Many stories have been written about Boca Raton’s first community and historically Black neighborhood, Pearl City, but none have included photographs and first-person accounts of the descendants of the original residents and their neighborhood, built in 1915, before the incorporation of Boca Raton 10 years later in 1925.
The Boca Raton Museum of Art, which stands two blocks from the original neighborhood, located south of Glades Road between Dixie and Federal highways, commissioned Washington, D.C.-based photographer Reginald Cunningham for a series of photographs, titled “Black Pearls,” in honor of Pearl City.
“We want to tell the story of Pearl City through the current residents whose parents and grandparents were the original Pearl City settlers,” says Irvin Lippman, executive director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art. “The Pearl City residents are our museum’s closest neighbors, and we want to celebrate our neighbors with this exhibition.”
To do so, Lippman invited Imani Cheers, associate professor of digital storytelling in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, and Candace Cunningham, assistant professor of history at Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, to tell the full historical story of Pearl City.
Photographer Cunningham (BePureBlack.com), a social activist, was selected in 2020 to photograph the cover of British Vogue’s special issue titled “Activism Now: The Faces of Hope,” which featured his wife, activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham, on the cover.
Inspired by photographer Gordon Parks’ motto—“I chose my camera as a weapon against all the things I dislike about America: poverty, racism, discrimination”—Cunningham set out to find out as much as he could about Pearl City, its original residents, and their descendants.
“Through the lens of my photography I’m always trying to create affinity for and uplift Black people and the Black experience in this country,” says Cunningham.
“One of the things I always aim to do is inspire people to feel something when they look at my work. To have an emotional, physiological response,” he says. “Being commissioned by the Boca Raton Museum of Art to photograph the residents and cultural emblems of Pearl City—one of the South’s most beloved and enduring Black districts—is an amazing experience.”
Cunningham captures not just images of Pearl City residents, but also the physical and ephemeral elements that make up the community, including street signs, the community garden, the Little Food Pantry, and the Martin Luther King monument located at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, 200 NE 12th Street.
As Candace Cunningham writes in the accompanying catalog, “On April 26, 1915, a land auction was held to create ‘a brand-new colored city’ that would be governed exclusively by colored people. African Americans purchased thirty lots that day.
“Those disparities [racial and social] pushed African Americans out of Georgia and the Carolinas and pulled them into South Florida,” she says about that time in history. “It was by no means the land of opportunity for Blacks, but it did offer more options than they were finding elsewhere.”
In more recent times, the neighborhood faced threats from developers and other outside forces. “What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to keep a sense, or an aura, or a feel for this community,” said the Rev. Henry Willis at the time.
Pearl City was known for being a safe, close-knit community where everyone knew one another.
“The people out of this area, the children, and the grandchildren out of this area have become professionals—athletes, doctors, lawyers, and teachers,” notes Pastor Calvin Davis. “They have become politicians and police officers. They have become productive citizens because of this area. That’s why this area deserves to be recognized as an area that developed many [generations] and is still developing people in so many ways.”
Life was hard in that era, especially for Black people, who worked in the fields picking beans for 17 cents a day, faced discrimination, and suffered through the segregated South.
The exhibit includes 24 photographs, including images of pastors Ronald Brown and Calvin Davis, Anne Blutcher, John Martin, the Anderson family, Katie Mae, Gladys Bettis, Geraldine and George Spain, Irene Rufus, Annette Ireland, Marie Hester and Dorothy Overstreet, Barbara Griffin, Eva Cunningham (Griffin), and Willie Jenkins. Stories in the subjects’ own words are also included.
Pearl City leaves a legacy of good memories and strong moral values with its inhabitants. The closeness of the community, the neighborliness, and the mentality of respecting and helping one another has stayed with its residents to this day.
Descendant George Spain Jr., who comes from an original family in Pearl City, remembers, “One of the founding principles of Pearl City to me was family. We had a deep sense of spirituality. We all had that foundational spiritual growth that was imparted in us to believe and trust in God.”
“That’s the only reason why it hasn’t been dispersed,” he says in the exhibit. “God blesses you to be a blessing to other people. In our house that is something that has been instilled. That’s one of the things that Pearl City was fond of—neighbor would look after neighbor. It’s a very close-knit community.”
“Black Pearls” runs through Jan. 22, 2023. Visit Bocamuseum.org.