Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue

Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue analyzes the strategic and calculated Civil Rights Movement in Tampa through the lens of Central Avenue. Segregation created the thriving black business district until its demise beginning in the 1960s with urban renewal, interstate construction, and a 1967 riot sparked by the death of a 19-year-old black man killed by a white police officer. These social forces led to the physical and symbolic destruction of Central Avenue. Tampa Technique is guided by interviews with residents, historians, and anthropologists to explore the state's first bi-racial committee, lunch counter sit-ins, integration of public facilities and schools, urban renewal/removal, interstate construction, and the '67 death of Chambers. The documentary begins and ends in Perry Harvey, Sr. Park to situate how Central Avenue is publicly memorialized.