Black man sought council seat in 1911

February is Black History Month. The historical contributions of blacks in Palm Beach County have often been overlooked. A few years back, we profiled four such personalities or couples. We’ll revisit them in our four Post-Time columns for February. Here’s the first:

George Green got more than one out of every four votes for the Delray Beach City Council. Not bad for a black man in the Deep South in 1911.

Green was one of the pioneers of the fledgling town during a time of Jim Crow poll taxes and other forms of black voter intimidation. But in the town’s first election, on Oct. 9, 1911, Delray Beach’s blacks were not only allowed to vote, they put forward their own candidate.

Eleven of the first 57 electors were black, and Green was one of 10 people nominated for five alderman’s positions, coming in seventh with 16 votes.

Green’s family could well have been named Monroe. That was the name of his father’s master. But with emancipation, the name became a hated reminder, and the family became the Greens. George, born in 1877 and one of six siblings, left the small town of Midway, near Tallahassee, with his wife in 1894. He joined a growing migration of Southern blacks lured to frontier South Florida by the promise of cheap and plentiful land.

Soon Green had a home in the neighborhood between Swinton and Northwest Sixth avenues, now called the West Settlers Historic District. He was a partner in a packing house that shipped winter vegetables to the north. Kidney disease killed Green at 50; he died in his family home and is buried, along with his wife, in Delray Beach.

Tags: African Americans, Black history month, black icons