ORLANDO, Fla. — One of many first traditionally Black cities within the U.S. is suing the native faculty board to cease the sale of land that’s tied up with Florida’s legacy of racial segregation and the state’s fast-paced development these days.
An affiliation devoted to the preservation of the city of Eatonville’s cultural historical past final Friday sued the Orange County College Board in an effort to cease the sale of the 100-acre property the place the Robert Hungerford Preparatory Excessive College as soon as stood.
The proposed $14.6 million sale of the varsity property to a developer with plans to construct 350 new properties, together with enterprise areas, threatens the cultural heritage of the city, the Affiliation to Protect the Eatonville Neighborhood mentioned in its lawsuit. The sale is ready to shut on Friday.
With a inhabitants of round 2,350 residents, virtually three-quarters of whom are Black, the city situated outdoors of Orlando is maybe finest recognized via the work of Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston. Eatonville was the setting for one among her finest recognized works, “Their Eyes Had been Watching God.”
The affiliation, together with different Eatonville residents, fears the sale of the property in a centrally situated a part of fast-growing metro Orlando will improve visitors and worth longtime residents of the city, a lot of whose households have lived there for generations.
“If this sale is allowed to proceed, the wealthy tradition and heritage of the city that Zora Neale Hurston popularized world wide as ‘the primary integrated African American group in the USA’ might be erased,” mentioned mentioned N.Y. Nathiri, government director of the affiliation, which is being represented by the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart.
The college board mentioned in a press release that it couldn’t touch upon pending litigation.
Based in 1887, Eatonville was among the many early all-Black integrated municipalities established within the many years after the top of slavery within the U.S. Round 1,200 Black cities or settlements have been established within the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, in response to the Historic Black Cities and Settlements Alliance.
The Hungerford faculty was established in 1897 for Black youngsters going through an academic system that segregated them from white college students. The Orange County College Board bought the property from a belief in 1951 below a deed restriction that the varsity would proceed for use to coach Black youngsters. Even after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom desegregated the nation’s colleges in 1954, Orange County public colleges remained segregated for years.
The college board was in a position to promote a portion of the property in 1974 after a circuit courtroom lifted the deed restriction for that part of land. Within the 2010s, the city of Eatonville, in cooperation with the varsity board, tried to have the deed restriction eliminated by suing the belief for a launch in order that the remaining land could possibly be bought for business functions throughout a time frame when Orlando was one of many fastest-growing metros within the U.S.
The events reached a number of completely different settlements over the last decade, however the affiliation’s lawsuit argues they’re void since they both weren’t court-approved or didn’t have the participation of all of the required events, together with the Florida legal professional normal representing the general public’s curiosity.
Final yr, Eatonville residents elected a brand new city mayor who opposes the proposed growth. The trustees don’t have any authority to carry the deed restriction, and any lifting of the restriction ought to both profit Eatonville’s youth or be used for academic functions, in response to the lawsuit.
By MIKE SCHNEIDER Related Press
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