The claim that Avon Park’s founders wanted a town free of Black people traces to the 1939 WPA guide

The Atlanta Daily World of 25 September 1949 opened its account of Avon Park’s Black voters by noting that the town’s founders “chose the site because, among other things, there were no Negroes here.”[adw-1949-09-25] That claim traces to a book that was ten years old and on every Florida library shelf.

The sentence

Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, the Federal Writers’ Project’s state guide, published in 1939, says this at page 499:

In 1886, O. M. Crosby, of Danbury, Conn., president of the Florida Development Company, chose the site for settlement because of its “open pine forests studded with clear water lakes, an abundance of fish and game, freedom from malaria, mosquitoes, and Negroes.”[wpa-1939]

The 1949 dispatch is a plain paraphrase of it, down to the “among other things” that stands in for the list. A wire-service reporter writing a Florida town’s background in 1949 would have reached for the state guide, and the sequence fits.

What the guide does and does not establish

The words are inside quotation marks and are attributed to Crosby. The guide names no source for them — no book, no newspaper, no letter, no pamphlet. The Federal Writers’ Project did not footnote.

Crosby’s two surviving books do not contain the sentence. Neither Florida Facts Both Bright and Blue (1887) nor Common Sense About Florida (1888) prints this line.

Where it came from

The source the guide does not name is The Florida Home Seeker, Crosby’s own promotional newspaper. The Federal Writers’ Project’s own Avon Park file says so. Barbara Berry Darsey, compiling the unpublished Avon Park Guide in 1936–37 from issues of the paper lent to her by the town’s first settlers, writes:

In an early issue of the Florida Home Seeker, a publication of the Florida Development Company in interest of this site, Mr. Crosby gave as his reasons for choosing this site: “The natural beauty of the open pine forest studded with fresh clear-water lakes gleaming like jewels; the abundance of fish and game; the high altitude; freedom from swamps, malaria, mosquitoes, and negroes.”[darsey-1937]

That is the guide’s sentence, fuller, and with a source attached to it.

The paper made the same claim in at least two other forms. A list of the town’s advantages, printed before the freeze, runs: “Features of Avon Park’s success: no frost, no whiskey, no negroes, nor malaria; low priced land, a solid township to select from; progressive people — no idlers.” [darsey-1937] The town history of 1976, drawing on the company’s advertising independently of Darsey, prints a closely matching version: “No frosts, no whiskey, no swamps, no malaria, no negroes, low prices for land, very easy installments. Northern progressive people. No idlers. Good society.”[maxwell-1976]

And an editorial of 1895 puts it as a labor argument:

Of course you know we have no “Race problem”, no cheap negro labor to compete with, no outrages, profanings, or lynchings; no need for sheriff, judge, or jury; because no “liquor” so no loafers or lawlessness. Yet this is not Utopia, only Avon Park, which we aim to make a place of model homes.[darsey-1937]

The position is therefore no longer that a government book quotes an unsourced sentence. It is that the town’s founder advertised his townsite, in his own newspaper and over several years, as a place without Black people, and that a Federal Writers’ Project writer who had the newspaper in front of her in 1937 recorded where the words came from.

A rule, not only a line of copy

The earliest and plainest evidence is from 1892, and it calls the thing by a legal name. Asked whether the rule at Avon Park would apply at Pabor Lake too, the Pabor Lake Pineapple answered that “the ‘no negro’ proviso, as it exists at Avon Park,” was another matter from a settler bringing his own servants: “As to selling land to negroes, that is another matter.”[plp-1892-11] A proviso is a condition in a deed or a contract. See Avon Park had a “no negro proviso” on the sale of its land by 1892.

Said as policy, not only as advertising

Crosby’s paper was selling something, and a reader may reasonably discount what a promoter says of his own town. The next town along said the same thing about Avon Park, in a column meant to answer plain questions from people thinking of settling. Under the heading “The race question,” the Pabor Lake Pineapple of 15 December 1895 answered:

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]

That is a different kind of statement. It is not a list of a place’s attractions but a description of how the township was run: land was not sold to Black people, and Black labor was not wanted. W. E. Pabor, who printed it, had no interest in Avon Park’s reputation beyond his own colony’s, and he set it down as a matter of fact that a prospective settler would want to know.

What it was, and what became of it

The wording belongs to a trade. Florida land promoters of the 1880s and 1890s sold health and comfort by listing what a place was free of, and malaria and mosquitoes belong to that list; so, in promotional literature aimed at Northern buyers in the decades after Reconstruction, did Black neighbors. Avon Park was founded in a nearly empty township, and a promoter could truthfully advertise it as containing almost nobody at all.

It did not hold. Whatever Crosby advertised, by 1930 more than a quarter of Avon Park’s people were Black — 928 of 3,355 — and the town held the largest Black community in Highlands County.[census-1940-t30] The turpentine camps, the crate mills and the groves brought a Black workforce within a generation of the founding, and Hopewell School, New Mount Olive A.M.E. and St. Mark Missionary Baptist grew out of it.

Everything the town later did to its Black citizens — the segregated precinct, the school built with no Rosenwald money, the council’s vote in 1951 to void every ballot cast in Voting Place No. 2 — reads differently beside the advertisement that founded it.

References

• plp-1892-11 — W. E. Pabor, editor and publisher. The Pabor Lake Pineapple, November–December 1892, page 4: the ‘no negro’ proviso at Avon Park. 15 December 1892. pabor-lake-pineapple.md
• plp-1895-12 — W. E. Pabor, editor and publisher. The Pabor Lake Pineapple, 15 December 1895, Question Box: the race question in Avon Park township. 15 December 1895. pabor-lake-pineapple.md
• darsey-1937 — Barbara Berry Darsey. Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers’ Project, pages 22, 27, 30 and 201. 31 December 1938. avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md
• maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida: the Florida Development Company’s list of the town’s advantages. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
• wpa-1939 — Federal Writers’ Project, Work Projects Administration for the State of Florida. Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, Federal Writers’ Project, 1939, page 499. 1939. wpa-florida-guide-1939-avon-park.md
• adw-1949-09-25 — Associated Negro Press, in the Atlanta Daily World. Negroes Swing Mayor’s Election In Avon Park, Atlanta Daily World, 25 September 1949, page 3. 25 September 1949. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn82015425/1949-09-25/ed-1/?sp=3
• census-1940-t30 — United States Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Volume II, Part 2, Florida, Tables 22 and 30. 1943. avon-park-population-by-race-1930-1940.md

Related

• Reference: The Florida Home Seeker, Avon Park’s own newspaper
• Reference: the WPA Florida Guide of 1939 on Avon Park
• Finding: in 1951 the Avon Park city council threw out every vote cast in the Black precinct
• Finding: the record of Black Avon Park is almost entirely missing
• Finding: Crosby’s own newspaper, the Florida Homeseeker, is lost
• Entity: Oliver Marvin Crosby
• Report: the founding of Avon Park

Where this comes from

Evidence

corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.

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 22, 27, 30 and 201 (references/avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md) (1938) · archival
4. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida: the Florida Development Company's list of the town's advantages (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
5. Federal Writers' Project, Work Projects Administration for the State of Florida, Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, Federal Writers' Project, 1939, page 499 (1939)
6. Associated Negro Press, in the Atlanta Daily World, Negroes Swing Mayor's Election In Avon Park, Atlanta Daily World, 25 September 1949, page 3 (1949)
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)

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