Article published Sunday, February 3, 2008 THE REV. FLOYD ROSE Activist dedicates life to change Fight against discrimination brought minister back to Toledo
The Rev. Floyd Rose gets a hug from Perlean Griffin after a rally at Toledo's Braden United Methodist Church.
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THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON
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For the Rev. Floyd Rose, the fight against racism began as a young boy in 1949.
He was 11 years old, wearing a new, blue suit and sitting next to an elderly woman on a chartered bus heading from Atlanta to a church service in Birmingham, Ala.
About halfway through the two-hour bus ride, the 82-year-old woman leaned over and told him she needed to use the rest room.
Almost immediately, the youngster jumped up, headed down the aisle, and asked the bus driver to stop at the next service station.
The driver pulled off at a gas station as the bus crossed the Alabama state line. A young Floyd Rose got off the bus and walked inside. He asked the four white men sitting around a table playing cards if an elderly woman could use a rest room.
A big, burly man with a cigar tucked between his teeth told him there were no rest rooms for blacks.
The man stood up, put his hand on the boy, and shoved him out the door.
Floyd picked himself up, turned around, and saw fear in the eyes of the black passengers staring at him from the bus windows. They said nothing.
He made up his mind right then - he never again would remain silent.
"I decided then that I didn't want to be like him and I didn't want to be like them," an emotional Mr. Rose, tears streaming down his face, told The Blade in an interview last week. "I didn't want to ever make anybody afraid of me, and I didn't want to be afraid of anybody - ever."
Mr. Rose's tireless lifelong fight against discrimination is what brought him back to Toledo last month.
For more than 60 years, the retired pastor has battled racism - in city government, law enforcement agencies, and at department stores. He's led boycotts, filed discrimination lawsuits, and organized marches.
Still today, Mr. Rose, who left Toledo more than a decade ago, is considered a leader among the city's black community.
On a cold Thursday night last month, a crowd of 150 people turned out for a rally at Braden United Methodist Church to listen to him speak for two hours. They sang, applauded, and raised their arms in support.
"He has a unique ability to unite people and ignite interest in what he has to say," Perlean Griffin said. "People love to listen to him."
Ms. Griffin, who was fired last year by Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and was asked by Mr. Rose to become president of the newly formed local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Mr. Rose, much like Martin Luther King, Jr., is an eloquent speaker unwilling to give up.
"When he believes in something, he's tireless," she said. "He's going to work on it from morning to night."
When Mr. Rose left Toledo in 1995 for his hometown of Valdosta, Ga., he said he had no plans to return.
But after being flooded with calls and e-mails from people saying the city needed his help, Mr. Rose decided to come back.
At the rally, he spoke about the ills facing Toledo's black community: the firing of Ms. Griffin as the executive director of the city's Office of Affirmative Action/Contract Compliance, and the lack of businesses along Dorr Street owned by African-Americans, which he said was once considered a "black mecca."
The 69-year-old man then raised his voice and urged the crowd to vote down the city's income tax renewal in March, which is projected to raise about $58 million in 2008.
"Rosa Parks didn't make an announcement, she made a decision," he told the men and women sitting before him. "Because she refused to move back, we moved forward."
Mr. Rose continued: "As long as the train of oppression is rolling over you and you don't pull the wheels off, it's going to continue to roll over you. You have to stop it."
And with that, Mr. Rose shook some hands, said his good-byes, and was on a flight home to Georgia the next morning, leaving it up to those here to carry out his message.
Bernard "Pete" Culp, who joined Mayor Carty Finkbeiner in criticizing Mr. Rose at a press conference following his call for defeat of the city tax, later told The Blade that the civil rights activist was echoing what some community members already have been talking about.
"Somebody needs to put issues back up on the radar screen, and that's what Floyd is trying to do," Mr. Culp told The Blade.
In fact, that's what he's been doing for a long time.
After he arrived in Toledo in 1956, Mr. Rose, who founded Family Baptist Church on West Bancroft Street, became the face for change among the black community, Mr. Culp said.
In 1981, Mr. Rose accused former Toledo Mayor Doug DeGood of racial discrimination for not interviewing black candidates for city manager. He was elected president of the NAACP's local chapter the following year, and in 1983 filed race discrimination lawsuits against the Lion Store. The store agreed to hire more minorities.
In an effort to end South Africa's apartheid, Mr. Rose, in 1986, joined in a national boycott against Coca-Cola because of the company's presence there. Locally, 48 stores stopped carrying Coca-Cola products.
One month after the boycott ended, Coca-Cola announced its intention to end its corporate presence in South Africa.
At a June, 1988, City Council meeting, Mr. Rose - along with 11 other black clergy and one white pastor - occupied seats reserved for councilmen and refused to leave in protest of the suspensions of three black community development department employees, including Mr. Culp.
Protesters, led by Mr. Rose, asked the city to hold public hearings for the suspended officials so they could respond to allegations about their work.
Police officers approached Mr. Rose first. He went to his knees, was dragged from council chambers, and arrested.
Mr. Rose, who serves as president of the Valdosta-Lowndes County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has led similar protests in Georgia.
In 2005, he asked City Council members to rename Valdosta's Barber Park, named after a white segregationist.
The park is in a predominately black neighborhood and Mr. Rose wanted its name to reflect the community in which it was located.
He refused to leave the podium at both meetings and was arrested along with 14 others. They were charged with disrupting a public meeting.
Mr. Rose's attorney, Rob Plumb, filed a motion with the State Court of Lowndes County to dismiss the charges, claiming the statute under which Mr. Rose was arrested was unconstitutional because it was vague and overbroad. The judge granted the motion.
The state appealed the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, which, in 2006, affirmed the lower court's decision. The charges against Mr. Rose were dismissed, Mr. Plumb said.
Later that year, Valdosta City Council approved renaming the park after John W. Saunders, Lowndes County's first black agricultural extension agent.
"There was a principle behind it," Mr. Rose said. "Streets and parks are named after people who are considered important to the people who live there. If all the streets in our neighborhood are named after white folks, then what does that say to our children?"
But all the protests and marches led by Mr. Rose have not been without criticism.
In September, 1986, a 26-year-old Toledo man was sexually assaulted and beaten near City Park, on Nebraska Avenue. A witness later came forward, saying he saw police beating a black man the night the victim was found.
Mr. Rose was outraged over the attack and the city's response. He led an emotional march of about 600 people to Government Center.
He also led a rally in response to the incident during which he said: "I hope and pray that the police didn't do it. If the investigation shows that someone else did it, we want that person prosecuted. If the investigation shows that police did it, we want them prosecuted."
An investigation cleared the officers and four young black people were arrested in the attack.
But Mr. Rose didn't apologize.
He said then that he accepted the findings but still believed officers were at the park the night of the attack, and didn't offer any help to the victim.
And he's not apologizing now for injecting himself into Toledo's recent troubles.
Last week, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission ruled there was "probable cause" that three black city officials disciplined by the Finkbeiner administration, including Ms. Griffin, were discriminated against by the mayor and the city.
On Friday, Mr. Rose said Mayor Finkbeiner is in denial about the racial problems in Toledo and the discrimination in his own administration.
John Henry Livingston said Mr. Rose's activism is, at times, misinterpreted.
"In his heart, his motivation was to draw attention to the disparities that otherwise no one would pay attention to," said Mr. Livingston, who was hired to do public relations for Mr. Rose in the early 1980s.
He said Mr. Rose understands that although change is sometimes uncomfortable and inconvenient, it is necessary.
"People resist change," Mr. Livingston said. "He would make people sit down and talk about it. He would make people dialogue about it. Reverend Rose's heart was in the right place even though everyone may not have concurred or agreed with his motive."
For Mr. Rose, the fight to end racism continues.
"If I could stop doing this, I would. This is what I am," he said. "We've got to look beyond color and see character."
Contact Laren Weber at: lweber@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.
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