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BY CAITLIN ASHWORTH
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – For years, national publications taunted St. Petersburg as “God’s waiting room” – a “city of green benches” where hordes of listless seniors shared downtown sidewalks with the pigeons.

“The old people sit, passengers in a motionless streetcar without destination,” Holiday magazine said in 1958.

How things have changed.

Now the city is a hip, trendy destination for millennials and tourists – so hip, in fact, that a family recycling business that relocated from Michigan in 1997 has started a distillery that trades on St. Petersburg’s name and uses iconic city photos of yesteryear in its marketing.

“Welcome to the Sunshine City,” say the labels on the bottles of rum and spice, gin, whiskey, and vodka that St. Petersburg Distillery produces on the gritty western flank of Midtown. The labels also feature a golden winking sun – the face of “Old St. Pete” Spirits.

Brothers Steve and Dominic Iafrate Jr., 33 and 35, and their father, Dominic Iafrate Sr., 65, said they developed a love for St. Petersburg, which they call a “hidden gem.” Since relocating their recycling company, Angelo’s Recycled Materials, they have expanded to Orlando, Lakeland and several locations in the Tampa Bay area.

The Iafrates say they saw success in the local craft beer industry and were interested in the craft and quality of microbreweries. They formed a bond with Henry Kasprow, a fourth-generation distiller, which led to the birth of their distillery company.

The Iafrates predict their distillery will help revitalize the Midtown area. After moving their recycling company here, they said, it was the city’s support for the area that drew them to the distillery’s location.

Between 1999 and 2012, the city says, $207.2 million in private and taxpayer money was invested in Midtown, which has seen stirrings of resurgence.

The 30,000-square-foot distillery at 800 31st St. S is within the boundaries of the South St. Petersburg  Community Redevelopment Area, a legal designation just approved by the city and county that allows local government to set aside property tax revenue increases in the district and plow them back into targeted improvements there.

Daniel Undhammar, St. Petersburg Distillery’s director of product development, said the distillery uses local ingredients and takes pride in the localism of St. Petersburg.

“Even the barcode is in the shape of Florida,” he said.

Undhammar said the distillery knows the importance of detail. Each bottle is marked with the Iafrate signature and a batch and bottle number. Each box of Old St. Pete Spirits contains a vintage-inspired St. Petersburg postcard “from your friends at St. Petersburg Distillery.”

Undhammar, a London native, said he moved from New York to St. Petersburg in the fall to work for the distillery.

He calls the Old St. Pete Tropical Gin “my baby” and said it is a combination of the old world of London and the new world of America. The style comes from gin’s classic ingredient, juniper, which is paired with Florida citruses to give it a modern and local twist, he said.

Unlike traditional gin, which uses only the peel of citrus fruits, the tropical gin uses the entire fruit, giving the gin more depth and flavor, he said.

When it came to right alcohol percentage to deliver a balanced taste, Undhammar said, they found just the right percentage.

“At 90 proof it (the gin) began to talk to us,” he said.

St. Petersburg Distillery crafts other spirits along with the Old St. Pete line – American Royal Mead, Tippler’s Orange Liqueur, and the Oak & Palm line of mid-tier rum.  By the end of summer, it plans to release its mid-tier vodka, Banyan Reserve.

Its Old St. Pete Spirits are now served locally at Cask and Ale, Mandarin Hide, Station House and Sea Salt. And the company is looking to expand.

“We love our hometown,” it says on its website, “and we want to take the spirit of St. Pete all over the country and the world.”

BY JEFFREY ZANKER
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – When Raymond Montchal decided to start a boxing club in 2013, he converted his fence company building into a gym, got a boxing promoter license and lined up a partner – his son Nicholas.

Nicholas had boxed as a youth, played football at St. Pete Catholic and worked in his dad’s construction company.

“He wanted to give back to the community and kids that didn’t have the opportunities he had,” his father said.

But Nicholas was recovering from drug problems. He had become addicted to oxycodone after injuring both shoulders in football. He had been arrested twice on drug possession charges and had participated in a drug treatment program when he died of an accidental overdose in March 2014. He was 23.

Raymond Montchal pushed on, determine to teach boxing skills and drug awareness to youngsters in memory of his son.

He named his new venture the Cornerstone Boxing Club after references to cornerstones in the Bible. “When you build anything, the cornerstone is the foundation,” he said.

The club is a tribute to Nicholas, said Montchal. “Everybody in Cornerstone walks into the ring with him.”

Cornerstone started in April 2014 in a 5,500-square-foot building at 2500 Emerson Ave. S. The remodeling cost about $200,000, he said.

The workout gym has fitness machines, boxing bags and a full-size ring. On the walls are painted portraits of Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and other boxers and quotations from boxers and the Bible.

There is also a portrait of Raymond and Nicholas along with thoughts that Nicholas had written in his Bible.

Boxing classes for men, women and children began this month. Members are trained in self-defense, fitness and stress management. The classes cost $85 a month for members. Twenty-five members have signed up.

“We have been getting good business through word of mouth,” Montchal said.

He has signed two professionals who hope to boost their careers boxing for Cornerstone’s professional team – veteran Darnell “Deezol” Boone, a super middleweight (161-168 pounds), and Danny Rosenberg, an amateur welterweight (140-147 pounds) who just turned pro.

Boone, 35, a pro boxer since 2004, said he has defeated three champions, but in his up-and-down career he has more losses than wins.

“My career has been a roller coaster ride,” he said. “But I have no regrets. I just keep going to become better.”

Rosenberger, 25, the son of a former New Jersey middleweight champion, came to Cornerstone at the recommendation of Boone, his sparring partner in Ohio. In his first professional fight, he and welterweight Julian Sosa fought to a draw in Brooklyn on June 4.

For a time, Boone and Rosenberger were joined at the club by Jeff “Left Hook” Lacy, 37, a St. Petersburg native and super middleweight who was once one of boxing’s biggest names. Lacy is now considering retirement, Montchal said.

Lacy and Boone both fought – and won – for Cornerstone in December at the TradeWinds Island Resort. Boone’s defeat of Colombian middleweight Dionisio Miranda with a one-punch knockout gave him his first world title in the National Boxing Association.

Since then, Boone has had two matches. He defeated rising super middleweight Phillip Jackson Benson, but lost to undefeated Russian middleweight Arif Magomedov.

In his spare time, Boone helps train younger boxers. “My experience in boxing is helping them get the real side,” Boone said. “It’s good to give experience to young amateurs you are starting.”

Cornerstone boxers work with James Battle, a trainer, and Robert Allen, a fitness coach.

Battle, 42, said he has trained boxers for 20 years. The deacon at Mt. Zion Primitive Baptist Church on 3700 22nd Ave. S is training more than 10 boxers at Cornerstone.

Allen, 53, works with different groups at Cornerstone. While conditioning the boxers, he also trains a young girls’ aerobatics team and works as a personal fitness trainer away from the gym.

Allen, a St. Petersburg native, works at a nursing home. He has preached at Rock of Jesus Missionary Baptist Church, he said, and he often provides gospel readings to boxers who seek spiritual guidance.

“It is like no other place that I have trained,” Rosenberger said. “They really care about their boxers, in and out of the ring.”

The club’s senior executive director, Chuck Nelson, 76, helped Montchal start the facility and helps manage the fighters. He is a veteran trainer and promoter and founded the K. O. Drugs High School Boxing Tournament in Ohio 27 years ago.

Cornerstone’s facility is still under development, and Montchal said he has been too busy traveling with his team to hold a proper opening.

“It was growing quicker than I can build the infrastructure,” he said. Construction of a swimming pool and steam rooms are in the works.

Cornerstone is promoting a professional boxing and charity event on Aug. 22 at the TradeWinds Island Resort to raise money for the Hope for the Warriors foundation. The nonprofit says it offers programs for members of the military, veterans and their families.

Montchal, a Brooklyn native, said he learned business and management skills through his stockbroker father. He did some street fighting in his youth, he said, and that helped prompt his interest in boxing.

“I don’t fight anymore. I fight with a pencil now,” he said.

He said he moved to Florida at 19 to train and sell thoroughbred horses. He briefly attended St. Petersburg Junior College and eventually became active in construction and real estate.

He owned RJM Communities, a real estate and construction company, and Hurrican Vinyl Fence, then closed them to start Cornerstone.

He lives in Treasure Island with his wife, Kim, and their three children. Kim, who worked with her husband in accounting and decorating, is one of Cornerstone’s managers.

Montchal said he enjoys his new career and wants to continue. His motto is “Submit, commit and have trust and faith in your team.”

“The sole purpose here is to help others and give back,” he said.

Information from boxrec.com and fightnews.com was used in this report.

BY CAITLIN ASHWORTH
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – In its heyday during decades of segregation, the city’s 22nd Street S was the vibrant heart of the black community with more than 100 businesses.

But dramatic changes came. The civil rights laws of the 1960s meant black people could live, shop and attend school in once-forbidden places. The arrival of Interstate 275 in the late 1970s effectively cut the neighborhood in half, and the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980 brought violent crime and more disruption.

Today, virtually all of the old businesses have disappeared from the once-bustling street. But one company with roots that apparently reach back to the 1940s remains open.

The Blue Star Cab Co.

“Open 24 hours, seven days a week,” said Mary Greene, the supervisor of dispatchers. She has been with Blue Star for about 55 years.

“We have never closed.”

Working out of a small office in the back of a former gasoline station at 1311 22nd St. S, Greene deploys 20 drivers around the Tampa Bay area. There are many “die-hard customers” who have remained loyal to Blue Star for years, she said.

The history of the Blue Star Cab Co. is hazy. Its early owners and drivers are dead, and there are scant mentions in newspaper archives.

The Royal Cab Co. dates back to the 1940s, and so does the South Side Cab Co., which appears in a list of 1940s black businesses in a book about 22nd Street S by Rosalie Peck and Jon Wilson.

Entrepreneur Jesse Abrams, who was apparently an ownership partner in two cab companies over the years, was co-founder of South Side Cab, which by the early 1960s had become the Blue Star Cab Co.

“It was one of the major sources of transportation for black folks in this area for a long time,” the Rev. Willie Miller told the Tampa Bay Times when Abrams, his longtime friend, died in 2013.

“They went so far as to pick your child up, and if you weren’t home they’d hang onto your child until you got home.”

Greene said Blue Star Cab and Yellow Cab were for a time the only two taxi companies in St. Petersburg. Blue Star served the black community and Yellow Cab the white. Then in 1962 Yellow Cab created a subsidiary called Checker Cab Co. to serve the black community.

James Thrasher, who was president of Blue Star at the time, objected, but the city’s legal department determined that the new endeavor was legal.

In 1963, another black cab company, Quick City Cabs, sprouted at the corner of 22nd Street S and 15th Avenue. It had six cabs, bringing the number of cabs in the black community to 43. Twenty-five operated under Blue Star and 12 under Checker.

After civil rights laws and integration came later in the 1960s, Blue Star was able to expand beyond the old boundaries of segregation.

Today, options are limitless.

“If you want to go to New York, we can take you,” said Victor Asuzu, a Nigerian native who has been with Blue Star for 15 years and its president for more than a year.

The heat from the Florida sun radiated off the black cement as the air conditioning rushed out the vents of Asuzu’s white Impala with a blue star on the door, lightly brushing the first place blue ribbon hanging from the rear view mirror. His 9-year-old daughter, Bianca, won it during a school track and field event.

Asuzu said summers are slow for Blue Star. Children are out of school and don’t need rides. However, when St. Petersburg College’s new Midtown Center opens across the street this fall, it could bring new customers, he said.

First Friday, a monthly event that allows open containers in designated areas of downtown St. Petersburg, is always busy for taxi drivers. But the night isn’t always a good thing, he said. Sometimes the intoxicated are unable to pay once Asuzu gets them home safely.

“I just want him out of the cab before he pukes,” he said.

Asuzu keeps his cab vacuumed and his equipment up to state regulations. His biggest problem, he said, is his monthly insurance bill, which lingers on the front seat until his three-day grace period is over.

Like a lot of cabbies, Asuzu said the lack of regulations for ride-share companies is unfair.

“I don’t understand how the city allows them to operate here,” he said.
In February, the St. Petersburg City Council discussed revising the decades-old ordinance that regulates vehicles for hire but did not take final action.

In 1952, South Side Cab became the first black-owned and operated taxi company to have radio-dispatched cabs on Florida’s West Coast. Although taxi companies now compete with the new technology of ride-share companies using smart phone apps, Blue Star sticks to its roots. It uses radio dispatching, documented with pen and paper.

Greene started dispatching for Blue Star while she attended Gibbs High School in the 1960s.

The hours were flexible, so Greene could support and raise her children. She was able put all three through college.

Greene’s children are now adults, but she has a new incentive to stay at Blue Star a few years longer.

She reached into her purse and pulled out her granddaughter’s high school senior class photos.

“I work for her now,” Greene said.

Information from the Tampa Bay Times and Evening Independent was used in this report.

BY JEFFREY ZANKER
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – When police officers Leon Jackson and Freddie Crawford patrolled in the early 1960s, they were always alert and ready for trouble. They broke up fights, confronted offenders and seized weapons.

But because they were black, Jackson and Crawford could patrol only black neighborhoods and arrest only black people. If they caught a white suspect, they had to wait for a white officer to come and make the arrest.

Some black residents considered them “half-police officers” – sellouts to a racist police department – and showed them little respect, said Jackson, now 74. “They said we only did half of our job, and they were telling the truth.”

So in 1965, 12 black police officers filed a lawsuit in federal district court, accusing the department of discrimination and seeking the same rights as white officers.

It took three years, but when a federal appeals upheld their challenge, it did more than halt discrimination. It set in motion changes that made it possible for St. Petersburg to have two black chiefs of police – Goliath Davis in 1997-2001 and Tony Holloway, who became chief last year.

It also earned the 12 officers a place in St. Petersburg history as the “Courageous 12.”

Only two of the 12, Jackson and Crawford, are still alive. Last month they were honored at a ceremony at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Museum, where they heard praise from Mayor Rick Kriseman, state Rep. Darryl Rouson and two of the current black officers who are beneficiaries of their trailblazing – Holloway and Assistant Chief Luke Williams.

“Those guys paved the way for us,” said Holloway. “I’d like to thank them for opening the doors for where we are today.”

St. Petersburg did not hire its first black police officers until 1949. Segregation and discrimination were still a way of life, and many black people viewed police as agents of white supremacy and hate.

Growing up in the city, Jackson and Crawford said, they never wanted to become officers. But black cops such as James King, who was known as “The Recruiter,” persuaded them to take the tests and undergo the training that made them officers.

Most of the Courageous 12 had known each other for years. Ten of them were graduates of Gibbs High School and several had been teammates on the Gibbs football team. As officers, they would play football and poker in their off-hours.

“We were all good friends,” said Crawford, now 77.

Then as now, police work was demanding and sometimes dangerous. The bars and night clubs in the city’s black neighborhoods could be volatile, and the black officers knew that their main job was “to keep the black areas in check,” said Jackson.

Crawford said he rarely carried a gun on duty. “I had a gun but wasn’t going to hurt anybody,” he said. “I wasn’t scared. I knew everybody.”

The black officers were “proud of our jobs,” Jackson said, but bristled at the discrimination they faced. At the police station, they used the same bathrooms, showers and water fountains as the white officers, but their patrol and arrest authority was limited and the patrol car they drove was marked C for “colored.” There was only one black supervisor, a sergeant, and his duties were limited to oversight of black neighborhoods and black officers.

Before filing their lawsuit, the officers twice met with Chief Harold Smith to discuss their grievances. He promised to investigate, but nothing changed and he declined to meet with them again.

“It became clear that something needed to be done,” Crawford said.  “We wanted justice; it was as simple as that.”

The group hired lawyers James Sanderlin and Frank Peterman Sr. to represent them. Some of them had to take out bank loans to pay the legal costs.

“We paid out of our own pockets,” said Jackson. “We were taking a gamble. We had families. But we sacrificed ourselves for what we believed was right.”

The lawsuit was titled Baker v. The City of St. Petersburg after Adam Baker, the officer whose name came first alphabetically. “But it was a joint effort,” Crawford said.

In the suit, the officers asked for the same rights as white officers in their duties and in opportunities for promotion.

In 1966, when they presented their case in federal district court in Tampa, the city of St. Petersburg denied discriminating, arguing that black officers controlled black areas better than white officers could. The judge dismissed the lawsuit.

“We were upset because we had a good case,” said Jackson.

The officers said they didn’t have enough money to appeal, but Sanderlin arranged for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to file it. And in 1968, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the officers’ favor.
“They deserve only what they seek – equality,” the court said.

The next year Jackson became the first black officer to patrol an all-white area in St. Petersburg. He left the police department in 1972 to work in machinery and appliances. He is retired and lives in the Midtown area.

“I made my mark and I am proud of what I did,” he said.

Crawford left the department in 1969 and joined the U.S. Department of Justice as a federal mediator for the Community Relations Service. He later became a director of corrections for three facilities in Miami-Dade County from 1981 until 2009. He now lives in Miami.

“I was a good police officer and still am,” he said. He and Jackson often speak to police departments and churches about their experiences.

The Courageous 12’s lawsuit reverberated beyond St. Petersburg.

Eventually, black officers in police departments elsewhere in Florida and the South prevailed in similar challenges. In Tampa, four black officers won a discrimination complaint against their department in 1976.

One of those officers, Rufus Lewis, was in St. Petersburg to help honor Crawford and Jackson.

Information from the Tampa Bay Times and historian and journalist Jon Wilson was used in this report.

The officers and the courts
The officers who filed the lawsuit were Adam Baker, Freddie Crawford, Raymond DeLoach, Charles Holland, Leon Jackson, Robert Keys, Primus Killen, James King, Johnnie B. Lewis, Horace Nero, Jerry Styles and Nathaniel Wooten.

To read the rulings of the federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals see:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12963154890893706626&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8573935906515472789&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholar

BY ANDREW CAPLAN
NNB Student Reporter

LARGO – An exhausted mother crawls out of bed in the middle of the night to comfort her screaming newborn.

She cradles the infant in her arms, bottle in hand, until the baby is quietly sucking down the formula. For just a moment, they lie down.

An hour later, the mother wakes up with a start. Her baby is dead.

Between 2005 and 2013, 90 infants in Pinellas and Pasco counties died while sleeping in bed with an adult, according to the District 6 Medical Examiner’s Office. They died because an adult rolled over on top of them or because their faces were pressed against a soft surface.

Over the same period, 45 more infants died while sleeping alone on their stomachs.

In those 135 cases, the medical examiner’s staff ruled that 113 were caused by asphyxia, or lack of oxygen.

Preventing these deaths is a passion of William Pellan, a father of three and director of investigations for the Medical Examiner’s Office. He had a role in every infant death determination.

Pellan, 46, was an autopsy technician, a forensic investigator and then forensic supervisor at the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office before moving to the Pinellas-Pasco office in 2000.

“I see the worst case scenario,” Pellan said. “I don’t see the ones that make it. And then I take that home.”

Pellan’s sons are 17, 3 and 9 months. He is grateful, he said, that all three made it through the first four months of life – a crucial time because babies that age are not yet strong enough to lift their necks or roll over.

He and his wife took extra precautions during those early months, he said, and his wife sat in a chair while breast feeding to avoid dozing off.

According to PreventNeedlessDeaths.com, babies are 40 times more likely to die in adult beds than in a crib. And nearly 74 percent of deaths of babies younger than 4 months happen in bed-sharing situations.

“You have to put your baby in a safe sleep environment,” Pellan said. “That means putting your baby to sleep alone, your baby sleeping on their back.”

Pillow-top mattresses, stuffed animals, blankets and pillows are just as dangerous in an adult bed as in a crib, he said.

For years, many pediatricians recommended that babies be put to sleep on their stomachs, reasoning that babies who throw up would be less likely to choke on their vomit.

That was the longstanding advice of Benjamin Spock, a pediatrician-turned-author whose folksy handbook on child care made him the preeminent adviser to parents for more than three decades.

His book, The Common Sense of Baby and Child Care, told parents to put babies on their stomachs to avoid choking on their vomit or spit. It was only later, after “studies began to render it suspect,” that he changed his position, according to legacy.com.

His book sold more than 50 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books in the 20th century in the U.S.

A more recent book, The Science of Mom by Alice Green Callahan, says a 2005 study estimates 60,000 infant deaths could have been prevented had the “back-to-sleep” campaign started in 1974 rather than in the 1990s.

“The problem is changing society,” Pellan said. “Now, we realize that if you put your baby on their back, they’re not going to choke, even if they spit up.”

According to HealthyChildren.Org, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the leading cause of death for infants between the ages of 1 month and 1 year. However, the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office hasn’t ruled SIDS as a cause of death since December 2000, when Pellan and Chief Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin started there.

SIDS is an “easy way out” for medical examiners and coroners who don’t want to place the blame on anyone or don’t do a thorough investigation, Pellan said.

“We are sympathetic of someone that lost a child,” Pellan said. “However, we don’t beat around the bush when we make a determination and the cause of death is asphyxia or suffocation. We call it what it is.”

He said his staff hopes that firm policy will help prevent future tragedies.

At a day care in the 1990s, Pellan said, the office investigated the death of a baby who was put face down for a nap on a foam mattress. The ruling: SIDS.

Roughly seven years later, at the same day care and on same type of bed, the same provider did it again. The result: another dead baby. The cause of death: asphyxia.

The medical examiner staff then went back and changed the first baby’s death certificate to asphyxia, Pellan said.

Between 2010 and 2013, only three infants in Pinellas and Pasco counties died while in safe-sleep circumstances. They all died from bronchopneumonia.
In 2014, Pinellas County had eight infant deaths in unsafe-sleep circumstances and Pasco had seven, according to Pellan’s office. The Pasco deaths included these:

On March 8, a 6-month-old girl was pronounced dead after her father put her down on her stomach to sleep. An adult-size quilt was found in her crib.

On April 21, a father fell asleep with his 4-month-old son in his arms, When he woke up, the baby was unresponsive in the bed.

On Oct. 4, another 4-month-old infant was in an adult bed with his grandmother when he died. The baby had been placed in the middle of a U-shaped pillow with another pillow beneath him.

BY BRYANA PERKINS
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – It’s been decades since the aroma of smoked barbecue wafted along the city’s historic 22nd Street S.

For years, Geech’s was the place to get barbecue, a popular spot that John “Geech” Black ran when 22nd Street – “the Deuces” – was the main street of the black community during the era of segregation.

But integration, urban renewal, the proliferation of drug trafficking and Interstate 275 – which in the 1970s effectively cut the neighborhood in two – spelled the end of most of the businesses and homes along the Deuces. Geech’s closed in the early 1980s.

Now, amid efforts to revive the street and surrounding neighborhood, a new barbecue restaurant has opened at 911 22nd St. S.

Deuces BBQ will feature the kind of fare that made Geech’s a popular fixture along the once-thriving street. But there is one difference: The men who own it are white.

They are Patrick “PT” Collins, 39, a local businessman who recently sold the Key West Shrimp Company in St. Pete Beach, and Kevin Egulf, 40, the head chef at Chief’s Creole Café, the restaurant next door to Deuces BBQ.

Both buildings are owned by entrepreneurs Eilhu and Carolyn Brayboy. The couple, who grew up in the neighborhood, say they have invested $800,000 to buy and restore four buildings there.

The return of barbecue is critical in their efforts to bring commerce and customers back to the Deuces, said Elihu Brayboy.

Even during segregation, white people patronized Geech’s, making it “the first integrated business” in the area, he said. “We’re talking about the remnants of history.”

The race of the owners is not important, said Carolyn Brayboy. “It’s really not about color; it’s about passion. One person can start a chain reaction” of positive developments.

The Brayboys hired Egulf in December to be head chef at their Creole restaurant and help build up business. So when they started interviewing people for the barbecue place, Egulf was a natural. He has a passion for cooking, said the Brayboys, and Collins has a history of entrepreneurship, including ownership of a corporate housing firm, a vacation rental company and a UPS store.

Both owners are mindful of local history and traditions.

“We hope to bring some good barbecue to downtown St. Petersburg and to the neighborhood,” said Collins. “We are really trying to reach out and embody the style of the neighborhood; that is why we chose the name Deuces. We really want to be part of the community.”

Collins said he handles the finances, marketing and other behind-the-scenes details. Egulf  continues to work at the café in the evenings after he is done smoking and preparing the food at Deuces BBQ.

Entrees on the menu range from $7 to $10, and include “beer, briskets, chicken, ribs, sausage, and hot dogs,” Egulf said. “Our sides will be potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw and jalapeno cheddar cornbread.”

Diners can eat inside at the counter or in a patio inside. The restaurant is open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

When St. Petersburg College’s new Douglas L. Jamerson Jr. Midtown Center opens this fall less than four blocks away, Deuces BBQ will be ready, Egulf said. Customers with a student ID will be able to buy a sandwich, chips and soda for $6.

Years ago, Geech’s was also popular with students. According to historian and former Tampa Bay Times reporter Jon Wilson, many students at the nearby 16th Street Junior High and Gibbs High School slipped away during lunchtime to get a bite to eat there.

Geech’s stayed open late to catch the crowds that flocked to concerts and parties at the Manhattan Casino and nearby dance halls, Wilson said.

Geech’s opened in the 1930s and had several locations along 22nd Street before Black sold the business in 1973, Wilson said. A new owner kept the Geech’s name until it closed in the early 1980s.

(Ten blocks to the south on 22nd Street, there was another barbecue restaurant. Joe Roberson opened Joe’s Bar-B-Que in 1963. It closed in the late 1990s. Connie Siermons, who had cooked at Geech’s, brought Geech’s specialty sauce with her when she opened Connie’s Bar-B-Q at 1795 16th St. S in 1986, Wilson said.)

Deuces BBQ marks a comeback for both barbecue and Egulf, who volunteered that he has had brushes with the law. He has put drinking, drugs and clubbing behind him, he said, and wants to do more in the lives of his four children.

“I’ve been blessed,” he said.  “All I can do is thank the Lord for giving me an opportunity to better myself and have a business of my own. I’ve waited 40 years for this.”

The Brayboys said a majority of the people involved in their work along the Deuces have spent time in jail or prison.

“Our whole concept is restoring buildings and trying to restore people’s lives,” said Elihu Brayboy. “They served their time. Now they’re just trying to restore their lives.”

BY KELSEY AL and ANDREW CAPLAN
NNB Student Reporters

ST. PETERSBURG – When police officers appear in a high-income neighborhood, residents often assume one of their neighbors is hurt. But when the neighborhood is low-income and predominantly black, people wonder who is going to be arrested.

And that, said police Chief Tony Holloway, is a difference in perception he wants to change.

Since he became chief 10 months ago, Holloway said, he has emphasized what he calls “community relations.” He wants people in every neighborhood to feel more comfortable around officers and see them in a more positive light.

“The biggest thing we should be talking about is community relations,” said Holloway, 53. “We want to be very diverse and very open. We want our officers to get out of their cars and meet you.”

That’s the premise of the chief’s “park, walk and talk” initiative. For at least an hour each week, all 550 sworn officers – including supervisors and the chief – must get out of their vehicles, walk the streets  they patrol and chat with residents.

Holloway had the same policy as chief in Clearwater and it seemed effective, he said.

When he was hired in St. Petersburg, Holloway inherited a fault line between the department and many people in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods and a department that itself was riven by racial tension.

Like most police departments in the South, St. Petersburg had no black officers for many years. The first black officers were hired in 1949, but they could not patrol white neighborhoods or arrest white people. They could drive only one cruiser, which was called C-52. The C was for “colored.”

In 1965, 12 of the department’s 15 black officers filed suit in federal district court for the right to patrol white neighborhoods and arrest white people. Three years later, a federal appeals court ruled in their favor.

In time, those officers became known as the “Courageous 12.” Only two of them are still alive. Freddie Crawford, 77, and Leon Jackson, 74, were honored this month in a ceremony at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum.

Among those on hand was Holloway, who acknowledged the debt that he and every black officer in St. Petersburg owes the 12.

“I’d like to thank them for opening the doors for where we are today,” he said.

Holloway is well aware of the gulf between his department and many of the city’s black residents.

In 1996, an 18-year-old black man was shot and killed by a white police officer after a traffic stop. There were riots that night and again three weeks later, when a grand jury declined to charge the officer. St. Petersburg became a national story, just as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore have been in recent months.

Nineteen years later, many black residents think police enforce the law unevenly. They contend that officers are often insensitive and too quick to stop young black men for questioning.

In turn, many officers are mindful that crime rates are high in some predominantly black neighborhoods. When three officers were murdered in 2011, the gunmen were black.

Within police ranks, some black officers bristle at what they call a double standard for minorities in promotions and discipline.

The internal rancor was one reason that Mayor Rick Kriseman hired Holloway, who as police chief in Clearwater and Somerville, Mass., had a reputation as a steady, even-handed leader.

One objective of the park, walk and talk initiative is to narrow the chasm between the department and distrustful residents, to lessen the preconceived notion that seeing an officers means trouble or an emergency, Holloway said.

Law enforcement’s interactions with residents should be seen as “community relations, not policing,” Holloway said, and positive involvement could help prevent friction and riots in the future.

Now, an encounter with police can mean free tickets to a Tampa Bay Rays game.

The Rays, who play two blocks from the Police Department, have helped establish a spinoff to park, walk and talk called “park, walk and cheer.” When officers are walking the neighborhoods, they can give up to four ticket vouchers to Rays games to people they encounter.

The vouchers go to young people who are doing well in school or people who have done something good in the community, said Holloway.

Officers must fill out a short form to submit to their supervisors after awarding the vouchers. Voucher holders can go to the box office at Tropicana Field and exchange the vouchers for a baseline-box ticket to any home game this season.

“They can go to a Yankees game, a Red Sox game,” said Holloway. “It’s any game they want to go to.”

The vouchers come with an attached baseball card featuring one of the Rays players. The card can be ripped off and saved for a potential autograph before the game.

Officer Joshua Hall, 40, has been with the department for 14 years. He says he loves the chief’s community initiatives because they give him another way to interact with residents.

Hall said he generally looks for youngsters but there is no limitation on who can get the vouchers.

“If they say to me, ‘Yeah, I love baseball. I’ve never been to a game,’ then that’s a perfect hook and you give them the tickets,” Hall said. “The surprise factor is good. They love it. It’s good seeing the surprise on their faces.”

NNB student reporter Jeffrey Zanker contributed to this report.

BY LAUREN HENSLEY and REBEKAH DAVILA
NNB Student Reporters

ST. PETERSBURG – His family’s church once stood in a neighborhood where Tropicana Field is today. His father’s boyhood home was on the site of today’s John Hopkins Middle School, which was two blocks from his grandfather’s wood business and nine blocks from the family’s tax and accounting firm.

Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, 50, is proud that his family’s roots go back three generations in an area that is now called Midtown.

“I’ve lived, worked and played in Midtown all my life,” he said.

That may help explain why he has been a leading advocate for a local government plan that will plow up to $70 million in extra property tax revenue into the poverty-plagued area over the next 30 years.

The plan designates the neighborhoods of Midtown and Childs Park a “Community Redevelopment Area.”

As a CRA, the sprawling, 7.5-square-mile area becomes a tax-increment financing district, where annual increases in city and county property tax revenue generated there will be spent there on improvements in housing, health care, economic opportunities and education.

“Our county is becoming prosperous, but within the county (there are places where) poverty is increasing,” said Welch. “In this county we can never reach our full potential if we have this poverty that is growing.”

The St. Petersburg City Council and County Commission have both embraced the plan, and “we are well on our way to full approval,” said Welch.

The CRA for Midtown and Childs Park grew out of a 2012 study that identified five pockets of poverty in Pinellas County. The other four were the North Greenwood neighborhood of Clearwater and areas in Lealman, High Point and east Tarpon Springs.

The largest pocket – Midtown-Childs Park – is bounded by Fourth and 49th streets between Second Avenue N and 30th Avenue S, excluding Tropicana Field and its parking lots. Almost half of Pinellas County’s low-income population lives in that area, the study found, and 45 percent of them are children. About 650 vacant and boarded-up homes are there, too.

Taken together, the five poverty areas cost local government an estimated $2.5 billion a year, Welch said.

Most of that money “is going toward poverty reaction,” said Welch. “We are more reactionary towards the impacts of poverty. We are paying for folks showing up to the ER as their primary means of health care. We are paying for kids not graduating (from high school) and ending up on welfare or in the sheriff’s facilities.

“Even if you don’t live in one of those areas impacted by poverty, you’re paying for it,” he said.

Welch, a former member of the Pinellas County Juvenile Welfare Board, stresses the importance of early childhood education.

“We lose kids before they even get to kindergarten because they don’t have those primary skills,” Welch said. “A lot of these kids are just plopped down in front of a TV and they’re not getting any educational value … You can look at the school test scores and see that high-poverty schools are the ones having the most difficult time.

“When you have kids that aren’t in school, not getting that degree, there is no potential any more. They’ve locked themselves into poverty,” he said. “This CRA will help to prevent the issues in the beginning and help to end the poverty overall.”

State law gives local governments the authority to create CRAs and the tax-increment financing that goes with them.

The Pinellas County Commission has never created a CRA outside a downtown core, Welch said. If the commission also creates a CRA for the poverty pocket in the Lealman area, as expected, it will be the first in an unincorporated area of the county.

In the CRA covering Midtown and Childs Park, the additional property tax revenue will be dedicated to rent subsidies for businesses, loans and grants for building improvements, workforce training programs, and early childhood education.

A nine-member advisory committee – six from the city and three from the county – will recommend where to spend the money each year, so that projects that fail to meet expectations will lose funding. The final decisions will be made by the City Council and County Commission.

Welch, who was first elected to the County Commission in 2000, said he intends to run for re-election in 2016. That would mean he would be around to help oversee the first years of the 30-year CRA program.

After that? Welch said he would consider running for mayor of St. Petersburg or Congress.

NNB student reporter Alexa Burch also contributed to this report, which includes information from the Tampa Bay Times.

By JEFFREY ZANKER
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – When he finds himself in boring meetings, middle school principal Dallas Jackson likes to sketch on a small piece of paper.

But Jackson is not an ordinary doodler. He is a painter, and some of his sketches have led to colorful work and exhibits.

His latest series – 11 paintings on jazz titled “The Dallas Jackson Collection” – is on display at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum at 2240 Ninth Ave. S through June 5.

Jackson, 46, a St. Petersburg native and resident, is principal of Sligh Middle School in Tampa. He is also a jazz aficionado who saw performances by musicians such as Wynton Marsalis while attending college in Louisiana.

The collection reflects his jazz-listening experience, he said, and its main theme is “how man and instrument merge as one with the music.”

He has paintings of jazz icons such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, but he wanted to give a different perspective of jazz.

“I didn’t want the viewer to focus on icons,” Jackson said. “It’s about the broader experience of the music.”

For example, there are paintings of a saxophone-playing musician turning into a bass and a woman blending with a cello. The freedom of expression in jazz is a theme reflected in his paintings of nightclubs, said Jackson.

“Everything about the music just comes together when you see these pieces, jointly or separately,” Jackson said. The significance of jazz is “the music put into it. It’s what humans respond to. It soothes the savage beast.”

Jackson, who grew up in Midtown, said he has been drawn to the arts since childhood, an interest that was supported by his parents. An early inspiration was Salvador Dali, whose surrealistic work Jackson admired during visits to the Dali Museum. At Northeast High School, he joined the art club and National Art Society.

When he left for college, Jackson said, he intended to pursue a career in the arts and earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La.

But he changed goals after mentoring kids in the arts during college. He received a master’s in education curriculum and instruction at National Louis University in Chicago and a doctorate in education leadership at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

When he returned to St. Petersburg, he worked first as a probation officer for the state.   His career in education began in the mid-1990s, when he worked as a program coordinator at the Pinellas Technical Education Center (now Pinellas Technical College), helping school dropouts learn job skills.

He next became assistant principal at Fitzgerald Middle School in Largo, which led to three principal jobs, starting with Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg in 2006. He left in 2012 to become principal of Martinez Middle School in Tampa and moved to Sligh Middle School in Tampa in 2014.

He, his wife Kaydianne and their four children live in St. Petersburg.

Their house is filled with his art work, Jackson said. He paints during free time on nights and weekends. He uses various materials such as stencils and acrylic paint in his work.

“The whole process is work … to express a genre of research,” he said.

Jackson describes his work as “a visual representation of deep thoughts, research and investigation.”

An exhibit at the Woodson museum last year was titled “Endangered” and expressed his concern over global and national issues like the 2014 abduction of Nigerian school girls, the endangerment of African-American male figures, and human self-destruction.

The exhibit’s inspiration was a school research project Jackson did on the disproportionately high suspension rates of minority students in urban school districts.

Though he views art and education separately, they both give him skills for solving problems, he said. “Art can help solve problems more creatively.”

He has two new projects in the works. In one, he plans to extend his “Endangered” series. The other, he said, focuses on the white, aristocratic traditions in American values and their influences on African-Americans and immigrants from the late 19th century until today.

Information from the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum website was used in this report.