- Jun 8, 2004
- 3,210
- 64
American Beach was born in a time when black life was dominated by the strictures of Jim Crow. Shut out from the white economy, African-Americans created their own, and in Philadelphia and Atlanta and Los Angeles and most other major American cities, they lived and shopped in a separate universe parallel to the white one nearby. Jacksonville had its own thriving black stores and restaurants, factories, newspapers, banks, insurance companies and hospitals and, as a direct consequence, its own black professional establishment. If that establishment was wealthy and educated, it was also invisible to most whites, who tended to think of black people as entertainers, criminals or "the help." The black middle class even vacationed out of white sight, in resorts like Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard and Val Verde outside Los Angeles. And American Beach.
Most of those places have languished—after the demise of segregation, they weren’t needed the way they once had been, and the businesses that created and fostered them closed as well. The Afro-American Life Insurance Company shut its doors in 1991, and what’s left of American Beach, with fewer than 25 year-round families, doesn’t even make an appearance on many Florida maps. Most of its homes are aging and modest; a few of the grandest have been torn down. And its businesses—the nightclubs, hotels and restaurants that used to throb with activity all summer night—are boarded up.
There are many who think American Beach will not be around much longer, considering the pressure from rich developers. Eight years ago, a large section of property that had once belonged to the Beach, including a giant sand dune that dominates the town, was sold to Amelia Island Plantation, one of the multimillion-dollar golf and vacation resorts that are American Beach’s neighbors. MaVynee vehemently opposed the sale—we are talking, after all, about the same dune over which she envisions flapping her butterfly wings. She calls it NaNa and grieved its loss as though the dune were a member of her family. The resort preserved it and built a golf course on much of the land behind it
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues03/jun03/peoplefile.html
CLICK ON THE WEBSITE FOR MORE..
Peace!
Isaiah
Most of those places have languished—after the demise of segregation, they weren’t needed the way they once had been, and the businesses that created and fostered them closed as well. The Afro-American Life Insurance Company shut its doors in 1991, and what’s left of American Beach, with fewer than 25 year-round families, doesn’t even make an appearance on many Florida maps. Most of its homes are aging and modest; a few of the grandest have been torn down. And its businesses—the nightclubs, hotels and restaurants that used to throb with activity all summer night—are boarded up.
There are many who think American Beach will not be around much longer, considering the pressure from rich developers. Eight years ago, a large section of property that had once belonged to the Beach, including a giant sand dune that dominates the town, was sold to Amelia Island Plantation, one of the multimillion-dollar golf and vacation resorts that are American Beach’s neighbors. MaVynee vehemently opposed the sale—we are talking, after all, about the same dune over which she envisions flapping her butterfly wings. She calls it NaNa and grieved its loss as though the dune were a member of her family. The resort preserved it and built a golf course on much of the land behind it
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues03/jun03/peoplefile.html
CLICK ON THE WEBSITE FOR MORE..
Peace!
Isaiah