People and places, Florida north and south

Finding information about frontier Florida's black residents isn't always easy when digging for voices from the past. Many were too busy making a living and raising families to find time to record memoirs or write in diaries. Some couldn't read or write. All faced years of discrimination from societies and organizations established to preserve local histories. 

So, I enjoyed watching the videos - shared here - that offer a glimpse from opposite ends of the state. The first gives a brief overview of sites associated with black history in Miami. They include the first house owned by a black person in Miami.

The other video is the introduction to Florida's Black History Channel, a YouTube channel about the history of the Glenwood neighborhood in Panama City in the Florida Panhandle. While the Miami video depicts places, the Panama City ones focus on people who share memories of days gone by. 

One thing became clear soon after I started watching the Panama City videos. It's a refrain that held true in my own youth. Neighborhoods were tight-knit and everyone kept an eye on all the local youth. Adults stepped in where and when needed, as needed. That was as true in my Brooklyn city youth as it was in the sandy backroads of country Florida. We've lost that, all of us. And that's a sad realization.

City of Miami - Black History video. Click on the photo to watch the video or use this link: https://youtu.be/T5LNGKbcEC4

Introduction video on the Black History Channel: Click on the photo to watch the video or use this link: https://youtu.be/k8kXOKP-6zg

Dorian, go away

The National Weather Service has a memorial page to the
1928 Okeechobee hurricane. This photo is from that page.
It depicts rescue workers pulling bodies from the water.

I write with a heavy heart. Hurricane Dorian is a monster storm and it's aiming right for Florida. At least we have the benefit of minute-by-minute forecasts, advance warning, and time to prepare. People in Florida a hundred years ago had none of that. Thousands of lives were lost as a result.

Wikipedia says more than 10,000 people have died in Florida due to what the encyclopedia's entry calls tropical cyclones. There's no footnote referencing a source, so I can't verify the accuracy of the number. There's an interesting sentence that says most of those deaths occurred before hurricane hunter flights started in mid 20th century. It takes only a brief look at a handful of early 20th century Florida hurricanes to understand that statement.

From the book Florida's Hurricane History, 1998 edition, for example, you learn that hundreds died in a Keys hurricane in 1906 (page 90), the Great Miami hurricane of 1926 (page 126), and especially the Okeechobee storm - called the Okeechobee Flood - in 1928, when thousands lost their lives (page 127). For a vivid fictional retelling of that storm and flood, read Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She includes the hurricane as part of the narrative.

In Okeechobee, floodwaters caused the horrible tragedy. The hurricane caused the lake to rise so fiercely it rushed over the dikes meant to contain it (page 130). The ensuing flood destroyed entire communities. The National Weather Service has a memorial page about the Category 4 storm that provides a lot of detail. It notes that almost three-quarters of the those who died were people of color who worked as agricultural laborers.

Rushing and rising water remain major threats today when a hurricane strikes. I live 25 miles inland from the coast, at a "high" point (high land being a relative term in Florida). Where I live, we fear the winds, storm-spawned tornadoes, and fallen trees more than rising water. People who live on the waterfront have a different set of concerns. But we're all worried. I haven't given up hope that Dorian will veer off to the east and open water. But that wish seems to be fading. Stay safe, all.

Hands across religions

As a child in the 1960s, I thought all people were either Catholic or Jewish. There was little evidence of other faith traditions in my New York City environs. When I moved to Central Florida in early adulthood, the known world appeared to be entirely Southern Baptist.

Those perceptions of were based partly on superficial observation of the surroundings as I went about my life. Yet it was true that the people in these - and probably other - faith traditions carved geographical niches at the time.

Sisters of St. Joseph at Cape Florida Lighthouse,
as shown in the book Miami 1909.
(Photo credit in book: Charles Mann / Miami Pioneers)

Our postmodern world has moved beyond denominational dominance in most areas of the United States. Interdenominational initiatives are a norm. What intrigues me is how my research on the social history of pioneer Catholicism in Florida continues to unearth similar modernist behavior. I keep finding exceptions in what I previously considered an era of isolationism among faith traditions.

As noted in other blog posts, those circles of friendships may be due to human needs on a sparsely populated frontier. But Miami wasn't exactly a backwoods settlement in 1909. Wikipedia cites the U.S. Census for the 1910 population count of 5,471. Yet 1909 Miami is when my latest example of religious intermingling occurs.

The 1984 book, Miami 1909, by Thelma Peters, (Banyan Books), is built around the diary Miami resident Fannie Clemons wrote that year. Peters, herself a Miami pioneer and a former president of the Florida Historical Society, established a rich sense of place in which to situate the diary excerpts. One of the places Peters mentions is St. Catherine's Convent School. In the photo caption for the picture of the school on Page 35, she says the following:

Some non-Catholic children were sent here because the sisters had a reputation for gentility and thoroughness.

I like the sound of that, having been the product of similar teachers at St. Brigid's in Brooklyn.

The Miami convent school was just east of the Church of the Holy Name, built in 1898 on grounds of what is today Gesu Church. The original, small wooden church was built on land donated by Henry Flagler, who I believe was Presbyterian. Peters relays an anecdote in which Flagler, at the time, said that "two institutions that never failed to do what they started out to do were the Standard Oil Company and the Catholic Church."

Flagler was busy extending his Florida East Coast Railway to Key West in 1909. Two of his business associates founded St. Catherine's school, which in 1909 was staffed by six Sisters of St. Joseph from New York, Florida, Ohio, and Ireland. Pupils that season closed the school year with a program that included the following:

• music by the school's music club, the St. Cecelia Club
• piano solos
• readings
• awarding of medals of excellence

And, we're sure, some heartfelt prayers.