Preserving Black Heritage: Florida activists fight to save historic
site and their culture

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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here

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Friend,

Behind a chain-link fence six miles from the cacophony of Orlando, a
jumble of old masonry sits quiet and still, the foundations of what
was the heart of a historically Black community nearly obscured by
tall grasses swaying in a hot Central Florida wind.

The Hungerford property, as it is known, makes up 15% of the tiny town
of Eatonville, a 1.6-square-mile patch of modest homes and businesses
that is one of the oldest incorporated Black communities in the U.S.
For the county school board offering the 100-acre tract for sale, the
developers eager to build on it and a narrow majority of the town
council, it is clear what they see behind the fence: profit.

But if only they could gaze into Hungerford's past, they would
see the young Zora Neale Hurston
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, the queen of the Harlem Renaissance, skipping joyfully through the
beloved Black town she grew up in and immortalized in her literary
masterpieces. They would see a school founded with the help of Booker
T. Washington
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filled with Black students thriving even as they were denied
opportunities in the white-run world around them. They would see the
mothers and fathers, the grandmothers and grandfathers of Eatonville
come to life from old photographs still cherished by their descendants
- dancing around a maypole, striding with confidence to and from
a Black-owned sawmill and a brickworks, harvesting sugarcane and
oranges on their own farms - and teaching their children the
pride of a place of their own.  

Today, 135 years after the 1887 founding of "The Town that
Freedom Built," that vision is clouded.

Eatonville, where 73% of residents are Black, faces what community
activists call an existential choice. Either the Hungerford property
is saved, opening the possibility of using the land to honor and build
on the heritage of the town with a museum and other cultural and
historical attractions, or the development "is going to eat
Eatonville," said Scot French
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, an associate professor of history at the University of Central
Florida who has spent decades studying the historically Black
community. "You know, it's just going to devour it."

The proposal has stirred discontent, opposition and, among many
residents of Eatonville, a sense of betrayal.

A local nonprofit, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville
Community
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, Inc., has been developing its own vision for converting the parcel
into a destination for tourism and study that it hopes could spark an
economic renaissance centered on the town's rich cultural,
sociological and literary history.

The town "is like having an artifact that's still
alive," said Malissa Williams, senior staff attorney for the
Southern Poverty Law Center's Economic Justice Project
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, which is working with the group to support its efforts to
ensure the land is used in a way that benefits the community and
safeguards its future.

READ MORE

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