In the 1920s, Sarasota was small, Southern and segregated. The Ku Klux Klan’s national resurgence did not pass the town by: In one local parade, residents marched down Main Street in white hoods, greeted—according to accounts from that era—with “cheery hellos” from onlookers. Black citizens, meanwhile, were often pressed into construction labor during the land boom.
Education was marked by inequity. In 1927, statewide valuations showed white school properties worth nearly $19 million, while those for Black schools stood at less than $1 million. An eighth-grade education was deemed “sufficient” for Black students, and, as former mayor Jerome Dupree described, “Every piece of equipment sent to Booker schools was second hand.”
The very inequities meant to contain the Black community spurred a parallel world—self-sustaining, rooted and determined to endure. In Overtown, later renamed the Rosemary District, businesses and gathering places thrived. In 1925, a new brick building opened as the Sarasota Grammar School for Negro Children—later renamed for its principal and founder, Emma E. Booker—which became a source of pride. The Colson Hotel, built by Edwin O. Burns, opened in 1926 as a refuge for Black travelers barred from white establishments.
Named for the Rev. Lewis Colson—once enslaved, later a surveyor and minister—and his wife, Irene, an expert midwife, it included a barber shop and soft drink parlor on the ground floor. Payne Chapel AME, destroyed in the 1926 hurricane and rebuilt the following year, anchored spiritual life…