 African Americans in Florida began a long struggle to regain their civil rights, with the movement growing in the 1950s and 1960s, after decades of being excluded from the political system.and being treated as second-class citizens.In 1972, students at the newly desegregated Escambia High School in Pensacola had a bloody race riot after black students fought the school's band and other white students when the band played the school song, "Dixie," at a football game.