An American Beach for African Americans

This nostalgic folk history of a Florida beach that welcomed generations of vacationing blacks throughout the grim era of segregation and Jim Crow is so rich in anecdote, character study, customs and the abundance of nature (not to mention the 106 b&w photos) that it could almost serve as a tourist guidebook--right down to the homespun recipes, among them directions for roasting pigs' feet that was borrowed from a local cook. But Phelts, a Jacksonville librarian, has a serious purpose here: to describe this stretch of property and the need for preserving a 200-acre African American community that began in 1781 with the Samuel Harrison homestead on the southern end of Amelia Island. Phelts's account centers on Abraham Lincoln Lewis, a wealthy black businessman who, in 1935, as president of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, purchased and developed the tract of seashore known as American Beach, which would become a resort mecca dotted by hotels such as the Ocean-Vue-Inn. Phelts, now a resident, writes of her childhood trips there in the 1950s that ""going to American Beach was the equivalent of going to Disney World today."" This is a lively story of a place marked by community, sociability and food, where generations of families found an oasis from racism. Phelts draws the reader so thoroughly into the everyday life of American Beach that by the final chapter, when she describes the natural disasters, white development and, most tragically, recent police violence (including the shooting of four unarmed African American men between 1990 and 1994) that threaten the community, one feels one's own childhood has been menaced. (June)