What If Eatonville Hadn’t Been Undone?
In 1887, six miles north of Orlando, a small group of formerly enslaved African Americans did something radical: they built their own town. Not just a settlement, but an incorporated municipality. Eatonville, Florida became the first all-Black incorporated town in the United States.
It wasn’t just a safe haven, it was a symbol. A town planned, governed and grown by Black people for Black people. In a post-Reconstruction America riddled with racial violence and economic suppression, Eatonville was proof of concept, that freedom, when self-directed, could flourish.
But what’s often missed in the retelling is what Eatonville represented economically. This wasn’t just about survival, it was about enterprise. Eatonville’s early residents purchased land, started businesses, opened schools, ran churches. It produced intellectuals like Zora Neale Hurston, who would immortalise the town in American literature and had it been allowed to grow free from the encroachment of nearby Orlando and the slow squeeze of development policy, Eatonville could’ve become a multi-million-dollar economic model for Black-led cities nationwide.
Let’s pause here. What if Eatonville had received the same infrastructure investment as Winter Park? What if the land hadn’t been chipped away by gentrification or annexation?
According to recent real estate data, property in the Orlando metro area has increased in value over 400% since the early 1980s.
If Eatonville’s land had been protected, maintained and empowered with capital over the past 130 years, conservative estimates place the town’s cumulative worth in the billions. Not just in property, but in intergenerational wealth, education, entrepreneurship and cultural legacy.
We should ask 'what hidden tipping points were buried in Eatonville’s soil?' 'What national transformation was lost, not because Black vision failed, but because systemic interference succeeded?'
So here’s the question to the group “what other Eatonvilles have we lost or are at risk of losing, today?”
If this post resonated with you, drop a comment with the name of an all-Black town or community you think deserves the spotlight next. Like this post if you believe history isn’t just something we remember, it’s a living, breathing map that can guide our future.
Don’t keep it to yourself, share it with someone who needs the reminder that Black legacy isn’t just a story of the past, it’s a blueprint of possibility still unfolding.
