Avon Park passed an ordinance barring Black people from its streets after eight at night
Summary
The town that had been advertised as having no Black people in it began admitting Black labor about 1914. It answered by passing a curfew. The account is in the Avon Park Guide, the Federal Writers’ Project typescript of 1936–38, which sets it out twice in two different sections.
What the ordinance did
From the 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. Gradually however negro labor began to be imported and a large settlement had grown up some distance west of the city. In order to prevent racial trouble an ordinance was passed which prohibited negroes on the streets of Avon Park after eight o’clock at night, except on Saturday nights. At this time they could come in and remain till eleven o’clock and the white people were requested to stay at home.[darsey-1937]
The section on industry says the same thing from the labor side, opening its account of the town’s workforce with it: before 1914 Black labor “was not allowed in Avon Park, except for railroad work or in the turpentine camps where they were closely confined,” and afterwards the workers were “employed in the groves, farms and the crate mills, where they have proven most useful and satisfactory.”[darsey-1937]
Three things follow from the wording. The exclusion before 1914 was of the town, not the district: Black men worked the railroad and the turpentine camps, confined to them. When that broke down, the new settlement went up “some distance west of the city,” outside it. And the curfew is described as having been passed “to prevent racial trouble” — the phrase a town uses about its own ordinance.
What is not known about it
No text of the ordinance has been found, no date within 1914 or after, no council minute, and no record of when it was repealed. The archive holds no ordinance book for Avon Park of any period. The account rests on one writer in 1937, setting it down twice, some twenty-three years after the fact, as a thing everybody in the town knew.
What is known is how quickly the thing the ordinance answered had grown. In January 1920, six years after the change, the town’s precinct held about 380 Black and mulatto residents, the largest group of them working turpentine.[census-1920-ed23] By 1930 Avon Park had 928 Black residents out of 3,355 — more than a quarter of the town.[census-1940-t30]
Related
- The town’s own chronology dates the first Black labor in Avon Park to 1914
- Avon Park had a “no negro proviso” on the sale of its land by 1892
- Avon Park was advertised as a town free of Black people, in its founder’s own newspaper
- The record of Black Avon Park is almost entirely missing
- The Avon Park Guide, a Federal Writers’ Project typescript of 1936–1938
References
- census-1920-ed23 — United States Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, population schedules, Florida, DeSoto County, enumeration district 23 (Precinct 14, Avon Park), NARA microfilm T625 roll 217. 25 January 1920. https://archive.org/details/14thcensusofpopu217unit
- darsey-1937 — Barbara Berry Darsey. Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers’ Project, page 37 (City Government) and page 119 (Economic Development and Industry, item 22, Labor). 31 December 1938. avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md
- 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. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1940/population-volume-2/33973538v2p2ch2.pdf
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
- United States Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, population schedules, Florida, DeSoto County, enumeration district 23 (Precinct 14, Avon Park), NARA microfilm T625 roll 217 (1920) · official
- Barbara Berry Darsey, Avon Park Guide, typescript for the Federal Writers' Project, page 37 (City Government) and page 119 (Economic Development and Industry, item 22, Labor) (references/avon-park-guide-federal-writers-project-1937.md) (1938) · archival
- 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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