Progress comes with a price.
She showed up unannounced at The News-Journal, an elderly African-American woman with a proud visage, a simple but elegant straw hat, and a bone to pick. Her name was Mary Moore, she said, and she wanted to speak to someone about Cypress Street Park.
The fence bordering the park on Nova Road and George Engram Boulevard had been taken down. She feared it was one more sign that the place she as a child knew as Cypress Street playground, which had been a cultural and social keystone of the black community during segregation, was being lost to the advances of time.
Her voice shook with anger, and then her eyes filled with tears.
***
Created in 1929, Cypress Street Park earned its stop on Daytona Beach’s Black Heritage Trail by giving generations of African-Americans something they weren’t allowed to have outside their neighborhoods: a place to play, to congregate, to entertain, to celebrate.
Moore calls it “sacred ground, like burial grounds for Indians.”
“If blacks did anything,” she says, “Cypress Street playground was part of it.”
The Cypress Park pool, built in 1942, once was the only public pool in Volusia County where blacks could go for a swim. In 1946, the park served as a spring training practice field for baseball’s minor-league Montreal Royals, who had a promising rookie named Jackie Robinson. In 1949, a recreation hall was built at the park specifically for African-Americans — so that the new Peabody Auditorium on the beachside could be reserved for whites.
Over time, Cypress Street Park reflected the changes in law and attitudes. As barriers fell, opportunities for African-Americans expanded. Although in 1952 a federal court ruled that blacks had to be admitted to public performances at the Peabody, the rec center stood until 2011, when it was demolished and replaced by the much larger Midtown Cultural and Education Center. Age and neglect forced the pool’s closure in 1999, but a new one was built in 2008 and reopened as the Cypress Aquatic Center.
Local taxpayers have pumped millions of dollars into upgrading the park. Today, it sports many of the modern amenities that weren’t made available to African-Americans decades ago.
But for Mary Moore, that progress has come with a price.
***
To her, history isn’t composed of stacks of milestones. It’s a tapestry woven with the names and faces and memories of the people who populated Cypress Street Park and contributed to everyday life in its neighborhood. Moore wouldn’t reveal her age, and I’m not going to embarrass myself or her by trying to guess it. Despite her years, her recollections of a bygone era of Daytona Beach are comprehensive and vivid.
You just sit back and listen to her unspool an oral history of growing up in a segregated society. She does so not with justifiable bitterness or anger, but with fondness for what she had, liberally appended with praise and thanks to God.
“We made lemonade out of the lemons they gave us,” she said.
She recalls amateur talent shows at the park, with the crowd booing off stage those acts that flopped. Concerts at a bandshell. Community picnics sponsored by white elected officials seeking black votes.
Most of all, she recollects the individuals who made an impact: Josie Q. James, Grace Brewer and Le Rosa Smith, who watched over the children playing in the park and kept them straight; Eddie Hill, who taught kids music; Dr. John Stocking, his daughter Evelyn Stocking Crosslin and her husband Dr. Neil Crosslin, all African-American physicians who tended to the black community. Just to name a few.
They brought joy to young lives. Shaped character. Inspired people.
And this is what she fears the most: Those names are in danger of being forgotten.
***
It turns out the fence at Cypress Street Park that Moore feared was gone for good was merely being replaced; a new one is up. She expressed relief.
But she remains troubled by what’s not there — recognition of the people whose contributions to the park and the community elevated the quality of life. There are no historic markers telling their story; no Crosslin Street or similar avenue.
“You don’t see any of these people’s names on anything,” Moore says. “They taught us how to dream, how to persevere, how to go farther.
“It’s like those people never existed.”
The park doesn’t lack for black history. There’s a time capsule in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. buried in the northwest corner of the park, to be opened on its centennial, Jan. 19, 2087. And for years the park has been the site of the annual Juneteenth celebration, which will be held Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
However, it deserves to have something that tells its unique story to current and future generations — who won’t have the privilege to hear it directly from Mary Moore.
Kent is The News-Journal’s Opinion page editor. His email is scott.kent@news-jrnl.com. His phone number is 386-681-2248. Follow him on Twitter @DBNJskent.