Images of Florida's Black History
Here are just a few of the many images depicting the history of African
Americans in Florida. |
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Plan
of the land between Fort Mossy (Mose) and Saint Augustine
Image Number: RC12824
Established north of St. Augustine in the 1730s, Fort Mose
was the first free black community in North America.
Map created between 1765 and 1775.
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Portraits
of six soldiers of the 54th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers
Image Number: N039653
The
Battle of Olustee was fought east of Lake City was the largest
Civil War battle in Florida. The Confederates stopped the
Union invasion of the interior. For the Federals, the casualty
percentage at Olustee was one of the highest of the entire
war.
The
rearguard action of the
54th Regiment, along with the 35th United States Colored Troops,
allowed the Union army to retreat to Jacksonville.
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Portrait
of Jonathan C. Gibbs
Image Number: RC02889
Served
November 6, 1868 to January 17, 1873, as Secretary of State.
Served January 23, 1873, to his death on August 14, 1874 as
Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Photographed
between 1868 and 1874.
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Joseph
E. Lee: Jacksonville, Florida
Image Number: RC11971
Born
in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Institute for Colored
Youth in the early 1860s and graduated from Howard University
in law, 1873. He
was admitted to the Florida bar that year and was one of the
first blacks to practice in Florida.
During his lifetime he was a municipal judge, Minister, collector
of customs and internal revenue. He was a member of the Florida
House from 1875-1880 and the Florida Senate from 1881-82.
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Engraved
portrait of Timothy Thomas Fortune (ca. 1891)
Image Number: RC10877
Accompanying note: Born to slave parents, Sarah Jane & Emanuel
Fortune, Oct. 3, 1856.
Made
himself useful in the office of the Marianna Courier after
the war.
After
family moved to Jax., worked in composing room of the Jax.
Courier then The Union. Read
more...
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Portrait
of Reverend James Page: Tallahassee, Florida (not after 1883)
Image Number: RC13794
First
ordained black minister in Florida. First pastor of Bethel
Missionary Baptist Church.
Came to Leon County as the slave of John Parkhill from Richmond,
Va. Was a gardener, carriage driver as well as a body servant
to his owner. After Page was ordained, Parkhill gave him land
for the Bel Air Church and a horse and buggy were maintained
at the Parkhill stables for his use. Read
more...
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Judge
James Dean: Monroe County, Florida
Image Number: PR14947
Having
graduated first in his class from Howard Law School he was
elected Monroe County judge over two white candidates in 1888.
(Dean was said to be the first black county judge elected
after reconstruction in Florida.)
Governor
Francis P. Fleming removed him from office in 1889 for marrying
a black woman and a white man (although the groom said he
was mulatto).
In
2002 Governor Jeb Bush reinstated his judgeship. Read
more.
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Former slave Bishop Abram Grant, D.D. and wife Florida Grant (ca.1891)
Image Number: N033744
Grant was born on August 25, 1848, the slave of Frank Rollison.
He was elected the 19th Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church on May 19, 1888, and ordained on May 24. Read more... |
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Florida
State Normal and Industrial School class of 1904 portrait:
Tallahassee, Florida
Image Number: RC02520
Later
became the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
Robert
William Butler, John Adams Cromartie, Arthur Rudolph Grant,
Rufus Jason Hawkins, Rosa Belle Lee, Sara Grace Moore, Winifred
Leone Perry, Walter Carolus Smith, Margaret Guinervere Wilkins,
Margaret Adelle Yellowhair (2nd from right, front row), Walter
Theodore Young.
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Woman
with a fan made of feathers
Image Number: HA00288
Photographed
in Tallahassee, Florida between 1885 and 1910 by Alvan S.
Harper. See more images from the Harper
Collection.
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Eartha
M.M. White and her mother Clara White: Jacksonville, Florida
(1910)
Image Number: PR00852
Born
in Jacksonville, the 13th child of a former slave, Eartha
Mary Magdalene White attended schools in Florida and New York.
An educator and publisher, she established the Clara White
Mission in honor of her mother during the Depression in the
1930s. She also ran a prison mission and donated property
for community projects, including the first park for black
children.
In
1967 she began the Eartha M.M. White Nursing Home, which grew
into the area's largest employer of blacks. She was a Women's
Hall of Fame inductee 1986.
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Robert
Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, Booker T. Washington
Hall (191-)
Image Number: PR02884
This
is a building in the all black town of Eatonville. Incorporated
in 1887, Eatonville is one of the oldest of the black towns
founded after the Emancipation Proclamation still in existence.
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Daytona
Normal and Industrial Institute during meal preparation: Daytona Beach, Florida (1912?)
Image Number: PR00796
Mary McLeod Bethune is third from left. Possibly taken inside
the original Faith Hall of the Daytona Literary and Industrial School
for Training Negro Girls. |
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Aunt Aggie's bone yard: Lake City, Florida (ca.1915)
Image Number: RC06315
Aunt Aggie Jones, a former slave, on the right with a visitor.
She maintained a garden, famous between 1900 an 1918, with
trellises, gateways and arches of animal bones.
She
charged no admission but usually had flowers and vegetables
for sale.
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Advertisement
for Bill Pickett movie
Image Number: PR07392a
Poster
for a movie called "The Bull-Dogger". A Norman
Studios production filmed in Jacksonville, Florida, ca.
1920. |
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Self-portrait
of Richard A. Twine (between 1922 and 1927)
Image Number: LV002
Richard
Aloysius Twine, born in St. Augustine on May 11, 1896, had
a brief but notable career as a professional photographer
in Lincolnville, Florida. Lincolnville was the center of the
black business and residential community in St. Augustine
during the first few decades of the 20th century.
See
more images from the Richard
A. Twine Collection.
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Portrait of blues clarinet player Raymond Sheppard holding a trumpet: Pensacola, Florida (between 1930 and 1949)
Image Number: FP83199b
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Gabriel
Brown playing guitar as Rochelle French and Zora Neale Hurston
listen: Eatonville, Florida
Image Number: FA0514
L to R: Hurston, French, Brown.
Hurston worked for the WPA, collecting folklife and folklore
from Floridians throughout the state. She is pictured here
collecting music from French and Brown.
Photographed in June 1935.
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Former
slave Charity Stewart: Jefferson County, Florida (1937)
Image Number: RC02016
Charity
Stewart was born in 1844. During the Civil War she was hidden
in the swamps of Jefferson County to make soap for the soldiers.
After
freedom, she returned to her former owners home where she
stayed until they died. For many years she lived alone in
an old log house in Jefferson County. She was 93 when this
photo was taken in 1937.
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George
Carson: Jefferson County, Florida (1937)
Image Number: RC02019
Former slave, George Carson, standing by the house in which he lived
after coming to Florida in 1875. |
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Four boys dancing in front of the Hemingway residence in Key West (1939)
Image Number: N045541 |
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Portrait
of Miami police officer John Milledge
Image Number: PR20204
Born
on May 6, 1898 in Bamberg, South Carolina. In 1925, John,
27, married Edna Johnson, 17, of Denmark and the couple moved
to Miami.
He
was involved in Civil Defense activities in the black community
during World War II which led to his being named one of the
five original black officers sworn into the Miami Police Department
on September 1, 1944.
Read
more...
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Virgil
Darnell Hawkins
Image Number: RC13783
Virgil
Hawkins graduated from Edward Waters College in Jacksonville,
Fla., in 1930, and returned to Daytona to become a teacher
and principal. He later became public relations director for
Bethune-Cookman College.
In
1946 Hawkins and five other African-Americans applied for
admission to professional schools at the University of Florida
in Gainesville. They were denied on the basis of race, and
the NAACP filed a lawsuit. Bethune-Cookman was told that loans
to the institution would not be renewed unless Hawkins was
fired. Read
more.
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Woman
by sign blown down during hurricane: Virginia Beach,
Florida (1950)
Image Number: RC13705
Virginia Beach is off the coast of Miami in Dade County. |
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Coach
Jake Gaither in the locker room with his FAMU football team:
Tallahassee, Florida
Image Number: C018793
Coach
Gaither stands to the middle right, wearing all white. Photographed
in December 1953.
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Reverend C. K. Steele at the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church:
Tallahassee, Florida (1957)
Image Number: RC12436
Photographed on January 3, 1957.
Accompanying
note: "Rev. Charles K. Steele with the 4' cross that was burned
at his church, at 224 north Boulevard St., at about 9:30 PM
on January 2, 1957. Most likely brought on by the front of
the bus riding demonstrations the week before." Read
more...
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Segregationists
and black demonstrators at a "white only" beach: Saint Augustine,
Florida (1964)
Image Number: RC17740
Photographed
on June 25, 1964 in Saint Augustine, Florida. |
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Swim
team at Robinson Trueblood swimming pool: Tallahassee,
Florida
Image Number: N047231
Robinson
Trueblood Swimming Pool on Dade Street was built by the city
in response to wade-ins by blacks at all white pools. It was
the only pool where blacks could swim and train as lifeguards.
The
first swim team included (standing, L-R) Roy Beard, Eddie
Graham, Edward Holifield, Bishop Holifield, more
info...
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Sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter: Tallahassee, Florida
Image Number: RC03283
The white student reading at the counter is Bobby Armstrong
and at the far right is reporter George Thurston.
Photographed
on March 13, 1960.
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Supreme Court Justice Joseph W. Hatchett poses with his family:
Tallahassee, Florida (1975)
Image Number: RC11873
Accompanying
note: "Black Justice with Family--Florida's first black Supreme
Court Justice Joseph W. Hatchett poses with his family after
they helped Hatchett on with his ceremonial robes prior to
his taking the bench Tuesday. Read
more...
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Air Force General Daniel "Chappie" James and Florida Governor
Reubin Askew (1976)
Image Number: PR00805
General James was being honored for his accomplishments by
the Florida legislature. Photographed on April 15, 1976.
In 1975, General James became the first African American 4 star
General in the Air Force.
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Representative Carrie Meek (1980)
Image Number: N035226
Representative Meek wore this prophetic t-shirt in the House
chamber. She was later elected to the Senate and then to the
U.S. Congress. Meek was the first African-American women to
be elected to the Florida senate. She was a 1992 Florida Women's
Hall of Fame inductee.
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