Eatonville’s bid to become the home of the Florida Museum of Black History grew far stronger this week as state officials ranked it among the top contenders and a new agreement in a legal dispute removed the largest impediment to the town’s preferred museum site.
“Location is no longer an obstacle,” said Eatonville Mayor Angie Gardner, adding she believes the town’s bid to now be the best.
Town leaders had worried their application for the coveted state museum might be derailed by a pending lawsuit from the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community over the fate of 100 acres of land that once housed the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School. The school was founded in 1889 to educate Black students unwelcome in the region’s whites-only schools.
The suit was filed in 2023 after the Orange County Public Schools, the owner of the land, sought to sell it to a private developer.
But in a letter to school district officials last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents the association, said it would not object to the school district leasing 10 acres of the 100-acre site to the town for a museum.
The association intends to make sure the Hungerford property is used as the school’s founders’ wanted: “for the benefit of the Town and the education of its children,” lawyers said in the letter, provided to the Orlando Sentinel. “It is Plaintiffs’ position that Eatonville’s African American museum proposal would be consistent with that intent.”
The Hungerford property sits at the western entrance to Eatonville’s downtown at Kennedy Boulevard and Wymore Road.
“The 10 acres have been carved out of the lawsuit as the school district, the Town of Eatonville and the [association] are all in support of the proposed African American History Museum to be located on the Hungerford property,” said Karen Castor Dentel, the Orange County School Board member whose district includes Eatonville, in an email.
The town’s 61-page application submitted to a state task force highlights Eatonville’s long and enduring legacy as the nation’s first town organized, governed and incorporated by African-American citizens, and also pitches Central Florida’s position as the nation’s top tourist destination.
It notes the museum “would benefit from an audience already in town looking for unique cultural and historical experiences.”
Incorporated in 1887 about two decades after the Civil War, Eatonville bills itself as “The Town that Freedom Built. It is famous as the home of author Zora Neale Hurston, whose work and legacy is celebrated annually with an arts festival.
“Since the end of the Civil War, freedom hasn’t really been free, but Black residents of the Central Florida region have dreamed, toiled, and worked through both triumphs and tragedies that illustrate not only a local story, but a nationally relevant narrative,” the application reads.
The museum task force, chaired by state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, will hold a special meeting Friday in Tallahassee to review eight museum proposals and whittle the list to three finalists for analysis by the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) School of Architecture and Engineering Technology. FAMU will present its findings to the task force in May.
In advance of the meeting, state officials advising the task force reviewed the proposals and ranked the top four candidates in order as St. Johns County, Eatonville/Orange County, Sarasota, and Opa-Locka. A bid from Seminole County ranked sixth.
Like Eatonville, Sarasota and St. Johns County, home to St. Augustine, described the rich Black history in their communities — early settlements where formerly enslaved people found freedom and other sites like beaches, motels and restaurants that became civil rights landmarks.
A plan to create the history museum was signed into Florida law in 2023 to educate visitors on how individuals of African descent shaped the state’s history over a period of 500 years. It will exhibit contributions and accomplishments of Black Americans in Florida and the United States.
A multipurpose venue is expected to include research facilities, meeting rooms, banquet facilities, and a performance space.
shudak@orlandosentinel and lpostal@orlandosentinel.com
