Music Festival featuring local singer/songwriter/actress/model SiobhanMonique and Area Entertainers

Some 106 years ago in the City of Saint Petersburg, FL, then Mayor Al Lang
endeavored to regulate the proliferation of benches of various colors and sizes that
dotted the city landscape, especially in the emerging downtown area. Benches lined the
bustling Central Avenue corridor and were present in the city’s prized Williams Park
(formerly City Park) named for city co-founder, John Constantine Williams, Sr. Lang’s
1917 Bench Ordinance required all public benches be painted hunter green. The city
would become known as the City of Green Benches. Not everyone, however, was
welcome to sit and linger on the green benches.

Mrs. Chlotiel Cooper, like many African Americans in the 1950s, worked as a domestic.
She lived in a segregated area of Saint Petersburg because she had to. She worked
outside the redline requiring her to traverse Williams Park, which in 1954 had become
the city’s mass transit bus hub. Her home was in Jordan Park, a well-maintained public
housing complex, too far from the park to comfortably walk. She would be compelled to
stand while waiting for her bus to carry her back to the safety of her people.

Chlotiel Cooper was a tall, graceful, beautiful, gentle, and dignified woman. However
tired she was after a day of labor, and however empty the park may have been at a
given time, she was not allowed to take a rest on the green benches for fear of
admonishment if not possible arrest. According to local historians, Black people could
sit on the benches as of 1945 without fear of arrest; however, decades of being
subjected to de-facto regulation would take as many years to become a commonplace
civil right.

Mrs. Cooper did not live to see the changes that would come because of the Civil Rights
Movement. She would not experience the subsequent dismantling of the green benches
that went away, not by an act of civil rights, but by the city’s decision to remove all of the
thousands of benches that once served as conversation pits for mostly elderly White
tourists. The city wanted to evoke a more ‘youthful’ vibe as tourism began to be the
primary focus of city leadership. The benches were banned in the 1960s.

On April 22, 2023, Mrs. Cooper’s great-granddaughter, Siobhan Monique, will command
the famous Williams Park bandshell and one-half of the grounds when the Motherland
Music Festival takes place, 4 pm to 8 pm. The festival is cathartic for Siobhan who would
not have been allowed to sit in the park nearly 80 years ago, let alone host an event.

Siobhan Monique, founding artist of Ancestral FunkTM, Inc, is heavily influenced by her
uncle, Buster Cooper, a 10-year member of the world-famous Duke Ellington Band.
Chlotiel, Buster and the Band all suffered the sting of racism and the indignities that
came with it. Times have changed for the better; even though much work remains to be
done.

The Motherland Music Festival is for all citizens and visitors in Saint Petersburg and
greater Tampa Bay. The kid-friendly event celebrates the diversity that is Saint
Petersburg in the 21st century. From food trucks to VIP seating and dining, to ethnic
dancers, fire dancers, stilt walkers, to musical acts, the Festival is sure to offer
something for everyone.