Florida's Historic African American Homes

Florida's Historic African American Homes

Author: Jada Wright-Greene

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2021-05-03

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1439672490

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The state of Florida has a rich history of African Americans who have contributed to the advancement and growth of today. From slaves to millionaires, African Americans from all walks of life resided in cabins, homes, and stately mansions. The lives of millionaires, educators, businessmen, community leaders, and innovators in Florida's history are explored in each residence. Mary McLeod Bethune, A.L. Lewis, and D.A. Dorsey are a few of the prominent African Americans who not only resided in the state of Florida but also created opportunities for other blacks to further their lives in education and ownership of property and to have a better quality of life. One of the most humanistic traits found in history is the home of someone who has added something of value to society. Today, some of these residences serve as house museums, community art galleries, cultural institutions, and monuments that interpret and share the legacy of their owners.


Newtown Alive

Newtown Alive

Author: Rosalyn Howard Ph D

Publisher: Rosalyn Howard, PH.D.

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780983127314

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This book chronicles the history of Sarasota, Florida's African American community - Newtown - that celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2014. It answers questions about many aspects of community life: why the earliest African Americans who came to Sarasota, then a tiny fishing village, first settled in areas near downtown called -Black Bottom- and -over town;- their transition from there to Newtown; how they developed Newtown from swampland into a self-contained community to ensure their own survival during the Jim Crow era; the ways they earned a living, what self-help organizations they formed; their religious and educational traditions; residents' military service, the strong emphasis placed on education; how they succeeded in gaining political representation after filing a federal lawsuit; and much more. Newtown residents fought for civil rights, endured and triumphed over Jim Crow segregation, suffered KKK intimidation and violence, and currently are resisting the stealthy gentrification of their community. Whether you are new to the area, a frequent visitor, an educator, historian or a longtime resident trying to connect the dots in your family tree, you will find these stories of courage, dignity and determination enlightening and empowering!


St. Petersburg's Historic African American Neighborhoods

St. Petersburg's Historic African American Neighborhoods

Author: Jon Wilson

Publisher: American Heritage

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781596292796

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Pepper Town, Methodist Town, the Gas Plant district and the 22nd Street South community--these once segregated neighborhoods were built by African Americans in the face of injustice. The resilient people who lived in these neighbourhoods established strong businesses, raised churches, created vibrant entertainment spots and forged bonds among family and friends for mutual well-being. After integration, the neighbourhoods eventually gave way to decay and urban renewal, and tales of unquenchable spirit in the face of adversity began to fade. In this companion volume to St. Petersburg's Historic 22nd Street South, Rosalie Peck and Jon Wilson share stories of people who built these thriving communities, and offer a rich narrative of hardships overcome, leaders who emerged and the perseverance of pioneers who kept the faith that a better day would arrive.


A World More Concrete

A World More Concrete

Author: N.D.B. Connolly

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-08-25

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 022613525X

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Many people characterize urban renewal projects and the power of eminent domain as two of the most widely despised and often racist tools for reshaping American cities in the postwar period. In A World More Concrete, N. D. B. Connolly uses the history of South Florida to unearth an older and far more complex story. Connolly captures nearly eighty years of political and land transactions to reveal how real estate and redevelopment created and preserved metropolitan growth and racial peace under white supremacy. Using a materialist approach, he offers a long view of capitalism and the color line, following much of the money that made land taking and Jim Crow segregation profitable and preferred approaches to governing cities throughout the twentieth century. A World More Concrete argues that black and white landlords, entrepreneurs, and even liberal community leaders used tenements and repeated land dispossession to take advantage of the poor and generate remarkable wealth. Through a political culture built on real estate, South Florida’s landlords and homeowners advanced property rights and white property rights, especially, at the expense of more inclusive visions of equality. For black people and many of their white allies, uses of eminent domain helped to harden class and color lines. Yet, for many reformers, confiscating certain kinds of real estate through eminent domain also promised to help improve housing conditions, to undermine the neighborhood influence of powerful slumlords, and to open new opportunities for suburban life for black Floridians. Concerned more with winners and losers than with heroes and villains, A World More Concrete offers a sober assessment of money and power in Jim Crow America. It shows how negotiations between powerful real estate interests on both sides of the color line gave racial segregation a remarkable capacity to evolve, revealing property owners’ power to reshape American cities in ways that can still be seen and felt today.


The Negro Motorist Green Book

The Negro Motorist Green Book

Author: Victor H. Green

Publisher: Colchis Books

Published:

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13:

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The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.


Ancestors of Worthy Life

Ancestors of Worthy Life

Author: Teresa S. Moyer

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2023-08-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0813072956

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Recognizing the lives of the enslaved at the historic site of Mount Clare Enslaved African Americans helped transform the United States economy, culture, and history. Yet these individuals' identities, activities, and sometimes their very existence are often all but expunged from historically preserved plantations and house museums. Reluctant to show and interpret the homes and lives of the enslaved, many sites have never shared the stories of the African Americans who once lived and worked on their land. One such site is Mount Clare near Baltimore, Maryland, where Teresa Moyer pulls no punches in her critique of racism in historic preservation. In her balanced discussion, Moyer examines the inextricably entangled lives of the enslaved, free Black people, and white landowners. Her work draws on evidence from archaeology, history, geology, and other fields to explore the ways that white privilege continues to obscure the contributions of Black people at Mount Clare. She demonstrates that a landscape's post-emancipation history can make a powerful statement about Black heritage. Ultimately she argues that the inclusion of enslaved persons in the history of these sites would honor these "ancestors of worthy life," make the social good of public history available to African Americans, and address systemic racism in America.  Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Division Street

Division Street

Author: Studs Terkel

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2024-11-05

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1620979195

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A landmark reissue of Studs Terkel’s classic microcosm of America, with a new foreword by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and co-creator of the Division Street Revisited podcast “Remarkable. . . . Division Street astonishes, dismays, exhilarates.” —The New York Times When New Press founder André Schiffrin first published Division Street in 1967, Studs Terkel’s reputation as America’s foremost oral historian was established overnight. Approaching Chicagoans as emblematic of the nation at large, Terkel set out with his tape recorder and spent a year talking to over seventy people about race, family, education, work, prospects for the future—all topics that remain deeply contentious today. Subjects included a Black woman who attended the 1963 March on Washington, a tool-and-die maker, a baker from Budapest, a closeted gay actor, and a successful but cynical ad man. As Tom Wolfe wrote, Studs was “one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country.” Most interviewees shared the hope for a good life for their children and the wish for a less divided and more just America, but the real Chicago street referenced in the title takes on a metaphorical meaning as a symbol of the acute social divides of the 1960s—and highlights the continued relevance of Terkel’s work in our polarized times. Now, over fifty years later, Melissa Harris and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mary Schmich have created the remarkable Division Street Revisited podcast, coming in January 2025, in which they have found and interviewed descendants of Terkel’s original subjects in seven rich episodes. Schmich’s foreword to the reissue and the extraordinary podcast—along with the new edition of Division Street—together demonstrate Studs Terkel’s prescience and the enduring importance of his work.


The Public Health Nurses of Jim Crow Florida

The Public Health Nurses of Jim Crow Florida

Author: Christine Ardalan

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0813072166

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Florida Historical Society Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award Highlighting the long unacknowledged role of a group of pioneering professional women, The Public Health Nurses of Jim Crow Florida tells the story of healthcare workers who battled racism in a state where white supremacy formed the bedrock of society. They aimed to serve those people out of reach of modern medical care. In the era of Jim Crow discrimination, their marginalization in medical facilities—along with the overall medical neglect to address their health—meant that many African Americans in rural communities rarely saw doctors. Christine Ardalan shows how Florida’s public health nurses took up the charge, traveling into the Florida scrub to deliver health improvement information to the homes of Black and white residents, many of whom were illiterate. Drawing on a rich body of public health and nursing records, Ardalan draws attention to the innovative ways nurses bridged the gap between these communities and government policies that addressed threats of infection and high rates of infant and maternal mortality. From the progressive era to the civil rights movement, Florida’s public health nurses worked to overcome the constraints of segregation. Their story is echoed by the experiences of today’s community health nurses, who are keenly aware that maintaining healthy lives for all Americans requires tackling the nation’s deep-rooted cultural challenges.


African Americans in Tangipahoa & St. Helena Parishes

African Americans in Tangipahoa & St. Helena Parishes

Author: Antoinette Harrell

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1467102644

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Tangipahoa and St. Helena are two of the eight Florida Parishes in southeast Louisiana. In 1810, St. Helena Parish was founded, and Tangipahoa Parish followed in 1869. The historic St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, public school desegregation case predated the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Many families in the two parishes are the descendants of former slaves. They endured the harsh treatment of Jim Crow and segregation while remaining connected to the Florida Parishes. Notable Grammy-winning singer Irma Thomas and Collis Temple Jr., the first African American to play varsity basketball at Louisiana State University, call these parishes home. Many African Americans in the parishes are successful and are still working to improve race relations.