Customer Reviews

An American Beach for African Americans

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This is really one of the most important contributions to Florida history in recent years. Some may think that black people just disappeared during the Jim Crow era, but this book will disabuse them of that notion. It has it all, from stories to recipes to photographs, covering a part of history that is still almost studiously ignored hereabouts. I hope this will encourage others to do the kind of digging Marsha Phelts has done, because Florida's black beaches from the age of segregation are an endangered species. They should all be studied, documented, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places to preserve what remains from the endless bulldozers of developers. Cheers to the author for telling this story so well!

An American Beach for African Americans is a special treasure of knowledge and history for everyone interested in reflecting upon the love, strength, and beauty of African American culture in Florida. Marsha Dean Phelts is truly a remarkable writer. She has dedicated a significant part of her time and expertise as a writer in order for all of us to appreciate times when the Beach Boys were not likely to be the first group to book a concert tour at American Beach, (although they had the choice), even though I sometimes wondered as a child growing up in Florida and New York in the 60s and 70s, if The Beach Boys were ever going to entertain an audience at American Beach. Thank God for Marsha Dean Phelts for writing this book. She was instumental in her sharing her writer-to-writer knowledge to me as I finalized the pages of my book titled Surfing the Sea, which is planned for release very soon. An American Beach for African Americans is more than a mere contribution to literature and Florida history. It is simultaneously long overdue and right on time!

This book, An American Beach for African Americans, while it did not provide for me all that I presumed it would be, it did add to the puzzle of What It Means to be Black in America.

The place covered, the people involved, and the results, reflect the pursuit and aggressive nature of African Americans, especially during the early part of the 20th Century, when many African Americans didn't know if there would be a tomorrow. The tomorrows in this book, like so many tomorrows that preceded this place and time, is one more milestone that I'm pleased was not overlooked. I'm pleased this author, Marsha Dean Phelts, took the initiative to chronicle our past.