“It was early in the afternoon when they got there, so Joe said they must walk over the place and look around. They locked arms and strolled from end to end of the town. Joe noted the scant dozen of shame-faced houses scattered in the sand and palmetto roots and said, ‘God, they call this a town? Why, ‘taint nothing but a raw place in de woods.’” (Chapter 5, p. 34)

And so with a tinge of disappointment, Joe and Janie arrive in Eatonville, Florida. As they enter this first town in the United States to be established by African-American men, their expectations are likely high:

The significance of Eatonville’s incorporation [was] proudly advertised by its citizens. In an 1889 article on the front page of The Eatonville Speaker, the headline read “Colored people of the United States: solve the great race problem by securing a home in Eatonville, Florida, a Negro city governed by Negroes.” Eatonville was sold as an operational and affordable all-black utopia, a working alternative for freedmen living in more oppressive communities throughout the South. It was promoted as, “… an incorporated city of two and three hundred population with a Mayor, Board of Aldermen, and all the necessary adjuncts of a full-fledged city, [with] not a white family in the whole city!”

-James Padgett, “The History and Legacy of Eatonville, Florida’s Pioneering African-American Town”

Take some time to watch this video, examine these photographs of Eatonville… “walk over the place” in your mind’s eye… “look around”...

Then document that imagined stroll in your notebook in whatever way you see fit…