Black Americans were barred from almost every beach in the South.
So in 1935 the first Black millionaire in Florida bought his own stretch of ocean and opened it to everybody.
Two hundred acres, white sand, bands, hotels, and nobody to tell you to leave. American Beach.
Abraham Lincoln Lewis founded the Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville and became Florida's first Black millionaire. He bought the land on Amelia Island so his employees and their families would have somewhere to go.
It became the most important Black resort on the Atlantic coast. Zora Neale Hurston went. Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Joe Louis all played or stayed there.
Look up the photographs. Families in good swimwear beside good cars. Women laughing in the surf. Children buried in sand. It is a complete picture of Black American leisure in the 1940s and 50s, which almost nobody has ever been shown.
Then desegregation opened other beaches, a hurricane took some of it, and developers took most of the rest.
A man bought an ocean so his people could swim. Stories like this are why we document https://t.co/V6OJtazidd
Celebrating the life and legacy of one of the greatest to ever do it, the incomparable Art Blakey. Born on 107 years ago today. 🕊️
📽️: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers live in France 1959.
Remembering the great Thelonious Monk who was born on this day in 1917.
Here, he is performing “Round Midnight” with Charlie Rouse on saxophone, Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums live in France, 1966.
Happy birthday to Art Blakey, born on this day in 1919!
Drummer and bandleader of the Jazz Messengers, the long-running hard-bop group that turned young sidemen into leaders. His press rolls and explosive hi-hat defined the sound.