The town of Eatonville, long known for its historic origins as the nation’s first incorporated Black municipality, officially submitted its bid package Friday hoping to make it the home of Florida African-American history museum.
The application includes a letter of conditional support from Orange County Public Schools for the museum to occupy up to 10 acres of the former Robert Hungerford Normal and Industrial School site, currently in a legal dispute.
Town leaders believe Eatonville is the right place and hope a state task force reviewing bids will think so, too.
“We are a living history, a living museum and a living testament,” Mayor Angie Gardner said. “Our resiliency as a body of people — the fact we’re still here — all those factors alone, show we should be the strongest contender for the museum.”
Founded after the Civil War, Eatonville bills itself as “The Town that Freedom Built” and is regarded as the nation’s oldest self-governing African-American municipality — which should help its bid to win the museum and the expected tourist boon. The town was incorporated in 1887.
School Superintendent Maria Vazquez sent the town a letter this week proposing a joint-use agreement that could allow building the museum on the Hungerford site where Black children were educated before Florida schools were integrated.
She suggested the district retain ownership of the land and the town build and operate the museum.
Vazquez’ letter acknowledges the ongoing lawsuit filed last year by the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, but sounds a hopeful tone for the proposed museum and future collaboration between the district and town.
“This active engagement with history will not only enhance academic achievement but also empower students to become lifelong learners and critical thinkers,” she said in the letter to Demetris Pressley, the town’s chief administrative officer. “Partnerships between the school and the museum can foster joint service projects, cultural celebrations, and educational forums, further strengthening the ties between generations and fostering a spirit of civic engagement.”
While describing the district as “willing to partner” in the project, she cautioned that no agreement for the land can move forward until the lawsuit is dropped by the Eatonville group or dismissed by the judge.
Gardner said Visit Orlando, the county’s tourist tax-funded destination marketing agency, helped the town put together its package to persuade a state task force to recommend Eatonville over a dozen other suitors for the museum.
Eatonville emerging as possible Florida African American history museum site
The task force is headed by state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, an Orlando Democrat and lawmaker who heads the Wells’Built Museum of African American History & Culture on South Street in the city’s Parramore neighborhood.
Gardner, who also serves on the Orange County Tourist Development Council which advises county commissioners on tourist-tax spending priorities, said the town would seek tourist-tax funding if awarded the museum.
“We’re expecting it to be anywhere from a $75-million to maybe a $100-million project,” she said.
Legislation creating the museum cited Black Floridians including Eatonville’s Zora Neale Hurston, a writer and anthropologist; legendary musician Ray Charles; civil rights icons Harry T. Moore and Harriette Moore, assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan in a 1951 bombing at the couple’s home in Brevard County; and Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and civil rights leader who in 1904 founded Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls, which eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.
A marble statue of Bethune is one of two representing the state in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Hers is the first statue of a Black American in the collection.
The law creating the museum, HB 1441, also requires “a multipurpose facility capable of generating self-sustaining revenues” with space for full-service banquet facilities to accommodate at least 250 guests and a a performing-arts theater.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com
