Bookertown

The first African-Americans arrived in this area in 1885 as laborers for the Orange Belt Railway and the Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West Railroad, and many helped build the railroad bridge over the St. Johns River that made continuous rail travel possible between Tampa and Jacksonville. In the 1890s, African-American farm and turpentine workers settled along the Orange Belt Railroad tracks just west of Monroe Station and north of present day Bookertown. The area's first black school opened in 1898, when David Henry Clay Rabun provided for 18 children of farm workers. In 1906, Michael Mackenzie Smith bought a large tract of pine woods that included the land that became Bookertown, surveyed part of it into lots, and sold them to black farm workers. By 1910, African-Americans owned six houses in what was known as Monroe's Colored Section. In 1925, Reverend Henry Manning established the settlement's first church nearby on Elder Road. In 1926, the Sanford Development Company bought a large part of M. M. Smith's land around the Colored Section, divided it into parcels, and platted streets to establish a place for African-Americans, and that same year the county school board built the community's first official school, a building that in recent years has served as the community center. The streets were named in 1926 for distinguished personalities in African-American history. The community took its name from Booker Taliaferro Washington, but because so many other places were named Washington, it became known as Bookertown.

Florida · United States