experience--he says he was refused a beer unless he went around to the back--has spawned several investigations and a barrage of negative publicity for the Panhandle town, 48 miles southeast of Tallahassee, which is one-quarter black.

It also has pushed the issue of race relations to the forefront, raising uncomfortable questions about just how much racial attitudes have evolved in small towns and rural pockets of the South--and about how much tacit acceptance there is from blacks and whites about discriminatory practices because they may be unwilling to speak out.

To many onlookers, the Perry episode calls to mind the struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s, when restrooms were labeled “white” and “colored,” restaurants and motels could refuse service with impunity, and blacks were relegated to the back of the bus. Some black residents say it’s “common knowledge” that blacks aren’t welcome in the front lounge at Perry Package, so they don’t go there, just as they say they know to sit in certain sections of local restaurants or even not to frequent some businesses.

“Perry is a white people’s town,” said welder William Greene, 29.

“I ain’t gonna lie--it’s been like this a long time,” agreed Andre Campbell, 22, a student at Florida A&M; University. “It took somebody from the outside, and he’s got some friends in high places. Us being local, they wouldn’t do anything. Black people around here are used to it.”

Branch, passing through Perry on a business trip about 3 p.m. that Saturday, said bartender Patricia Hughes directed him to the back room, saying: “I can’t serve you. It’s the rules.” Branch said he took that to be a reference to his race because several white patrons were drinking at the bar.

When Branch pressed her, Hughes said that Holton, who wasn’t present, had told her to close the front lounge briefly for an afternoon cleaning and that the other customers would be leaving as soon as they finished their drinks. In a later interview with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), however, Hughes told investigators she also feared the reactions of two white male patrons to Branch’s presence and didn’t want Branch to get hurt. She directed him to the back “for his own protection, but did not know how to tell him that,” she said.

Asked whether Holton had ever instructed her to guide black patrons to the back, Hughes said no.

“He leaves that . . . if we think it might be a dangerous situation, to assess the situation,” she told investigators. “We serve blacks up front all the time, but it’s usually people passing through. He does that his self, he assesses the situation, and if you got rednecks in there, try to call [black customers] aside and say, ‘Look, you know, maybe you’d be more comfortable if you would come on in here and talk to me or come back here.’ We come back here and sit and talk with the blacks all the time. . . . We don’t have a problem with that. . . . The only reason they’re back here is because that’s the way they like to drink.”

Holton and Hughes have said the back room, behind the business’s package store section, was where patrons who liked to buy a more economical bottle in the store, instead of expensive drinks in the lounge, would sit and relax. Most local patrons who choose that room, they said, are older black men; a younger, exclusively black crowd congregates at the nearby 98 Club. There are several other combination package store-lounges in town, mostly catering to whites.

As Branch argued with Hughes, he said, he heard a female voice--he didn’t know whether it was a customer or employee--say, “Coloreds are served at the back or the drive-through.” Stunned, he finally went out into the parking lot and called town police to lodge a complaint.

“I was absolutely torn. I couldn’t believe it,” Branch, 45, who heads Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus, said recently. “It’s hard to explain. I was filled with a lot of anger, feeling like I was back in the ‘40s or ‘50s or ‘60s.”

Later, he said he related the incident to a friend in Perry who responded, “I could’ve told you not to go in there.”

Holton has since locked up the back room. He and Hughes have written letters of apology to Branch, with Holton denying any racist intent and offering “sincerest apologies and commitment to fight against racial intolerance.”

In addition to the FDLE investigation, ordered by Gov. Jeb Bush, the case is being investigated by the U.S. attorney’s office. The Florida Commission on Human Relations has set up temporary shop here to gather other complaints. The state Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco seeks to revoke the business’s liquor license.

And Florida Atty. Gen. Bob Butterworth has charged owners Holton and his wife, Diane, and Hughes with civil rights violations and unfair trade practices, seeking monetary damages and penalties of up to $10,000 per violation. Butterworth said the incident revealed “a long-standing pattern and practice of segregating people on the basis of race and subjecting African American consumers to inferior treatment and conditions. . . . Incidents such as this make us realize how much further we still have to go.”

But Holton’s attorney, Greg Parker of Perry, said the case has become a “rush to judgment” as rumors and myths have overtaken the facts. “This is not Rosa Parks’ bus,” he said, acknowledging Hughes was wrong but well-meaning in her handling of the situation.

Holton, 48, faced with the potential loss of the business started by his father, said he would have been forced to close long ago if he were guilty of such practices.

“We’ve been here over 50 years and we’ve never had a violation on our license and we’ve never had a complaint and we’re right here on the edge of the black community,” he said. “If we were mistreating people, there would’ve had to have been something before now.”

Perry had until now attracted little attention beyond its annual Florida Forest Festival, featuring a chain saw competition and the world’s largest free fish fry. Surrounded by thick pine forests, the town is at the center of the state’s timber industry, and big logging trucks rumble up and down Highway 27, on which Perry Package is situated.

Since news broke of the incident, bringing in television camera crews and a busload of black state legislators accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, many white residents have clammed up, politely deflecting reporters’ questions and declining to give their names. Many say the incident, while unfortunate, shouldn’t reflect on the entire town. They say blacks and whites get along well here and that any problems are confined to the bar scene.

“It’s not good for the Chamber of Commerce, being labeled the most racist town in America right now. When you get down and start looking, the facts don’t bear that out,” said Don Lincoln, editor and publisher of the Perry News-Herald, who says many reporters have arrived with “preconceived opinions.”

“Sure, we’ve got some work to do, but this is by no means this bad, prejudicial town,” he said. “We’re a nice town. We go to church a lot. We take care of our kids. We have a low crime rate. . . . If people want to believe all this poppycock, fine, they don’t need to come here. But once they come here, it’s not what they thought it would be.”

Back at Perry Package, David Holton said he regrets all the trouble. “I’m sorry for my community getting embarrassed,” he said. “I’m sorry for Mr. Branch getting embarrassed. I wish I could make it go away, but I can’t.”