Can't find the original post now, but it was asked upthread why there are relatively few black people in Walton County compared to Bay or Okaloosa. Seems like the majority of the middle class black population in the panhandle outside of Pensacola is here for military ties- either current generation or a parent or grandparent and
1- you want to live closer to jobs and services. Trying to home from work at Eglin/Hurlburt/Tyndall to Santa Rosa Beach on US 98 during the summer would kind of make me hate life.
2- Once the Pentagon decides that civil rights issues need to be handled in a specific way, it is done without concern of "but my daddy and granddaddy did it this way". Military-dominated Okaloosa was the first school district in the state to desegregate (after Brown but ahead of lower court order) and it happened when black airmen on base approached their commander about separate and unequal education for their kids, the base commander went to the school district, and the most eventful thing about the whole process is that Choctawhatchee High School spent a couple years racking up forfeit wins in football and basketball because a lot of other schools in the region refused to play against a 'mixed' team.
The DoD can and does blacklist a business that shows discriminatory practices against their personnel in uniform. Somewhere around 2005, I think it was, Air Force investigators found that a Walton County appliance store was charging higher prices to Hispanic service members than it was to white buyers. The store was put on the DoD 'do not go here or purchase services from this business' list, and it went out of business not much later.
Granted it's not perfect on this side of the county line as the recent issues with he Baker School show, but town and base are tied together tightly enough that race relations have tended to be a little more forward-thinking than in many non-military parts of the old South.
1- you want to live closer to jobs and services. Trying to home from work at Eglin/Hurlburt/Tyndall to Santa Rosa Beach on US 98 during the summer would kind of make me hate life.
2- Once the Pentagon decides that civil rights issues need to be handled in a specific way, it is done without concern of "but my daddy and granddaddy did it this way". Military-dominated Okaloosa was the first school district in the state to desegregate (after Brown but ahead of lower court order) and it happened when black airmen on base approached their commander about separate and unequal education for their kids, the base commander went to the school district, and the most eventful thing about the whole process is that Choctawhatchee High School spent a couple years racking up forfeit wins in football and basketball because a lot of other schools in the region refused to play against a 'mixed' team.
The DoD can and does blacklist a business that shows discriminatory practices against their personnel in uniform. Somewhere around 2005, I think it was, Air Force investigators found that a Walton County appliance store was charging higher prices to Hispanic service members than it was to white buyers. The store was put on the DoD 'do not go here or purchase services from this business' list, and it went out of business not much later.
Granted it's not perfect on this side of the county line as the recent issues with he Baker School show, but town and base are tied together tightly enough that race relations have tended to be a little more forward-thinking than in many non-military parts of the old South.
