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Tuesday, December 7, 1999

Heritage trail cuts bold path through area

By JOHN CARTER
Daytona Beach News-Journal Columnist

Florida has one of the richest and most diverse heritage trails honoring African-Americans, and this area is at the heart of it.

Bethune-Cookman College, with its Mary McLeod Bethune House, and Jackie Robinson Ball Park in Daytona Beach would be enough to guarantee that, of course, but there's much more.

Florida's Black Heritage Trail has a whopping 141 stops, and 11 of them are here. In addition to the above sites honoring Dr. Bethune and Jackie Robinson, Daytona Beach boasts the Howard Thurman House and a section of the Museum of Arts and Sciences.

DeLand boasts the Bradley Hall-Safe Home Orphanage, Old DeLand Colored Hospital, the J.H. Wright Building and the Yemassee Settlement. The New Smyrna Beach area claims Bethune- Volusia Beach and the Old Sacred Heart/ St. Rita (Colored) Mission Church.

Florida's trove of interesting African- American historic sites stands up well against those of any other area in the nation.

A survey of such sites shows a smaller, but very well-organized Black Heritage tour of Boston, featuring 14 sites in the Beacon Hill area, a similar trail based in Portsmouth, N.H., one in Rhode Island sponsored by Brown University and a Thomasville, Ga., trail based mainly on the life and times of Thomas Osian Flipper, the first black to graduate from West Point.

Florida can be proud of a trail that covers many miles and offers a wide variety of educational and travel experiences. Some have historic interest that rivals or exceeds the impact of some of the New England sites.

For instance, there is some startling and important recent research into a swampy site near St. Augustine. That archaeological find, called Fort Mose, is believed to be the home of the first black freedom fighters in America.

Slaves who had escaped from British territories were given their freedom by the Spanish in exchange for sentry duty north of the more famous Castillo de San Marcos.

The story of the town of Eatonville near Orlando is an interesting one, as well as the life of its most famous daughter, author Zora Neale Hurston.

The list, running alphabetically from American Beach to White Springs, contains so many churches, historic homes, battlefields, schools, museums and other attractions that it is hard to imagine that one person could sample them all in one visit.

Problem is, if anyone has ever navigated our entire trail there likely is no way to know it. In fact, there is no way to know how many have seen even major parts of it.

"It's hard to judge, there is no reporting requirement," conceded Fred Gaske, grants and education director for the Bureau of Historic Preservation in Tallahassee.

But the trail line-up, and the handsome color booklet produced by the state to support it, drew admiring comments from conferees at the Southeast States Historic Preservation Conference in Virginia this year, Gaske claimed.

The department has had a special relationship with Volusia County, Gaske said, working closely with local government officials and representatives from Bethune-Cookman College to obtain historic preservation grants for the trail.

Volusia County lost a great champion and highly-regarded historical preservation expert in November of 1998, Gaske lamented.

He said that Dr. Joseph Taylor, the late historian, professor and administrator at Bethune-Cookman College, was one of the first, and most effective, supporters of the plan which evolved into the Florida Black Heritage Trail.

Taylor had written extensively on the life and times of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. He was chairman of the Daytona Beach Historic Preservation Board, member of the Florida Historic Preservation Council and the Florida National Register Review Board.

State and local officials have credited Taylor's work on the first special commission appointed to select sites for the Black Heritage Trail for Volusia County's important position in it.

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