Tallahassee Civil Rights Oral History Collection

Jackson Lee Ice was born in 1925 in Buffalo, NY. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his M. Div. from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1955. That same year, Ice became a faculty member in the Florida State University (FSU) Department of Philosophy. As a professor of religion, Ice was interested in the philosophy of religion, contemporary religious thought, and the relationship between religion and art and religion and science. In 1974, he became full professor, serving in that rank until his death in 1991. At the time of his death, Ice was working on a manuscript for a book, Albert Schweitzer: Sketches for a Portrait. It was published by University Press of America in 1994. John Carey, former Chairman of FSU's Department of Religion, described Ice as "one of America's premier Schweitzer scholars."

The Tallahassee Civil Rights Movement oral history project, conducted in the summer of 1978, was a natural outgrowth of Dr. Ice's involvement in Tallahassee civil rights activities during the late 1950s and 1960s. Ice arrived in Tallahassee in 1955, nine months before the bus boycott. He was a witness to and a participant in the civil rights activities and social changes that affected Tallahassee during those years. When he arrived, he joined the Tallahassee Council on Human Relations, the city's first integrated civic organization. Many members of the Council were FSU and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) professors. Ice became its president in 1961-1962. During that time he came under heavy criticism from local political figures for his statements supporting the rights of African-Americans to demonstrate and perform civil disobedience for their cause. Ice was almost fired from his FSU teaching position. It was because of his work with the Tallahassee Council on Human Relations that he became acquainted with many local African-American leaders and participants and familiar with the issues and problems they faced.

Through this experience, Ice became convinced of the importance of the activities of the Tallahassee Civil Rights Movement in our nation's history. Primarily, he wanted to record these events, as told by individuals who witnessed them, before they faded from memory. He also wanted to enlighten his students about what took place during this era of racial tension, courage, and sacrifice and the role that Tallahassee played nationally in the civil rights struggle. He also became involved in this project in the late 1970s because he felt it was significant for people to know that there was progress made in civil rights and race relations since the early 1960s.

Working for the FSU Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Religion with funding supplied by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Ice taped a series of interviews with people who were residents of Tallahassee during that era. He selected a representative sample of civil rights advocates and their opponents.