It’s a part of Delray Beach‘s history that has been lost in time — the push to integrate the city’s public beach.

Now, Delray’s Spady Cultural Heritage Museum, the only museum in Palm Beach County with a sole focus on keeping African-American history alive, is aiming to document events leading up to the 1962 integration of the sandy shores.

Museum officials have teamed up with several history professors from Florida Atlantic University to conduct interviews with longtime Delray residents who have memories of Delray’s contributions to the national Civil Rights movement.

To carry out its goal of publishing a booklet on various local events from the 1950s and 1960s, the project, called “Beach at Delray: Florida’s Segregation Dispute,” received a $5,000 grant from the Florida Humanities Council.

“We are researching the occurrences surrounding the beach segregation dispute that took place in the 1950s,” said museum director Charlene Jones. “There is a lot of information surrounding the topic, but it hasn’t all been put together in one place.”

One pivotal event was the addition of a black designated swimming pool.

The idea to pinpoint a timeline that shares Delray’s black community’s struggle to receive access to public facilities came from Derrick White, an associate history professor at FAU, who also serves on the museum’s board.

“In terms of civil rights history, Florida isn’t well documented in many small communities,” White said.

What piqued his interest in the integration of Delray’s beach specifically is a story he said he heard a mother tell about her son dying on a stretch of beach between Boca Raton and Delray in the mid-1950s.

“This man unfortunately lost his life,” White said. “That was spurred by the Delray Beach community forbidding African-Americans from using the beach.”

Jones said blacks were also “discouraged” from using the public saltwater swimming pool located on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and State Road A1A.

So, blacks had to find unincorporated beaches, which were often deemed too dangerous for swimmers and lacked lifeguards. Jones said that prompted blacks to lobby for a safe place to swim.

“These areas weren’t well kept,” she said. “They weren’t meant for the public to swim at. They were unsafe and several people died.”

She said the reason blacks were denied access to the public beach is because city officials, at the time, wanted white tourists to feel “comfortable” while vacationing.

Undeterred, the black community relentlessly fought for their own swimming facility, she said, all while city officials crusaded to alienate black residents from using any public facility.

The battle reached a head when commissioners proposed de-annexing black neighborhoods from Delray.

“The dispute escalated to the point where city officials submitted paperwork to the state of Florida to annex the section where black people live from Delray,” Jones said.

White said from a political standpoint Delray’s goal to alienate the black community stood out because Delray’s 1950s tourism driven economy thrived off of black laborers in the service industry.

“It was an interesting policy decision because Delray Beach was selling itself as its tourist spot that depended on black labor,” he said.

Ultimately, the state rejected the annexation idea. Jones said that verdict was the catalyst for city officials to meet with black residents. The result: a public pool located at what is now Pompey Park.

But the installation of the pool was still years away from the 1962 integration of the beach and the city in its entirety. It’s those specific details that the folks working on the project say are foggy.

Once they nail down the dates, time and places and the booklet is published, Jones said the goal is to apply for another grant to help the museum create an exhibit showcasing the overall push toward integration.

“The swimming issue is just one story that can be told,” she said. “The whole story is about access to public facilities. It was a long period of time.”

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