{"id":533,"date":"2026-01-01T14:03:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T14:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omp.space\/?p=533"},"modified":"2026-01-03T01:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T01:49:09","slug":"key-west-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/2026\/01\/01\/key-west-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"Key West – Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Key West. The Conch Republic. Cayo Hueso (Bone Key). Mile 0. Southernmost Point. How many more names are there for a place so small? Each resonant of a different spirit to say nothing of the lost local names for areas, some remaining as tourist destinations, Bahama Town, many just lost, Sears Town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had visited briefly in the late seventies. In the interregnum between the departure of the Navy in the mid-seventies and the tourist boom beginning in the mid-eighties with the construction of the cruise ship piers that have made today\u2019s modern Key West. There were always tourists, since Flagler built his railroad then becoming the Overseas Highway accomodating the rise of automobile travel and self-directed vacationing by car. On arrival, I was startled by the changes. It had been an end-of-the-road, pavement runs out place that attracted people, many with little means, who wanted to remake themselves or discover their identities with freedom to express themselves. A long standing aura of the edge-of-the-law hung about the island, perhaps the spirit of its history where early fortunes were made in ship wrecking and salvage, with much of the old town build by repurposing timbers from sunken ships, long before \u201crepurposing\u201d became vogue and tripped of the tongue. Now, to some extend, repurposing has come to mean relocation as many locals who make the services and create the ease for the many visitors are struggling to live in their own paradise. A soft removal through increased rents, increased service costs, and salaries rather than hourly wages to support a family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perched in the ocean and more Caribbean than mainland the people and culture are a mix again and likely always in flux. Strategically, Key West has long been important. Some knicknamed Key West the \u201cGibraltar of the Gulf\u201d as from its port the Navy could monitor and to some degree control shipping from the Atlantic to the historic southern ports of Mobile and New Orleans. Curiously, although Florida sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, Key West remained a Union port significantly throttling Southern maritime trade and previously preventing the illicit slave trade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving in Key West, I thought I had left behind the earlier themes of my American excursion, the Civil War, Civil Rights, and reconciliation with John C. Calhoun\u2019s \u201cpeculiar institution\u201d. Between learning about Fort Zachary and more importantly, President Truman at the Little White House, America\u2019s slave history is more pervasive as the nation stumbles towards its 250th anniversary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Off the gift shop, where, of course the tour ends, is a small room dedicated to Truman\u2019s activities in Civil Rights. The house tour is eccentric \u2014 following the patrician Franklin Delano Rosevelt, whose Hyde Park estate represents his heritage, Truman\u2019s Little White House is surprisingly modest, and very much a house of the people. While comfortable, is it not ostentatious, in fact the furnishings are quite humble and very much in the vein of a summer house where ties, jackets, hard polished shoes with laces, are banished. Any view from the quarters is blocked by the former Navy Administration building, now condos for the very wealthy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The room, in a dark blue with gold lettering, almost like the in-box for elegant stationary is a display dedicated to: Exectutive Orders: 9808, December 5, 1946 Presidential Civil Rights Commission; 9980, July 26, 1948 Fair Employment in government offices, and 10308, Dec 3, 1951 non-discrimination in federal contracting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate display honors Executive Order 9981, July 26, 1948, President\u2019s Committee On Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. This display includes an image of the brutalized face of Seargent Isaac Woodard Jr., a World War II veteran, who, while in uniform, was attacked by South Carolina police trying to board a bus after his discharge in February 1946. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close by is an image of Truman addressing the NAACP membership at the Lincoln Memorial eerily echoed by Martin Luther King some six years later. Truman, in this address in 1947 states: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[And] When I say all Americans,
I mean all<\/em> Americans
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>
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Coda: In February 2019, led by Judge Richard Gergel and Major Don North, the town of Batesburg-Leesvile, erected an historic marker to Isaac Woodard Jr. on the site of the jail where he was so brutally beaten. The marker notes the attack led to President Truman to create the Commission on Civil Rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Key West. The Conch Republic. Cayo Hueso (Bone Key). Mile 0. Southernmost Point. How many more names are there for a place so small? Each resonant of a different spirit to say nothing of the lost local names for areas, some remaining as tourist destinations, Bahama Town, many just lost, Sears Town. I had visited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-us"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}