Last week’s post was left open ended as my original scope for the post expanded beyond a singular post. It was originally intended to continue my site narrative through public memory and land traditions. Covering public memory last week, this week will focus on land traditions and the establishment of community identity to contextualize Club Eaton as a social site. I decided to dedicate an entire post to this topic after hearing the end of the “Washboard” Bill Cook’s oral history mentioned last week.
Mr. Cook has an extensive personal history and is a wonderful repository for local information given his life spent living or traveling throughout most of Florida. He has recorded multiple oral histories, hosted on Florida Memory, throughout which he recounts his career as a musician, especially renown for his folklore traditions. His career as a musician can arguably traced back to his mother’s ownership of a juke joint. His interviews contain wonderful snapshots of local history and many insightful vignettes. Shortly after commenting on Club Eaton and its function as a central social site in Eatonville, he reflects on its highly unique status as an essentially Black-owned and operated township by saying, ““The blacks still running that town? That’s one place they stuck together. They still running Eatonville.” (23:09-23:11)
This led to questions about how Eatonville’s development mirrors and differs from other African American communities in Florida and how they connect to each other, especially in the context of African American social and performance spaces. Working at the Sanford Museum, I am familiar with the history of Georgetown. I have seen reference to it as a "segregated suburb” of Sanford. In a way, so was Eatonville to Maitland. Another, and perhaps more accurate, term is “race colony” defined by Eleanor Mason Ramsey and Everett L. Fly below.
The histories of Eatonville and Georgetown share many parallels in their establishment. Both began around a lake: Lake Lily for Eatonville, Lake Monroe for Georgetown. Narratives found within the early history of both communities reflect themes which distinguish race colonies. Both began by organizing communities around the African American labor force crucial to developing and fueling emerging industries. Both communities were comprised of people who “toil[ed] at clearing land, planting crops and citrus groves, and helping to build houses, hotels, and the railroad.” (from Eatonville’s National Register Registration Form) Despite similarities throughout their histories, Eatonville remained autonomous while other African American communities were subsumed (sometimes forcibly) by larger municipal systems, as is the case for Georgetown and Goldsboro near Sanford. Might it be the result of how land and business ownership functioned? By continuing to investigate common threads and differences, I hope to develop a more comprehensive narrative and comparative analysis of Black communities throughout (especially Central) Florida.
More site specifically, we know of Club Eaton’s history as a site on the Chitlin’ Circuit, and I hope to connect it to sites in other cities to establish a more comprehensive history of music venues throughout Florida. While I hope to document other sites on the Circuit, I do also want to document any information I find on juke joints. Their vernacular and clandestine tradition make for elusive histories but identifying and investigating them documents a thriving African American cultural scene that existed throughout Florida, despite the restrictions and threats of Jim Crow segregation. I also want to track the community development which resulted in the shift between juke joints as one of the primary spaces of African American social gathering to more upscale music venues such as Club Eaton.
Not much information is available on juke joints in Sanford. The only one I have found record of thus far is Mable Dixon’s Juke Joint Bucket of Blood from her obituary in the Sanford Herald. A rather colorful name, it apparently was not an uncommon one among juke joints—supposedly due to the violence one could expect to encounter there, according to a “Curious Jax” article by the Florida Times-Union. More results or further information is likely to come from oral histories.
The man at the helm of the upscale Club Eaton, Condor Merritt, also shares a beginning in common historical tradition with the early residents of Central Florida’s African American communities.
By working in the citrus and construction industries, Merritt established enough financial capital to continuously expand and diversify a successful business network which grew to include commercial enterprises and social venues. He evolved his career from more clandestine sources such as bootlegging and running a bolita game (a lottery game often found at juke joints) to owning one of the most popular social venues in Central Florida. Merritt’s personal history and that of his business empire speaks to his role as a community developer. And, in a way, it also mirrors the shift from clandestine operations patronized by those “in the know” to more ‘aboveground” enterprises capable of attracting world renowned musicians.
Looking at newspaper articles concerning juke joints in Florida, the shift was likely the result of crime and “hooliganism” that was attributed to the venues. Juke joints were either shut down or forced out of business once permits were required to operate, and businesses began to shift to package liquor sales as a stream of revenue. It is likely Club Eaton followed this model, as the early photo of the structure posted in Week 1 advertises the service. As ownership of the site shifted throughout the years, such claims continually persisted—evidencing the seemingly perpetual conflict between revenue and business opportunities generated by entertainment options (especially by outsiders) and community members vigilant against such encroaching tides and associated activities.
Today, while the site may sit dormant, its ownership has not. It has changed hands five times since 2014. Sold by Wayne and Jeanette Freeman to Bayview Loan Servicing LLC in 2014, it was then sold to different variations of an organization associated with 426 E Kennedy Street. Then, in 2021, it was sold to the Floridian Heritage Society Inc. Not much is available online concerning the society and its goals for the site, but members of its board include managing partners at a health spa facility in Winter Park and a developer capable of securing a more than $190,000 real estate deal in the early 2000s.
While the City of Eatonville is likely inclined to invite development, they are also equally inclined to ensure the best kind of development for the city. Given current tides of gentrification and rising property values in Central Florida, it is worth remaining vigilant and aware of a community’s property owners as—historically—they are often the primary drivers of local government policy and administration. It is not my intention to automatically assign bad intentions to this organization; I merely seek to understand what their connection is to Eatonville, their plans for the site, and if they will include community desire, interaction, and feedback in their development plans. It is crucial that those with generational ties to and/or knowledge of Eatonville remain apprised of what is going on in a community that has always stuck together and keeps running.
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