Lawson State Community College in Alabama has an excellent black history page on its website that’s chock full of information on historical and present day figures.
Click here to check out this comprehensive site.
Tags: Black history month
By Michelle Quigley
The Northwest Community Consortium, Inc. is hosting a Black History Month trolley tour of historic sites in the northwest neighborhood.
Tour-goers will see Payne Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, both founded in January 1893; Pine Ridge Hospital, which opened as a hospital for African-Americans in 1916; the Sunset Cocktail Lounge, a showplace for black entertainers in the 1940s and 50s; and the home of Haley and Alice Mickens, where Dr. Alice Moore still resides.
The tour is Saturday, February 27, 2010, beginning with a program at 8:30 a.m. at the Salvation Army Community Center at 600 N. Rosemary Avenue, followed by the tour at 10:00 a.m. The program, including a display of Ineria Hudnell’s photo collections, and tour are free and open to the public. Registration is required. Please call 561-820-4872 to register. Click here to see a map of the tour route.
The Sunset Cocktail Lounge in West Palm Beach was the “Cotton Club of the South” in the 1950s. Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Duke Ellington were among the performers at the Sunset, owned by Dennis and Thelma Starks. Mrs. Starks, who died in 2008 at 91, recalled, “We had music on those days.” (Palm Beach Post file photo)
The Sunset Cocktail Lounge and Ballroom in 1930s. (Palm Beach Post file photo/Courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
The Sunset Cocktail Lounge in 1973. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
The Sunset Cocktail Lounge in 2003. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
The Payne Chapel at the corner Ninth and Division streets. The church’s origins lie in old Palm Beach, when blacks worshiped at Bethel AME Church in the shanty town called the Styx. When it moved to Banyan Street in West Palm Beach in 1902, it was known as Payne Chapel, named after one of the bishops. In the ’20s, it
moved to Ninth and Division streets, meeting in the basement. In 1937, the church was completed and services were held upstairs for the first time. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Retired teacher Alice Moore stands in front of her 1917 historic home on Fourth Street. Moore is the adopted daughter of Dr. Alice Frederick Mickens, a West Palm Beach civil-rights leader. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
This photo from the Collie family shows John Collie’s son, Warren (in black suit) and one unidentified gentleman standing in front of the new Pine Ridge Hospital shortly after it opened. The hospital served black patients in five counties until 1956, when St. Mary’s Medical Center integrated. In 2008, the property was sold to the Charmettes Inc., an international service organization. Charmettes was founded locally by Frankie Drayton Thomas and Gwendolyn Rodgers, whose husband, Edward Rodgers, was Palm Beach County’s first black judge. (Palm Beach Post file photo/Courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Tags: African Americans, Black history month, buildings
BY LADY HEREFORD
Riviera Beach’s majority black population makes it a rarity among South Florida’s waterfront municipalities. But the city’s complexion was quite different in its early days.
White settlers in the area voted to incorporate the city as the Town of Riviera in September 1922. It was re-incorporated in June 1923, and a volunteer fire department began in 1926, according to the book “A History of Riviera Beach, Florida,” edited by former Library Director Lynn Brink.
The 1928 hurricane destroyed Kelsey City, Riviera’s northern neighbor, and caused widespread damage to homes and businesses. During the next two decades, the sleepy town relied mainly on the commercial fishing industry and tourism, earning the nickname “Conch Town.”
During the 1940s, the town expanded, at one point buying 1,000 feet of beach on Singer Island (named for developer Paris Singer) for $40,000. The town, which changed its name to Riviera Beach in 1941, later acquired much of the south end of the island.
The civil rights era brought major changes to the city, which saw its black population more than double between 1950 and 1970. In 1962, attorney F. Malcolm Cunningham became the city’s first black councilman.
The Rev. Herman McCray moved to Riviera Beach in 1966. The area’s affordable homes attracted a large number of black professionals, McCray said.
He and his neighbors in the Imperial Point neighborhood founded the Imperial Men’s Club to fight for services like trash collection and street lights. The club grew to more than 100 members at one time, he said, and the group’s goals expanded citywide.
“It’s just something that needed to be done,” said McCray, who later became the city’s sanitation superintendent, served on the city council, owned a successful business and sat on the county school district’s biracial committee. He and the club earned a mention in the book “Blacks and Social Change” by James W. Button.
Many of the city’s newer residents aren’t aware that before integration, Riviera Beach, like many municipalities, had separate facilities for blacks and whites, he said.
“We’ve had a used car lot, black drive-in theater, pool, gymnasium,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t have that.”
Tags: Black history month, Riviera Beach, Singer Island
The pews were full at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in this October 2005 photo taken as congregation members celebrated the reopening of the church a year after Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne caused more than $1 million in damages. Staff photo by Carolyn Drake/The Palm Beach Post.
BY ELISA CRAMER
Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church was home to the first school for African Americans in Palm Beach County. Then located on what is now Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach, the school was overcrowded with 74 students on Oct. 1, 1894. So, the Superintendent of Schools arranged for two school terms of four months each.
That was one year after Tabernacle was organized in the Styx in Palm Beach, Fla., in October 1893. Now, 116 years later, under the leadership of the Rev. Gerald D. Kisner, Tabernacle continues to offer boys and girls and others in our community support, encouragement, education and tools to help them reach their God-given potential. The church is committed to building a two-story, 11,000-square-foot multi-purpose center in honor of the late Mr. Ulysses B. Kinsey, a dedicated member of Tabernacle and longtime principal and community leader for whom a nearby elementary school is named.
The church building has been destroyed by storms, displacing the congregation temporarily in 1902, 1928 and 2004, when Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne caused more than $1 million in damage to the church. But the congregation is resilient and committed to the Northwest Community in West Palm Beach and to empowering people throughout Palm Beach County.
Often called “God’s House on the Hill,” Tabernacle is a red brick church that sits at the intersection of 8th Street and Division Avenue, visible from many points in and near downtown West Palm Beach. The church offers a variety of services, including free hot breakfasts on Sunday mornings, educational forums throughout the year, youth festivals and resource fairs on topics from health to voting. Church school is every Sunday at 8:30 a.m. Worship services are Sundays at 10 a.m. Adult Bible Study is Tuesday at 7 p.m. Prayer and Praise Service is Wednesday at 7 p.m. Children’s Bible Study is offered some Saturdays each month, and Morning Bible Study is at 11 a.m. on the second and last Wednesdays of each month.
Everyone is welcome at Tabernacle (801 Eighth Street, West Palm Beach, FL 33401). Check out the church’s Web site or call (561) 832-8338 for more information.
Tags: Black history month, churches, Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church
By Michelle Quigley
Thomas L. Jefferson, Joseph Wiley Jenkins, C. Spencer Pompey, Joseph N. Bernadel, Ulysses B. Kinsey, Solomon D. Spady, Cracker Johnson, Eva Mack, Edward Rodgers, Louise Buie, M.A. Hall Williams, Ineria Hudnell, Freddie Stebbins Jefferson, and Vera Farrington are people who have made a difference in our community.
Among them are Florida’s first black female mayor, the king of black West Palm Beach in the 1920s, the county’s first black chief judge, one of the first black doctors in Palm Beach County, and the first black woman on The Palm Beach Post editorial board. Two of them have schools named after them, one a bridge, and another a post office.
Click here to see a photo gallery and read the stories of these local black icons.
Tags: African Americans, Black history month
