Florida Black Heritage Trail Guide

The Florida Black Heritage Trail Guide features historic black American sites from Pensacola to Key West and includes profiles and biographical sketches of many distinguished and accomplished black Floridians. Available for free at VISITFLORIDA.com, the guide also includes four self-guided driving tours and features vivid color photographs.

Sites in the book include:

• Eatonville, the country’s oldest black municipality and home of noted writer Zora Neale Hurston;
• the Julee Cottage Museum in Pensacola, home of Julee Panton, a “free woman of color” that lived in the early 1800s and purchased the freedom of fellow enslaved blacks;
• American Beach, a predominantly black oceanfront resort established by Abraham Lincoln Lewis, who in the 1930s founded the Afro-American Insurance Company of Jacksonville.
• the Black Archives Research Center and Museum at Florida A & M University, the oldest historically black public university in the state of Florida.

Florida A&M University | Tallahassee, FL

                   

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, commonly known as Florida A&M or FAMU (Pronounced fam-you), is a historically black university located in Tallahassee, Florida. Florida A&M was chartered in Tallahassee in October 1887 as the State Normal College for Colored Students. In the 1950s and ’60s, the historically black college became the first black institution to be accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and School.

Part of the campus is a U.S. National Historic Landmark District known as the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College Historic District. The district is centered along the section of Martin Luther King Boulevard that goes through the campus, encompassing over 370 acres, and containing over 14 historic buildings.

Florida Agricultural And Mechanical University
Tallahassee, FL 32307
Phone: (850) 599-3000
Official Website
Map & Driving Directions

Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts | Eatonville, FL

Named in honor of one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts features not only the works of Zora Neal Hurston, a writer, anthropologist and folklorist known for such works as Their Eyes Were Watching God. The museum also showcases the work of other artists of African descent, as well as other historical artifacts (e.g. old photos) of her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. About 20 minutes north of downtown Orlando, the historic town was one of approximately one hundred of communities founded by and for African Americans were established throughout the southern U.S. from the 1880s to the 1930s. In fact, Eatonville was the first incorporated African American town in the U.S. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.

Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts
Address: 227 East Kennedy Boulevard, Eatonville, Florida 32751
Phone: 407-647-3307
Official Website: www.zoranealehurstonmuseum.com
Map & Driving Directions

Additional Information:

• Zora Neale Horton Official Website
• Town of Eatonville, Official Website
• Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities

Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities | Eatonville, FL

 

Zora Neale Hurston (1901-1960), was born in Eatonville , Florida , the first incorporated black city in the United States . She was a noted novelist and folklorist who traveled throughout Florida collecting and writing stories of rural people. She was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s and was part of the Federal Writers’ Project in Florida in 1938. Her most prominent works include Mules and Men, Dust Tracks in the Road, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her work, revived by feminists in the 1970s, has gained her considerable recognition as one of the most important black writers in American history. Eatonville annually holds the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, a tribute to Hurston’s lasting literary accomplishments.     

Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities
Address: 227 E. Kennedy Blvd, Eatonville, FL 32751 USA
Phone: (407) 647-3307 or (407) 647-4436
Website: www.zoranealehurstonfestival.com.com
Map & Driving Directions