Ticket to ride: Jacksonville Beatles show echoes through Kitty Oliver's life 60 years later
When Kitty Oliver attended the Beatles’ 1964 concert in Jacksonville as a Jacksonville teenager, nothing noteworthy happened to her, other than seeing Paul, George, John and Ringo.
The fact that nothing noteworthy happened to her is noteworthy in itself. Oliver attended the Sept. 11, 1964, show at the old Gator Bowl stadium by herself, as a Black teenager, at a concert where the Beatles insisted that the crowd be desegregated and just a few months after the Civil Rights Act was signed.
She wasn’t harassed by the overwhelmingly white crowd. Nobody called her names or tried to stop her from cheering for the Fab Four.
But the experience changed her life.
Hell or high water: Beatles overcame obstacles to play 1964 concert in Jacksonville
“In the larger context, something did happen,” Oliver said last month from South Florida, where she lives and heads the Race and Change Initiative. “It’s just taken all this time for that one little experience to resonate.”
Oliver, known as Eloise Leeks at the time, was a student at New Stanton High School and a huge music fan. She said she skipped school for the first time to see Herman’s Hermits, tried to knock on the door to Johnny Mathis’ hotel room and had other “oddball teenage adventures.” But the Beatles were something special.
“I was a fan at 15 when they first hit American consciousness and I had been following them. I was 16 when I went to the concert, entering my senior year of high school.”
A good friend was also a Beatlemaniac and the two girls would spend hours listening to the records. “When the idea of the concert came up, I thought it was a wonderful opportunity, but she didn’t feel the same way."
That’s how she ended up attending the concert by herself. Her mother was a protective type but had enough faith in her daughter to give her blessing to the show.
“Growing up as an only child, and she was a working mom and a young mother, it fell on me to be responsible,” Oliver said. “I remember telling her I wanted to do this and I knew if I could show her I could get the money for it ... she was fine with it. It had nothing to do with the Beatles.”
Oliver cleaned houses to raise money for her ticket, but Mother Nature almost ruined her plans. Hurricane Dora passed through the area just days before the show and the city was still in recovery when the Beatles came to town.
“Here comes the hurricane,” Oliver said. “Everyone was concerned about whether the house would be standing; I was more concerned about whether this was going to mess up my plans.”
The concert was held at the Gator Bowl, which was near the home of Oliver’s grandparents and her church, so it wasn’t unfamiliar territory and not far from her home at 23rd Street and Myrtle Avenue. She caught a ride to and from the concert with the New Deal Cab Co., which serviced the Black community at the time.
She said she was a little concerned walking into the Gator Bowl when she did not see another Black face in the crowd.
“I was intimidated once I got there, if I look back on it,” Oliver said. “I was aware once I went there and found my seat that I was the only Black person there. For a moment, I was in that zone of uncertainty, not knowing what would happen and also knowing what could happen. So the antennae were definitely up. The not knowing is where the anxiety came."
Then the Beatles came on and she was just another screaming teenager.
“The music started and things changed, it was like a switch went on and it was a different kind of experience.”
The whole experience gave her strength and confidence in an era of great change, she said. The landmark Civil Right Act of 1964 was just a few months old and, a year later, she was one of the first Black freshmen at the University of Florida. She went into a career in journalism and education and has spent much of her life working on race relations.
“I think just being a product of my time and my generation and the Beatles being a major soundtrack of the time, of course they affected me,” she said. “I think it being my introduction to the international appeal of music and how the music I grew up hearing could be reinterpreted and that music can be a great integrator in life.”
She wrote a memoir, “Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl,” about growing up in Jacksonville and attending UF, but the Beatles story isn’t in the book.
“I did certainly remember it and thought about using it, but the book was put together in the late 1990s and I had a theme I strongly wanted to explore, about encounters and milestones you hit when you are crossing the racial divide.”
That’s not to say she’s never told the story. Years ago, she recounted her Beatles adventure to a blogger and forgot all about it. Around 2012, someone from producer Ron Howard’s office found it and got in touch with her. She flew to California for an on-camera interview and is featured in Howard’s 2016 documentary, “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – the Touring Years.”
Oliver is also a jazz singer and, naturally, "Yesterday” and “In My Life” have worked their way into her act. She said she’s also used “In My Life” in her race-relations seminars.
Oliver will be back in Jacksonville on Sept. 12, 60 years and a day after the Beatles concert, to talk about it. The “1964: When the Beatles Rocked Florida” event will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 12, at the Ritz Theatre. Oliver and Bob Kealing, author of “Good Day Sunshine State,” will discuss the concert and Beatles tribute act Liverpool Live will provide the music. Tickets are $20.
She’ll also be in Jacksonville on Sept. 20 to lead a Jax Book Fest workshop at the Main Library.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Kitty Oliver on seeing the Beatles in Jacksonville in 1964