Attachment_American_Beach_LOI_110421_0001.pdf

Landscape Architecture Program 121 Burruss Hall 0190 Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 P: (540) 231-5583 slough@vt.edu

November 4, 2021

Cynthia Walton Acting Chief, Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science; and Branch Manager, Archeological and Historic Preservation Partnerships National Park Service, Interior Region 2 100 Alabama St. SW Atlanta, GA 30303

Cynthia, Attached please find attached the National Historic Landmark Letter of Inquiry for American Beach, Nassau County, Florida. This Letter of Inquiry is submitted after meeting with community members, including members of the Friends of American Beach, Inc. and the A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach and reflects the community support for a National Historic Landmark Nomination for American Beach.

American Beach is nationally significant as an African-American resort community founded during the Jim Crow era that achieved a national stature and recognition as a place where African- American’s could escape, if for a time, the brutalities, indignities, and outrages of daily life under Jim Crow. American Beach thrived as one of the premier such resorts until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s period of Significance extends from 1935, when American Beach was established as a resort community by the Pension Bureau of the Black-owned Afro-American Insurance Agency through 1964 and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which brought an end to legal segregation and enabled Black vacationers to seek out new resort destinations that previously had not been open to African Americans.

American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 1 for its significant association with African-American outdoor leisure during the Jim Crow era and its association with the development of recreational spaces that offered Blacks the “time and space for leisure on their own terms and among their own people;” as identified in a forthcoming African American Outdoor Recreation Theme Study being prepared for the National Park Service by Historians Andrew Kahrl and Malcolm Cammeron under a cooperative agreement with the Organization of American Historians. American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 2 for its significant association with Abraham Lincoln (A. L.) Lewis, the driving force behind American Beach’s creation and president of the Black-owned Afro-American Life Insurance Company. American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 3 for its significant association with the ideal of Opportunity for All and evidences the emergence and growth of a Black elite and a Black middle class, which fueled the growth of Black pleasure travel and vacationing in the mid-twentieth century. American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 5 as a resort community comprised of an assemblage of natural and man-made features that outstandingly exemplifies those recreation places Blacks created to commune with nature through active leisure at the ocean’s edge during the era of Jim Crow.

The 2002 American Beach Historic District nomination notes that despite the loss of some structures and alterations to other contributing features, American Beach survives with a “high degree of physical integrity” and its “unique environmental setting” of beach, dunes, including Florida’s tallest dune, and upland oak and palmetto forest, is intact. American Beach’s original street grid remains as do representative commercial buildings and cottages from the period of significance.

Respectfully Submitted, Brian Katen, FASLA Landscape Architecture Program School of Architecture + Design Virginia Tech bkaten@vt.edu 540.449.5908

Cc: Paul Zwirecki, Organization of American Historians Déanda Johnson, Historian, National Park Service Pastor Carlton Jones, Chairman, Friends of American Beach, Inc.

Timothy Parsons, Florida State Historic Preservation Officer

Thad Crowe, Planning Director, Nassau County, Florida Professor Terry Clements, Landscape Architecture Program Chair, Virginia Tech Dr. C. L. Bohannon, Landscape Architecture Program, Virginia Tech

National Historic Landmark Letter of Inquiry American Beach, Nassau County, Florida Brian Katen, November 4, 2021

The American Beach Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP hereafter) on January 28, 2002. Two houses at American Beach had been listed on the NHRP prior to the Historic District Nomination. The Hippard House was listed on the NRHP on October 12, 2001 and Ervin’s Rest was listed on the NRHP on April 23, 1998.

American Beach, in Nassau County, Florida is an unincorporated African American resort community platted in 1936 and 1941 along the Atlantic Ocean on the east side on the south end of Amelia Island, a coastal barrier island, approximately thirteen miles long and two miles wide at its widest point. The island’s east side is composed of coastal dunes. Florida’s tallest dune is American Beach’s signature landscape feature. This pristine 8.5 acre dune, known locally as Na Na, is located just south of Lewis Street near the center of American Beach,0F i To the west of American Beach, the dunes and dune vegetation of sea oats and grasses, give way to a thick canopy of oaks, pines, sable palms, and saw palmetto that extends to the extensive salt marshes along the Amelia and Nassau Rivers at the island’s western edge.1F ii

American Beach, the only African American Resort community established by a Black-owned business, was established in 1935 by the Pension Bureau of the Black-owned Afro-American Insurance Agency of Jacksonville, Florida, in part to generate revenue for the company’s employee pension fund. Its location on Amelia Island featured the island’s “best beach…where the strand was the widest, under the brow of the island’s largest sand dune – a beach sequestered from the rest of the world by square mile upon square mile of undeveloped live oak and palmetto forest that stretched in all directions.”2F iii The driving force behind American Beach’s creation was Abraham Lincoln (A. L.) Lewis, president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and one of Florida’s first black millionaires. Lewis envisioned American Beach as a recreation resource and resort for his company’s African American executives and employees.3F iv Lot sales, however, would be limited to a “select group of Negro citizens” who agreed to occupy the houses they constructed and to “conform with other regulations which guarantee the most wholesome recreation and the most neighborly spirit of cooperation.”4F v Property deeds specified the minimum cost of construction on new houses, prohibited gambling and alcohol sales and other “noxious” behaviors including playing loud music. The platted lots sold slowly, however, with only twenty-five sold by 1940.5F vi But the beach was a popular weekend retreat and in addition to the few early houses constructed, tents provided temporary for vacationers. A pavilion and cabins for the use of company employees were built soon after the town’s founding but for the first ten years, most of the construction at American Beach was for private vacation homes for African American professionals from Jacksonville and Fernandina Beach, including executives from the Afro- American Insurance Agency.6F vii The first home was built in 1935 for company president A.L.

Lewis. In 1938, Lewis built a second home immediately next door and sold his first house to his son, James H. Lewis, who would later succeed him as company president.7F viii

116 acres of American Beach’s original 225 acres were platted in 1936 and 1941 laying out 323 lots on approximately 28 blocks. By 1946 American Beach was a community of 216 contiguous acres with a half mile of the ocean front.8F ix Today, 23 blocks and 204 lots are within the National Register District. Buildings are located on 122 lots with 71 contributing properties identified in the Historic District Nomination. The remaining lots are vacant. Most of the contributing properties identified in the Historic District Nomination are single-family homes. The resort’s two-story houses are concentrated along Gregg Street and Ocean Boulevard near the ocean with the single-story, usually smaller, houses typically located in the wooded lots west of the beach. Thirteen of the contributing properties were originally constructed for commercial use including a hotel, apartments, and restaurants.9F x Several of the town’s streets were named after founders of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, other streets were named after key employees of the company, additional streets were named after members of the Lewis’ family including his mother and son, who succeeded him as president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company.10F xi

American Beach is nationally significant as a preeminent and enduring African American ocean beach resort community established during the Segregation era, a place on the ocean where blacks “could enjoy, in the phrase in use in its advertisements at the time ‘recreation and relaxation without humiliation.”11F xii The period of significance extends from 1935, when American Beach was established as a resort community by the Pension Bureau of the Black-owned Afro-American Insurance Agency through 1964 and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that brought an end to legal segregation and enabled Black vacationers to seek out new destinations that previously had not been open to African Americans. 1964 was also the year that Hurricane Dora extensively damaged many structures in American Beach further reducing Beach visitorship. Today, American Beach is also recognized as important contributing resource and value for The National Park Service’s Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, established to protect the region’s natural ecology and important ecological and cultural resources along the St Johns and Nassau Rivers.12F xiii

SIGNIFICANCE:

National Pattern of History:

American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 1 for its significant association with African-American outdoor leisure during the Jim Crow era and its association with two major themes and contexts in African American history identified by Historians Andrew Kahrl and Malcolm Cammeron in a forthcoming African American Outdoor Recreation Historic Theme Study being prepared for the National Park Service under a cooperative agreement with the Organization of American Historians:13F xiv

• the development of recreational spaces that offered Blacks the “time and space for leisure on their own terms and among their own people;” recreation spaces in natural settings that offered the opportunity to commune with nature and that brought pleasure, and relief from the ever-present and overwhelming strictures of Jim Crow and that demonstrated an expressed rejection of Jim Crow.”14F xv

• the development of leisure and recreation places where Black people came together and that became critical sites in the production and dissemination of Black popular culture.15F xvi

American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 2 for:

• its significant association with Abraham Lincoln (A. L.) Lewis, The driving force behind American Beach’s creation and president of the Black-owned Afro-American Life Insurance Company. Lewis was one of Florida’s first black millionaires and he envisioned American Beach as both a recreation resource and resort for his company’s African American executives and employees and a venture that would generate revenue for the company’s employee pension fund.

American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 3 for:

• its significant association with the ideal of Opportunity for All. American Beach evidences the emergence and growth of a Black elite and a Black middle class which fueled the growth of Black pleasure travel and vacationing in the mid-twentieth century.16F xvii

American Beach meets National Historic Landmark Criterion 5 as:

• a resort community comprised of an assemblage of natural and man-made features that outstandingly exemplifies those recreation places Blacks created to commune with nature through active leisure at the ocean’s edge during the era of Jim Crow and Segregation, a period when the opportunity for Black home ownership was limited.

In response to the indignities of Jim Crow, from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, African Americans built or laid claim to hundreds of outdoor recreational spaces -spaces that provided “something they so desperately needed: pleasure and relief”- relief in some measure from the weight of the “oppression” from the ever-present and overwhelming strictures of Jim Crow.17F xviii What W. E. B. Du Bois characterized as the, “absolute freedom from the desperate cruelty of the color line.”18F xix The recreation spaces African American’s created for themselves were places to rest, recuperate, and be together - social spaces that also gave African Americans relief from the constant gaze and judgement of white Americans. What sociologists Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake described as “rest from white folks.”19F xx

”Blacks’ pursuit of places of their own was also a means then of “undermining and transcending” Jim Crow and asserted their rights to leisure and recreation. That assertion has been identified by Kahrl and Cammeron as “an important (and under-appreciated) dimension of the Black freedom struggle.”20F xxi Black-owned and operated resorts, beaches, campgrounds, and rural retreats became spaces where a Black counterpublic emerged, where Blacks not only found relief from the brutalities, indignities, and outrages of daily life, but pleasure, joy, and each other.”21 F xxii In its heyday, American Beach attracted visiting numerous celebrities including writer Zora Neale Hurston, heavyweight champion Joe Lewis, homerun king Henry Aaron, and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph. Internationally known entertainers including Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, and Jazz drummer Billy Moore brought their talents to American Beach. Home owners at American Beach have included numerous men and women of letters including business executives, educators, university presidents, medical professionals, state legislators, federal and state judges, historians, and journalists.22F xxiii

The ever-present indignities, outrages, and brutalities of Jim Crow America were a relentless, “chronic” condition endured by African Americans throughout the country each and every day.

Kahrl and Cammeron describe being Black in Jim Crow America as exhausting.23F xxiv By the end of the nineteenth century most white-owned resorts and outdoor commercial amusements in the United States, including those in the North either excluded African Americans or forced them to accept inferior separate but unequal accommodations.24F xxv But, segregation in outdoor recreation spaces was not a goal in itself. Whites were accepting of Blacks in public recreation contexts as long as they were there in expressly subservient roles. The staff at many nineteenth and early twentieth century recreation and leisure venues was often predominately Black. Kahrl and Cammeron have identified that fundamentally what the strictures of Jim Crow America sought to affirm was America’s racial hierarchy, a hierarchy made manifest by Black subordination.25F xxvi For many whites, the exclusion of Black people from accessing and enjoying outdoor recreational spaces, including resorts, beaches, parks, campgrounds, and playgrounds, betrayed their “underlying unease with the very notion of Black people enjoying themselves, by themselves, on their own terms.”26F xxvii In these contexts, during Jim Crow the safe havens offered by Black resorts were vital resources for African Americans.

The growth of the Black leisure spaces in the early twentieth century reflected the growth and evolution of a Black middle class nation-wide. For historian Gretchen Sorin, that Black middle class was largely composed of professionals including doctor’s teachers, clergy, artists, writers, lawyers, and small business owners and corporate executives,27F xxviii who were established in the urban centers. The growth of the middle class was accompanied by travel by automobile. While black automobile travelers might feel a “sense of escape and adventure” on the open road, historian Mark Foster recognized that “for inexperienced Black motorists” unfamiliar with the “local racial customs and etiquette pleasure trips could quickly turn into unpleasant ordeals…even when pursuing the most innocent pleasures.”28F xxix As a result, despite the freedom that the automobile gave Black Americans, they had a deep distrust of the America’s “racialized roadside.”29F xxx Historian Brian McCammack identifies the racialized roadside encountered by Blacks as a national problem that cut across economic strata, noting that even the Black cultural elite of Chicago “had to be prepared for embarrassing, if not violent racial prejudice” while traveling through white areas.30F xxxi

Throughout the North and the Midwest the growth of the middle class was propelled by the Great Migration31F xxxii and the promotional literature for Black resorts often actively targeted the white- collar and professional classes.32F xxxiii For some this led to concerns that the resorts were exclusionary. But at American Beach and at other resorts, including Idlewild, the small lots and their low prices did, over time, attract resorters of more modest means. At American Beach, where the first lot purchasers and homebuilders were executives from the Afro-American Insurance Agency, over time the summer houses would be “inhabited by eminent people in the forefront of their generation in Jacksonville and the South – pioneering dentists, doctors, lawyers, preachers, educators, undertakers, and, as you might expect, insurance company executives.”33F xxxiv The resorts low rates also supported the excursions and day gatherings of working class vacationers from farming towns across north Florida, South Georgia, and Alabama.”34F xxxv

The first public accommodations built in American Beach was the Ocean Vu-Inn built in 1945, by Ralph and Ada Lee, who owned two houses at American Beach. The Inn included a restaurant, ballroom and twenty-one guest rooms. Although the original property deeds for lots sold at American Beach prohibited alcohol sales and playing loud music, the Ocean Vu-Inn featured live music by nationally known jazz musicians was it was the first business in the town to sell beer and wine. The Lees' business soon “developed a nation-wide reputation for its exceptional sea food, music, and relaxed, progressive ambiance” attracting patrons from across the country to American Beach. In 1948 Evan’s Rendezvous opened. The Rendezvous featured a 200 seat restaurant and an open porch facing the beach as well as live entertainment. 35F xxxvi For nearly four decades the Beach’s clientele arrived by car and caravans of buses, from cities as far away as Chicago, to see the big-named bands that played the Ocean Vu-Inn, the Rendezvous, and American Beach’s other clubs.36F xxxvii In its heyday between the end of World War II and 1964, American Beach exemplified those resort towns where Black people came together at venues like the Ocean Vu-Inn and Evan’s Rendezvous that provided live entertainment, and became places for the production and dissemination of Black popular culture.37F xxxviii In towns like American Beach, where Black people congregated in the shadows of Jim Crow, some of the most popular and influential musicians of the twentieth century honed their craft before Black audiences. As they toured the country along what became known as the chitlin circuit, the musicians “facilitated the cross-pollination of Black musical styles and sounds.” And from these recreational gathering places would emerge new “forms of music, entertainment, thought, and expression that would “profoundly influence and enrich American culture and society as a whole.”38F xxxix

Like so many segregation-era African American beaches, American Beach has faced extensive development pressures as the value of beach-front property has increasingly spiraled upward.39F xl Today, among American Beach’s neighbors on Amelia Island are multi-million dollar golf and vacation resorts and master-planned resort communities including Amelia Island Plantation, a master-planned community south of American Beach with over 1.350 acres of maritime forests and marshes and approximately 900 homes and 1,200 condominiums. North of American Beach is the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island an oceanfront luxury resort. Farther north, in Fernandina Beach, is the Omni Amelia Island Golf Resort.

Landscape Setting:

The original, platted rectangular grid of streets remains intact with houses built east of Gregg Street, the north-south street closest to the beach. The land along the beach and extending one block inland to Ocean Boulevard is sandy, relatively flat, and with little vegetation. West of Ocean Boulevard the land rises along coastal dunes affording views of the ocean. West of the dunes the land flattens out and features dense vegetation with oak tree cover.

Near the center of American Beach just south of Lewis Street, the main entry road to American Beach from Highway A1A, is a pristine 8.5 acre dune, the tallest dune in Florida, known locally as Na Na, an African name of affection for a female ancestor.40F xli Since 2005, Na Na has been under National Park Service stewardship as part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, created to “preserve certain wetlands and historic and prehistoric sites in the St.

Johns River Valley, Florida” and to protect the natural ecology and important ecological and cultural resources of a portion of Duval County along the St Johns and Nassau Rivers.41F xlii

The existing architectural resources at American Beach are predominately single-family vacation homes identified as frame or masonry vernacular construction. With a few exceptions, the homes are defined by construction materials rather than formal architectural styles.42F xliii A good example is the Hippard House (NHRP 2001), now known as "Miss Martha's Hideaway," constructed in 1938. While the house reflects the Colonial Revival Style, popular between 1880

– 1955, it is constructed of hand-made concrete blocks formed on-site with sand containing coquina shells.43F xliv Most of American Beach’s two-story houses are concentrated along Gregg Street and Ocean Boulevard on the flat lands near the ocean. Single story houses are typically located in the higher, wooded lots west of Ocean Boulevard. “Typical of the commercial construction is the Lewis Motel at 5553 Gregg Street, constructed in 1950 Built on a concrete slab, the one-story block building is in the shape of a wide “U" with its rooms facing the open courtyard and the ocean.” The motel had twenty-two suites, each with a living room, dining room, and electric kitchenette, all only steps from what the motel brochure called ‘the ripples of the tangy sea.”44F xlv

PHYSICAL INTEGRITY:

“American Beach was created as a very specialized community - a segregated, planned beach resort community. It thrived as one of the premier such resorts until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the social changes that followed. Despite these social changes, the harsh coastal environment, and local developmental and economic pressures on the community, it survives with a high degree of physical integrity and its unique environmental setting is intact. The historic resources associated with other such beach resorts have largely been lost to similar pressures, making the American Beach community uniquely associated with and representative of an earlier period of African American life.”45F xlvi Many of American Beach’s early buildings still stand and the ethos of the community remains. Residents and visitors are committed to preserving the beach’s spirit and legacy.46F xlvii

Ervin's Rest, the Louis Dargan Ervin House (NRHP, 1998), is a modest, two story, frame vernacular building located at 5448 Gregg Street in American Beach on the east coast of Amelia Island, Nassau County, Florida. The 1938 house is located on its original site and retains the integrity of its historic design, materials, setting, feeling, and workmanship to a high degree. Ervin’s Rest is the only original oceanfront home in American Beach that has not been significantly altered from its original state and continues to reflect the character of the original resort.47F xlviii The two-story Colonial Revival Style Hippard House (NRHP, 2001), was constructed using concrete blocks formed on site using a formula of two parts coquina shell collected from the beach with one part cement. Its concrete block construction is well suited to withstand the harsh ocean coastal location and the 2001 nomination notes that “the integrity of the house is high.”48F xlix Also on the house property is an outbuilding/garage that competing oral traditions say was used either to house gambling and other recreational activities after the clubs and bars in Fernandina Beach were closed for the evening or served as a party house that hosted dances and parties for a variety of civic, fraternal, and religious organizations that came to American Beach.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS:

American Beach is among a select group of African-American resort communities founded during the Jim Crow era that achieved a national stature and recognition as places where African Americans could escape, if for a time, the brutalities, indignities, and outrages of daily life under Jim Crow. Comparable resort communities along the Eastern seaboard that are recognized as having a national stature include Highland Beach, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, founded in 1893 by Major Charles Douglass, a Civil War veteran and a son of Frederick Douglass, the famed African-American humanitarian, orator and writer. 49 F l Douglas purchased the land for Highland Beach after he and his wife were denied access to a nearby white resort. Frederick Douglass provided financial assistance for his son's endeavor and purchased a lot in Highland Beach in 1893. Recognized as the first seaside resort owned and controlled by a Black man in America, Highland Beach is representative of those resorts established by elite African Americans as separate and private leisure worlds of their own during segregation. The initial sale of lots was offered to Douglass’ family and friends and Major Douglass was the first to build a cottage at Highland Beach. His cottage, now demolished, was completed in 1894. A year later, Douglas completed construction of Twin Oaks a summer house built for his father but which soon became a gathering place for prominent African-Americans from Washington D.C. and across the mid-Atlantic region.

Originally intended as a summer resort, by 1915 Highland Beach was a flourishing year-round community. After desegregation, interest in Highland beach, and many other Black resorts, waned. But today, sixty homes remain in Highland Beach and among the town’s year-round residents are descendants of Highland Beach’s original families. In 1992, Twin Oaks was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Oak Bluffs, is an enduring African American Resort Community on Martha’s Vinyard, Massachusetts. Free Blacks working in the fishing and whaling industries were an early presence on Martha’s Vineyard and freed slaves found shelter there in the nineteenth century.

After the Civil War, other Blacks came to the island to attend revival meetings or while employed as servants of white island vacationers. Among those Blacks attracted to the island by revival meetings was Charles Shearer, who first came to the island to attend religious services in Baptist Temple Park. Charles and is wife Henrietta grew to love Martha’s Vineyard and the town of Oak Bluffs overlooking Nantucket Sound. In the late 1800s Charles and Henerietta became year-round island residents of Oak Bluffs with the purchase of their first property on the island. In 1903 they purchased their second property overlooking Baptist Temple Park and within walking distance of downtown Oak Bluffs. There, Henrietta opened a laundry serving the island’s white summer residents. In 1912 the couple added a twelve-room cottage to the property and opened a seasonal inn, the Shearer Cottage, 5 0F li the first African American-owned guest house on Martha’s Vineyard. Replete with tennis courts, the Shearer Cottage along with the “Inkwell,” Oak Bluff’s popular town beach helped anchor a growing Black enclave on the island in the decades that followed. A “who’s who” of prominent African Americans was attracted to Shearer Cottage each year and many would purchase cottages in Oak Bluffs. In 1998, Martha’s Vineyard opened the island’s African-American Heritage Trail to tell the stories of the island’s rich African- American-heritage. The first stop on the trail is the Shearer Cottage.

In the 1940s and 1950s, three subdivisions, Azurest, Sag Harbor Hills, and Ninevah, in the small village of Sag Harbor on the eastern end of Long Island, collectively known as SANS (NRHP, 2019), became summer home destinations for upper- and middle-class African-Americans and their families.51F lii The first subdivision, Azurest, was laid out in 1947 by African American sisters Maude Terry and Amaza Lee Meredith who had purchased 20 acres of undeveloped land from a white landowner. The first lots were sold to Black professionals and middle-class families from New York City who were friends and acquaintances of the sisters. They had recognized Azurest as the opportunity to own a vacation home with access to a protected beach in a place where they could escape, if only for a time, the oppressive conditions of segregation. Black vacationers soon began building summer cottages nestled among the trees and facing the calm waters of Long Island Sound.52F liii The lots at Azurest quickly sold out and two more subdivisions, Sag Harbor Hills and Ninevah, were created in the early 1950s. The layout of the neighborhoods emphasized beach access and conservation along with the development of beach-front property. The three summer communities, composed of professionals and their families, many of whom were members of shared social networks, were close knit with a sense of exclusivity.

For all, summers at Sag Harbor offered a stark contrast to their lives in the city. Today, SANS remains one of the most exclusive places on the east coast for professionals, politicians, and academics of color to vacation. SANS was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

Along with American Beach, these resort communities all offered respite to Black vacationers and each has endured despite the dramatic changes brought about by the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ended legal segregation and gave Blacks access to recreation destinations that had previously been denied to them.53 F liv Significantly, as at American Beach, these resort communities along the eastern seaboard have all faced increased development pressures as the value of ocean beachfront property near the east’s growing population centers increased. Less affected by development pressure have been African-American resort communities in the more rural mid-west. Three enduring midwestern resort communities are of particular note. Idlewild, Michigan, (NRHP 1979, 2010) the “largest land based historically African-American resort ever assembled in the United States”54F lv was established in Lake County, Michigan in 1915. Planning for Idlewild began in 1912, when six white businessmen formed the Idlewild Resort Company and began the development of the Black resort community at Idlewild. The resort was conceived as a much needed recreation and leisure community and a strategic response to the widespread practices of systemic racism, discrimination, and segregation found at white resort facilities throughout the United States.

Initially, The Idlewild Resort Company together with leading middle-class African Americans and professionals, members of the New Negro Movement, helped shape Idlewild into an intellectual and cultural center for African American elites and their families with sales directed towards members of the white collar and professional classes. Over time, however, Idlewild would also become a recreation and leisure destination for the working class as well.

Vacationers from all over the Middle West came to Idlewild to enjoy the pleasures of beautiful scenery, swimming, boating, sun bathing, picnicking, horseback riding, fishing, and hiking.55F lvi They also came to socialize and see nationally recognized performers in Idlewild’s many night clubs. Idlewild’s peak of popularity was from 1955 and 1962.5 6F lvii Today, Idlewild’s landscape setting with its signature lake continues to reflect its location in the adjacent Huron-Manistee National Forest, and the essence of the early resort community is present in the extant architecture of cottages and houses, stores, motels, and clubs from a time when thousands flocked to Idlewild to pass a weekend or the summer. The Idlewild Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The nomination was updated in 2010.

In 1924, a group of white businessmen formed the Fox Lake Land Company and purchased land along the south side of Fox Lake in Angola, Indiana, for the development of Fox Lake, (NHRP, 2001)the first and only African-American resort community established in Indiana.57F lviii The original farmhouse on the property was converted into a small hotel, an existing barn was converted into a restaurant and dance hall, and a bathhouse and pier were constructed along with a few cottages built by the mid-1930s that were rented out until purchasers were found.

The early land owners saw Fox Lake as a tranquil oasis where African Americans were welcome.

As more Black families learned of Fox Lake, they began buying lots and constructing their own cottages and rental properties. Throughout the 1930s vacationers came to Fox Lake from Indianapolis and from other cities within a day’s drive including Detroit, Chicago, Toledo, as well as smaller Indiana cities such as Marion and Fort Wayne. Word of the resort community continued to spread and Fox Lake grew throughout the 1930s. Fox Lake hosted meetings of black fraternal and alumni organizations as well as church gatherings. Fox Lake also became a recreational destination for young African Americans who lived within easy driving distance.

They came to Fox Lake to swim at the beach, dance, and socialize. In 2002 Fox Lake had 32 relatively modest lake cottages, most of which were constructed before World War II. Today, Fox Lake’s many second and third-generation cottage owners, maintain the community’s tradition as a place of one’s own where one could escape the heat and pressures of the city and enjoy the pleasures of outdoor summertime activities. Fox Lake was Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001

In 1934, two Black professionals, a newspaper man and doctor, purchased 346 acres in the Missouri Ozarks, near Stover, Missouri, land on which to develop Lake Placid, “a recreational center for colored people.”

58F lix 33’x100’ lots were platted and a golf course and lake were imagined on the wooded site. Unable to afford the construction of a dam on the property, they successfully sought federal support through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the dam needed to create the community’s landscape focal point, the 15 acre Lake Placid, was completed in the summer of 1937. The first cabins had been built by the lake’s site in anticipation of the dam’s construction and the resort community of Lake Placid soon welcomed a variety of Black professionals who built cottages along the lake’s wooded shores. Lake Placid quickly became a place to relax without having to suffer the indignities of racial segregation. It was a place within nature, a place not available in the inner cities of the industrial Midwest. A formal development company was incorporated in 1939 and in 1940 the Lake Placid Lot Owner’s Association was formed and implemented fishing regulations and restrictions on the use of motor boats. The Association also initiated efforts to limit access to the lake to non-owners and their guests. Over time, a concrete dock was constructed and fishing, boating, dancing, card playing, and picnics were common recreational pastimes. Lake Placid thrived after WWII reflecting both the growth of the Black middle class and the mid-west’s persistent Jim Crow racism. Church groups, fraternities and sororities and travelers’ clubs all visited Lake Placid and large crowds were common on the 4th of July. Interest in Lake Placid declined with the coming of desegregation in the 1960s, but today second and third-generation vacationers have led a resurgence of this “island of paradise” in the Missouri Ozarks.

American Beach is the southern-most of the enduring African-American resort communities along the Atlantic coast. Several Atlantic coast resort communities, although no longer extant, offer additional comparative analysis to American Beach. The first Black beach in Florida was likely Manhattan Beach, established in 1901 on land set aside by industrialist Henry Flagler, a co-founder of Standard Oil and a key figure in the development of Florida’s Atlantic Coast.

Flagler was building the segregated Continental Hotel in near-by Atlantic Beach, Florida and Manhattan Beach was created as a place of recreation for the hotel’s Black construction workers who were barred from the areas segregated beaches. Located in the dunes of what is now Jacksonville’s Hanna Park, Manhattan Beach became a refuge for black beach-goers from all over segregated Northeast Florida, a bustling place that included pavilions and boardwalks, concessions including swimsuit rentals, and vacation homes.

In 1907 the Flagler-owned East Coast Railroad which ran from present-day Jacksonville Beach to Mayport, Florida, added a stop at Manhattan Beach. A round trip ticket from Jacksonville cost 60 cents and Manhattan Beach became a popular excursion destination for Blacks from Jacksonville including church groups and labor unions. Black entrepreneurs such as Mack Wilson and William Middleton from Fernandina Beach bought property at Manhattan beach and built beach pavilions among the dunes that offered lodging, dancing, and entertainment.

Wilson’s pavilion featured a cafe and a bathhouse that offered bathing suit rentals for beach-goers. One of the attractions at Manhattan Beach was Little Coney Island, an amusement park for children with a merry-go-round and swings.59F lx

Philanthropist Eartha White, a founder of the Clara White Mission, established a Fresh Air Camp in Manhattan Beach, where children suspected to have tuberculosis spent four weeks living in tents near the beach, under the care of doctors and nurses. In the early years, blacks were able to buy property in Manhattan Beach but by 1915 Henry Flagler started selling off his land holdings in the area and Manhattan Beach faced development pressure from white investors who began buying land throughout the area for a planned segregated resort that would stretch to the St. Johns River jetties. The developers refused to sell to blacks, and actively schemed to try to remove African-Americans from Manhattan Beach. Manhattan Beach held out against the development pressures and in 1931 a group called the Manhattan Beach Amusement Corporation was boasting in a brochure that the resort “offers only amusement of the better class.” But Manhattan Beach lost much of its clientele when train service to Manhattan Beach ended in 1932, although by that year a road had been built from Jacksonville to Manhattan Beach allowing access to the beach by car and bus excursions. In 1934, a year before the founding of American Beach, developers bought Mack Wilson’s property and its buildings were demolished. A 1938 fire of suspicious origin, beach erosion, and the construction of the Mayport Naval Base all contributed to Manhattan Beach’s final demise.60F lxi But, as historian Marsha Dean Phelts has identified that “as Manhattan Beach was lost, American Beach was developed.” 61F lxii

In 1927, Frank B. Butler, an African American, began purchasing oceanfront property on Anastasia Island, Florida. Eventually, Butler acquiring a tract stretching across the island from the Atlantic to the Matanzas River. He named the property Butler Beach and opened it to African-Americans. Butler Beach was the only stretch of beach between Daytona Beach and American Beach, north of Jacksonville, where African-Americans were allowed to enjoy the sand and the sea. Butler built bathhouses and a motel, and installed a merry-go-round and picnic facilities for beachgoers. Butler built a home for his family at the beach and sold lots to other perspective homeowners. In 1937, Butler opened the Sea Breeze Kaseno and later the Butler Inn. Eventually, 11 black-owned businesses were operating at the beach and the area became a popular stopping place for visitors traveling along highway A1A.

Butler Beach was associated with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights in the early 1960s but with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Butler Beach’s appeal as a blacks-only destination ended.62F lxiii Within a few years, developers had purchased most of the beachfront land and began building the condos and large homes now located there.

Black resort communities across the country were impacted by the end of segregation and the opening of formerly segregated resorts to Black vacationers. Development pressures and environment factors continue to provide challenges to Black ocean-side resorts.63F lxiv

Freeman Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina, known to vacationers as Seabreeze, was established in 1922 near Wilmington, North Carolina. In contrast to those resorts that catered to upper and middle class Blacks, Seabreeze, developed into a commercial, leisure and entertainment mecca that welcomed people of all economic strata. At Seabreeze, people were welcomed as they were and invited to enjoy nature on their own terms in a place to vacation, relax, and play. By day, church groups and families could enjoy a variety of vacation activities at the beaches’ hotels, beach cottages, restaurants, boat pier, bingo parlor, and small amusement park complete with a Ferris Wheel. Evening entertainment at Seabreeze focused on more adult forms of recreation with its numerous dance halls and “juke joints.” During the summer months thousands of visitors flocked to the area. But beach erosion became a significant problem at Seabreeze after the opening of the artificial Carolina Beach Inlet in 1952. Two years later major damage from Hurricane Hazel further impacted Seabreeze’ alure and the crowds of vacationers shrank. By the late 1960s, desegregation brought new challenges to Seaview as vacationers explored other, formerly segregated beaches. Today, development pressures pose the most significant threat to the beach community at Seabreeze. 6 4F lxv

In 1934, African American businessman George W. Tyson opened the Black Hawk Night Club on 47 acres of newly purchased oceanfront property north of Myrtle Beach in Horry County South Carolina. In 1936, Tyson, spurred by the club’s success, began developing and selling beachfront lots and purchasing additional acreage for the development of the resort community of Atlantic Beach. For the next two decades, Atlantic Beach, known as the “Black Pearl,” thrived as a popular destination for African American vacationers. The towns heyday as an African American vacation resort ended in 1954 when Hurricane Hazel destroyed much of the town's infrastructure. As at other resorts impacted by the hurricane, revitalization efforts slowed with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending the segregation era and giving African American vacationers access to new spaces of recreation in formerly white-only beaches and resorts. In response, in 1980 Atlantic Beach successfully introduced a new event to bring visitors to the Resort - the Atlantic Beach Bike Fest and Black Bike Week. The event, held each Labor Day weekend, has brought thousands of visitors to Atlantic Beach. Black Bike Week’s success also brought new challenges, including contested attempts, beginning in the 1990s, by white-owned businesses in Myrtle Beach to restrict and later ban this popular annual gathering. 65F lxvi

OWNERSHIP AND SUPPORT:

A Zoom meeting open to community members was held in September 2021 with the assistance of the Chair of the community organization, Friends of American Beach. That initial meeting led to a request for additional information about the nomination process from the American Beach Property Owners Association as well as letters of support from numerous individual property owners. The initial outreach to the community and the discussions that have followed indicate a high level of support for American Beach’s nomination. Additional support for the nomination has been expressed in conversations with the Florida State Historic Preservation Officer, Florida Bureau of Historic Preservation, the Planning Director, Nassau County, Florida, National Park Service staff at the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, and representatives from the Amelia Island Museum of History and the A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach, Florida. The active presence of an established museum and ongoing community activities to celebrate and share the rich history of American Beach since it was added to the NRHP are additional evidence that a strong foundation is in place for community support for a NHL nomination.

The community’s commitment to preserving and celebrating the history of American Beach is embodied in the life and work of MaVynee Oshun Betsch, the great-granddaughter of A. L.

Lewis one of the founders of the Afro-American Insurance Company and American Beach.

Betsch was an international opera singer, historian, activist and environmentalist who returned to American Beach in 1977 and for the next twenty-eight years, until her death in 2005, devoted her attention to preserving the legacy of American Beach, which she called “her sacred place.”66F lxvii Known as the Beach Lady, Betsch became a “griot,” a storyteller in western Africa who perpetuates the oral tradition and history of a village or family.67F lxviii In her role as American Beach’s griot, Betsch became a catalyst for the community’s collective efforts to preserve American Beach. She was a founder of the A. L. Lewis Historical Society, and she lobbied to have American Beach listed on the National Register of Historic Places.68F lxix Betsch also fought against encroaching development and environmental degradation. She was a staunch environmentalist who lobbied for the preservation of a natural buffer of intact maritime land between American Beach and proposed resort development to the north of American Beach and the preservation of Na Na, an 8.5 acre sand dune system and a signature landscape feature in American Beach.69 F lxx

Carolyn Finney accurately captures the impact of Betsch’s work on behalf of American Beach asserting that “single-handedly, Betsch brought attention to the importance of recognizing the beach as a font of African American history and enlisted community members, local, state, and national organizations to her cause.”70F lxxi Betsch was the driving force for the creation of an American Beach Museum to protect and preserve American Beach’s story and its place in history for future generations. The museum, opened in 2014, and is today a repository of American Beach’s history and legacy, a place where the story of American Beach is told and visitors can experience the Beach in its heyday. The museum embodies the spirit of Mavynee Betsch and the shared community spirit focused upon the preservation and celebration of this nationally significant African American recreation resource. Among the original historic buildings at American Beach with a continuity to the American Beach’s heyday is the former A.

L. Lewis Motel, a 22-unit, ocean-view motel, that opened in 1950. During the beach’s heyday, the motel was known for its superior hospitality and service. Today, the business continues to offer accommodations to beach visitors under the name American Beach Villas.71F lxxii

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

“African American History by the Sea on Florida’s Historic Coast,” St Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors and Convention Bureau, https://www.floridashistoriccoast.com/blog/african-american-history-sea-floridas-historic-coast/ (Accessed July 21, 2021).

A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach, https://americanbeachmuseum.org/ (Accessed July 21, 2021).

A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach, https://americanbeachmuseum.org/about/ (Accessed July 21, 2021).

A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach, https://americanbeachmuseum.org/origins-and-history/ (Accessed July 21, 2021).

A. L. Lewis Museum at American Beach, “American Beach Then and Now,” https://americanbeachmuseum.org/then-and-now (Accessed July 21 2021).

American Beach Historic District, “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2002.

Aron, Cindy S. Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Chase, Larry. “History of American Beach,” National Park Service, Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, https://www.nps.gov/timu/learn/historyculture/ambch_history.htm (Accessed July 21, 2021).

“Barbara Goodman Correspondence to Warren Brown, September 12, 2002,” American Beach Historic District, “National Register of Historic Places Registrations Form,” 2002, Du Bois, W.E.B. “Hopkinsville, Chicago and Idlewild,” in The Crisis, vol, 22, no. 4, (August, 1921): 158 -

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