BY HARRY COVERSTON, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
WINTER PARK – History came alive at Winter Park Library’s Edyth Bush Theater October 6- quite literally. The Chatauqua of Hannibal Square, a dramatic presentation created by Maria Olivia Bryant, featured four Black founders of Winter Park who spoke of their lives in an unincorporated settlement that would become a modern city.
Gus Henderson (Ben Codallo) told of the critical role Hannibal Square’s Black voters, newly enfranchised under the 15th Amendment, played in the incorporation of Winter Park as a city in 1887. The City of Winter Park owes its legal existence to the Hannibal Square community.
Henderson was editor of the Winter Park Advocate from 1889 to 1896, the only paper serving both Winter Park’s white and Black communities. He later edited the Florida Christian Reporter and fought for voting rights for all Floridians until his death in 1917.
Alderman Walter Simpson (David McFadden) was the first Black official in Winter Park, elected alderman in 1887. But the joy of that moment was short lived. Local white leaders would redistrict Winter Park in 1893 removing Hannibal Square from the city. It would not be reannexed until 1925. Simpson would be reelected only to lose his seat when a second election was called in which a majority of Black residents could not vote because of poll taxes a Jim Crow Florida had enacted.
Simpson said, “Just doing one’s job as an alderman was difficult. You could not attend meetings if white women were in the audience. But what was important was that colored men were working hard to make Winter Park a better place for all.”
Frank R. Israel (Maury Lambright) also served on the Winter Park City Council and was a co-founder of the Ward Chapel AME Church. Israel built a general store at the corner of New England and Pennsylvania Avenues. He spoke with fondness of Saturdays in Hannibal Square when residents came in to buy dry goods while deliveries were made for those not able to get to the store. It was a good life in the prosperous little town he helped found which became today’s city of Winter Park. “Much has been lost but never forgotten. But our legacy lives on. Our stories are embedded in the streets of Hannibal Square.”
Mary Lee Depugh (Chatauqua creator Maria Olivia Bryant) spoke of coming to Winter Park from Evanston, Illinois. A founder of the first Black clinic in Florida, Depugh was also a founder of the Ideal Woman’s Club in 1915. “We had no social life. So we created it.”
Much of Depugh’s monologue was devoted to the changes that had come to this community. “Great change has come. You could call it progress. But gentrifying has been a dark time. Seeing neighbor’s houses torn down leaves me tired, sad. The change here had to come. But don’t forget the old. The old is what helps the new move forward. All we want is for change to be great for everybody. And while the change has almost erased the wonderful foundation, it is lost, but not forgotten.”
Seeing history come to life in front of you speaks to every aspect of the observer – mind, heart, soul. That is particularly true of history that has been neglected, buried, whitewashed. These dramatic presentations fill a void in a culture where Civil War and Seminole War battles are routinely reenacted but voices of non-white minorities are rarely heard. We are indebted to the Chatauqua of Hannibal Square.
