Growing up in segregated Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s, Eugene Pettis was not allowed to use public bathrooms reserved for whites. His mother once told a Burdines clerk, “You have two choices: either let my son use your bathroom or he will pee on the floor.”

As a sixth-grader, Pettis was severely beaten by white teachers shortly after his elementary school was integrated — an incident that left him angry and could have defined his life.