In September, we told you about the 90th birthday of Treasure Coast historian Ada Coats Williams. This month, we celebrate another: Ineria Elizabeth Hanley Hudnell, a walking time machine born Nov. 29, 1920.
In three decades as a schoolteacher, and in the more than three decades since she retired and became a widow, she served as a historian, bringing exhibits to venue after venue.
“When I started this, I couldn’t stop. And I’m still going with it,” Hudnell said in April 2009.
She said it was because she believed God had a plan for her. But it’s also because no one else would do it. She fought for years, without luck, for a permanent place to house the history of the area’s mostly invisible black community.
“I tell them all, ‘You don’t have to wait until Black History Month,’ ” she recalled once.
“We’re part of the city,” Hudnell said in an April 2009 interview. “And it should have been part of us, too.”
The Jacksonville native graduated from Florida A&M in 1943 and taught in Gifford.
She moved the next year to West Palm Beach and started at Washington Elementary School, then a wooden building. A year later, she switched to Roosevelt High. She would spend more than three decades there.
She married postal worker Arthur “Tiny” Hudnell and moved in 1959 to her home on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, then just a dirt road called 12th Street.
At the time, West Palm Beach had two communities, each self-contained. They weren’t equal.
But, she said: “I felt it would get better in time. It had to.”
Arthur Hudnell died at 51 on his wife’s birthday in 1971. She retired around seven years later.
It was in the early 1980s, while she helped on a history of the Evergreen Cemetery, and later on the book Like A Mighty Banyan, that people began submitting photos and documents to her.
Now they stand stacked dozens deep along every inch of wall. Frames cover every bit of horizontal space as well, many holding photographs of her many grandchildren or friends who are now policemen, politicians or judges.
She said young people who see her exhibits are amazed that segregation once was the law — something she says is really good but also really bad.
“Many of them are still asking ‘why?’ And it’s hard to say,” she said.
Ineria Hudnell at her Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard home, with some of the historical documents and artifacts from her collection. The portrait, center, on the wall was painted by one of her art students when she was a teacher. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Graduation Day for Ineria Hudnell at Florida A&M College in 1943. See more photos of Ineria Hudnell and other local black icons in the Historic Palm Beach Black Icons photo gallery. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Tags: Black History
BY ELISA CRAMER
To provide scholarships to high school seniors, they cooked and sold dinners each Saturday. They started community programs, from tutoring elementary school students to volunteering at nursing homes to helping to break down barriers erected by segregation.
That legacy of service to the community has endured for 55 years for the members of Zeta Tau Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Chartered in Palm Beach County on December 10, 1955, this graduate chapter of the oldest Greek letter organization for black women is as strong today as ever. Through the efforts of the Ivy Educational Foundation, a 501(c) (3) organization that supports the fundraising efforts of the Zeta Tau Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the Chapter annually awards scholarships to graduating high school seniors. Last year, the Chapter awarded $20,000 in scholarships.
The Chapter also:
· provides a community outreach program for middle and high school students, along with workshops for parents;
· sponsors two youth groups – one for middle school girls and one for young ladies in high school; and
· gives support to cancer research, the American Lung Association, The Salvation Army, The Red Cross and several other community organizations.
To make these contributions, including the $20,000 in scholarships last year, the Sorority hosts such fundraisers as: the Emerald Elegance dance, The Mother/Daughter Luncheon, and the Fashionetta youth pageant, luncheon and fashion show, featuring the Hamilton Vogue Esquire models of Chicago. This year’s Mother/Daughter Luncheon will be held at the PGA National Resort and Spa in Palm Beach Gardens on May 1, 2010, at 11:30 a.m.
Under the leadership of Chapter President Maxine Perry DuPont, the Chapter aims this year to focus on the economic growth of the Black family, health issues facing elementary school students and their parents, and financial literacy. The Chapter also supports such annual grassroots programs as the Thelma R. Jones Prayer Breakfast, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and the provision of Thanksgiving Food Baskets.
The 15 charter members who launched the Zeta Tau Omega Chapter 55 years ago had a vision of sisterhood and service – a vision that thrives in Palm Beach County today. Zeta Tau Omega Chapter is one of three graduate chapters of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., in the county. There also is a chapter in Belle Glade and in Delray Beach.
To find out more about the Mother/Daughter Luncheon, how your daughter can become a part of the Twenty Pearls or Precious Pearls youth groups, or other information about Zeta Tau Omega’s activities, please contact Maxine DuPont at (561) 655-3978.
Following are the chapter’s 15 founding members:
Charter Members in 1955
Geneva Boynton
Myrtis Edgecombe Burke
Vernice Williams Butler
Clayton Lowe Coleman*
Naomi Daniels Cole
Lillian Hearst
Bernadine E. Lazier
Doris Matthews*
E. Bernadine Cousins Murray
Louise Murray
Ardis Orr*
Juanita Orr
Marian Orr*
Delores Robinson Powdrill
Novik Mitchell Stubbs*
Evangeline Wilburn*
*Deceased
Tags: Black History
By Keely Gideon Taylor
The LaFrance Hotel in Delray Beach was the first Black-owned hotel in Delray Beach.
Completed in 1949 by the Charles Patrick family, it was the home away from home for seasonal laborers during the segregation era. When it opened, it was the only Black-owned hotel between Delray Beach and Fort Lauderdale. During the 1950s and 60s, many Blacks who were professionally trained as laborers in the North would travel to warm South Florida during the winter. From January through April, they would travel to Delray Beach to work long days as butlers, chauffeurs, housekeepers and waiters in segregated upscale homes and fine restaurants.
Kenneth Durante of Delray Beach remembers traveling from New York to Delray Beach from 1960-1968 and staying at the LaFrance. He was trained as a professional waiter in the North. He described the LaFrance as a nice place with decent size rooms and a common area with a small television. He recalled paying $35 a week to stay at the hotel during the 1960s. The hotel had two stories, 16 rooms and two bathrooms. In addition to professional laborers, the hotel also provided a home for traveling Black entertainers. Although Blacks musicians played in local clubs to integrated audiences, they were forced to eat and sleep in segregated establishments.
In 1968, Mr. Durante moved to Delray Beach and started a family. The Durant family has remained permanent residents. Mr. Durante, along with his wife Charlotte, a former City Commissioner, has owned several businesses in Delray Beach. His son, Tony Durante, currently works in ministry at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. His daughter, Lori, serves as executive director/chief curator of the Museum of Lifestyle and Fashion History.
The LaFrance was purchased by the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency in 2004 and redeveloped into affordable housing for low income seniors. The LaFrance Apartments sit on the original site on NW 4th Avenue in the West Settler’s Historic District of Delray Beach.
LaFrance Apartments in Delray Beach
Tags: Black History, Delray Beach, LaFrance Hotel
