Bethune Beach of Yore

“Isn’t that God’s Water?”

The Advent and Demise of Bethune-Volusia Beach, Incorporated

Introduction

     Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.

—William Faulkner

What does Faulkner’s quote have to do with the book, Isn’t That God’s Water?—The Advent and Demise of Bethune-Volusia Beach, Incorporated? As Faulkner, a Mississippi native son and revered Southern writer suggested, I have raised my voice for honesty and truth about the two and one-half mile stretch of shell-filled sand that is present-day Bethune Beach. As he also said, “If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.”

I looked at many other great quotes by known people before I decided on Faulkner’s. His came closest to expressing how I felt about this book. I do take exception to “it would change the earth.” I believe these standards we would affect a change in how they treat each other. However, the application must be done without regard for the color of the face, but with steadfast sameness. Honesty and truth are constant; not bent and twisted for the convenience of a situation.

While poring over pages of documents for this project, the beauty of truth rested next to ugly distortions of it. But that was my perception and I didn't want others affected by my filter. Therefore, I put my lens aside and attempted to relate the information objectively and without judgment. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

Chapter I

The 1,350-mile coastline of Florida is dotted with resorts and public beaches for residents and visitors to enjoy. In Volusia County, located on the central east coast, several notable beach towns border the Atlantic shoreline. In northeastern Volusia is Ormond Beach, The Birthplace of Speed. As a visitor travels south along the coast, he arrives in Daytona Beach, The World’s Most Famous Beach. In recent years, other havens have developed along the south-end of this barrier island. Natives and longtime residents of east Volusia may read the above line a couple of times, pausing at the reference, “barrier island”. If that happens, it is understandable. The land across the Halifax River, in recent history, has always been referred to as “on the peninsula”. Perhaps in not so recent history, the area was a peninsula. That has to be explored at another time. In this book, the land across the bridges is referred to as the peninsula.

     

 To reach other popular beach destinations  in Volusia County, a westward ride over the Dunlawton Bridge and an eighteen-mile drive south are necessary; otherwise, a boat ride is needed to reach the sleepy resort of New Smyrna Beach and its World’s Safest Beach. That moniker may change to Shark Bite Capital of the State. So far in the twenty-first century, the beach has received extensive national news coverage about such incidents.

Over the years, thousands have frolicked on these beaches, but until the mid-60s, laws forbade unlimited access to black people. This practice is one which Volusia County did not hold exclusivity. The policy was pervasive in the Jim Crow South. But incidents on The World’s Most Famous Beach prompted the establishment of Bethune-Volusia Beach, Incorporated. So, this story could not be told without including the history of Volusia County’s premier vacation spot.

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Daytona

Home

of

The World’s Most Famous Beach

During the Civil War, federal forces seized homes, crops and slaves along the St. John and Halifax Rivers; so along the two waterways, acre after acre lay bare after residents fled, glad to escape with their lives. When the South surrendered, northern military officers, with both black and white former soldiers, returned to this speculators’ hunting ground.

Dr. John Milton Hawks, a surgeon, former officer of a black Union company and abolitionist came to this part of Florida the year after the war. He soon purchased the old Samuel Williams Spanish Land Grant. This encompassed much of the land in eastern Volusia County. He and some associates dreamed of starting a citrus-growing industry. To make a go of their idea, more than land was needed. People had to be attracted to the area and housing had to be provided for them.

 Dr. Hawks and his partners put plans in place to take care of both. Soon five hundred blacks came to work in the newly emerging citrus-growing business and to build houses for the upstart community. It wasn’t long before an additional 1,000 blacks came to Dr. Hawks’ community of Freemanville, which is now a part of Port Orange.

The Florida Land and Lumber Company, one of Dr. Hawks’ business ventures, constructed an impressive brick building with a lofty chimney and ordered the machinery for a sawmill. There, workers would process lumber for permanent houses. But in transit, the machinery for the mill was lost in Ponce Inlet. With that disaster and the reality that citrus farming posed daunting challenges without proper equipment, many original settlers of Freemanville went inland or north to Jacksonville. A few residents came to clear land and build structures in present-day Daytona.

 In April, 1870, on one of Dr. Hawks’ trips to the North, he ran into Mathias Day in a Jacksonville hotel. The men struck up a conversation and Day told of his desire to buy some land. Since Hawks was familiar with the area, he went along with Day to look at territory along the Halifax and Hillsborough (Indian) Rivers. Hawks also showed land which lay within the Samuel Williams Grant. Day locked in on an old sugar plantation. Mathias Day returned to his hometown Mansfield, Ohio, but within months he returned and purchased 3,200 acres for $l, 200. He then set about planning the settlement of Daytona.

Day and other early settlers of east Volusia focused on common goals: survival, construction, and eradication of mosquitoes and fleas. The infestation of fleas from hogs that roamed freely along the riverbanks of the Halifax caused so much discomfort that at evening dinner and tea gatherings door prizes, flea powder became the coveted item lady attendees hoped to win.

To get rid of the nuisance swine, word went out that whoever corralled and removed them, could have them. As for mosquitoes, the citizens are still fighting that war. To their credit, they are having some luck with that enemy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with the “noceums”. It’s hard to fight an invisible enemy.

  Mathias Day’s settlement, which some called Daytona from the beginning, amounted to 70 people in 1875, and was initially color-blind in its race relations. When the founding fathers decided to incorporate in 1876, two of the twenty-six who voted, John Tolliver and Thaddeus S. Gooden, were black men who had served as Union soldiers. Their inclusion in such a profound decision is testament to the open-minded attitude that existed early on in Daytona.

During those years, whites and blacks in Daytona tended to live in their own neighborhoods, but no hard and fast policy dictated it. As was a common practice of immigrants, ethnicities lived in their own enclaves. Throughout the world, and certainly in the United States, people seek familiarity, for they share similarity of food, music, religion and language patterns. So, it was for those reasons the two groups lived apart in Daytona. But things did take a rather startling turn.

  As better farming techniques developed to improve yield of citrus and other produce, Volusia County, again, became a magnet for people looking for better opportunities. White and blacks from other southern states arrived in the western sector of the county and interior of the state to plant crops and groves. However, when devastating freezes of 1886, 1894, and 1895 left hordes of irreparable, frost-bitten groves, both groups abandoned the interior sector of the county and migrated to Daytona, hoping to find work in its budding tourism industry or on Henry Flagler’s railroad project. Unfortunately, the rural whites brought a venomous strain of racism with them.