The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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The town’s own chronology dates the first Black labor in Avon Park to 1914

Summary

Among the fifty-odd entries in the chronology of Avon Park that Barbara Berry Darsey drew up for the Federal Writers’ Project, between the town’s incorporation in 1913 and the first paving of its streets in 1916, stands this:

1914 — First negro labor allowed in Avon Park.[darsey-1937]

Her bibliography names her authority for it: “Reck, W. M. pioneer of ‘second growth’” — an interview with William M. Reck, one of the developers who rebuilt the town after the freeze. [darsey-1937] It is one man’s recollection, taken down about twenty-two years after the fact, and no other record yet known confirms or refutes the year. What can be established is what stands on either side of it.

What the town had been saying

Avon Park was advertised from its founding as a place with no Black people in it. Crosby’s own newspaper gave “freedom from swamps, malaria, mosquitoes, and negroes” among his reasons for choosing the site, and told prospective settlers there was “no cheap negro labor to compete with.”[darsey-1937]

That was not merely a founder’s advertising copy the town had outgrown. On 6 October 1905 the Avon Park column of the county paper, conducted from the town by O. R. Thacher, commented on a local-option liquor vote in Putnam County:

Putnam county has a large negro element which was nearly solid for a continuance of the saloons, and with the white saloon element were able to continue the county wet by the small majority of 65 votes. Probably, after all, DeSoto county will be better off without negroes, and it will be better to keep them out if that can be done by fair methods. Negroes fastening saloons upon a county, in defiance of the wishes of the decent inhabitants, makes us realize the wisdom of keeping the negro out. “No negroes and no saloons” was a pretty good slogan for us after all.[dcn-1905-10-06]

Nine years before the chronology’s date, the town’s own correspondent was still calling the exclusion a slogan and a policy, and treating it as something to be kept up “by fair methods.”

The next town along described it as an established arrangement rather than a slogan. Answering settlers’ questions in December 1895, the Pabor Lake Pineapple wrote: “The race question. It does not enter into the condition of things as they exist in Avon Park township. No land is sold to negroes, and no encouragement given to them as laborers.”[plp-1895-12]

What the enumerated record shows

The 1900 federal census of Avon Park’s precinct records 232 people in 69 households, and the color column of the transcription reads “W” against every one of them; the only appearance of any racial word in it is the occupation blacksmith.[usgenweb-1900-avon-park] That is a transcription rather than the schedule itself, and it is a count of who was enumerated in the town’s precinct, not proof that no Black person was in the neighborhood.

The 1910 and 1920 schedules for the precinct survive only as unindexed microfilm, with no name or place index, so the decade in which the claim falls is the one decade the census cannot readily answer.

Outside the town, the picture is different and earlier. The first formal school for Black children in the Avon Park area was at Hagan’s Turpentine Still, south of the town, and opened about 1910 under a teacher remembered as Mr. Abraham.[maxwell-1976] Black workers were therefore in the turpentine woods around Avon Park some years before the date Reck gave.

The typescript says as much itself, elsewhere in the same volume, and twice. Its section on the town’s government: “Prior to 1914 negro labor was not allowed in Avon Park except for railroad and turpentine work and then the negroes were kept close within their camps.” Its section on industry opens the account of the town’s workforce the same way, adding that the camps were where Black workers “were closely confined.”[darsey-1937] The chronology’s one line is shorthand for a distinction the writer sets out at length: not the district but the town, and not labor as such but labor allowed to live and move in it.

What followed the change is the subject of a separate finding: the town passed a curfew ordinance barring Black people from its streets after eight at night. See Avon Park passed an ordinance barring Black people from its streets after eight at night.

Within the town, the first Black congregation to leave a record is St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1916 on East Green Street under the Reverend G. W. Epps.[maxwell-1976] A church two years after the date, and a turpentine school four years before it, bracket Reck’s recollection without confirming it.

What followed

Whatever the exact year, the exclusion did not hold for long. By 1930 Avon Park had 928 Black residents out of 3,355 — more than a quarter of the town, and the largest Black community in Highlands County.[census-1940-t30]

No ordinance, deed restriction or company rule barring Black residents from Avon Park has been produced. But the neighboring colony’s newspaper, in November 1892, called the arrangement “the ‘no negro’ proviso, as it exists at Avon Park” — a proviso being a condition in a deed or a contract — and distinguished it from a settler’s right to bring his own servants.[plp-1892-11] That points at the Florida Development Company’s own conveyances as the place the rule would be written down.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. W. E. Pabor, editor and publisher, The Pabor Lake Pineapple, November–December 1892, page 4: the 'no negro' proviso at Avon Park (references/pabor-lake-pineapple.md) (1892) · newspaper
  2. W. E. Pabor, editor and publisher, The Pabor Lake Pineapple, 15 December 1895, Question Box: the race question in Avon Park township (references/pabor-lake-pineapple.md) (1895) · newspaper
  3. Barbara Berry Darsey, Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers' Project, pages 188 and 192: the Chronology and its bibliography (references/avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md) (1938) · archival
  4. O. R. Thacher, in The De Soto County News (Arcadia, Fla.), Avon Park Locals, in The South Florida Sun department of The De Soto County News, 6 October 1905, page 8, conducted by O. R. Thacher (1905) · newspaper
  5. USGenWeb Archives, 1900 United States federal census, Avon Park, Precinct 14, DeSoto County, Florida, enumerated 25 June 1900 by Henry C. Evarts; transcription by Janine Rickner and Phyllis Borden for the USGenWeb Archives (2025) · secondary
  6. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida: the school at Hagan's Turpentine Still and St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
  7. United States Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Volume II, Part 2, Florida, Tables 22 and 30 (1943) · official

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