Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center (formerly Excelsior Museum and Cultural Center) is an African American history museum located at 102 Martin Luther King Avenue in St. Augustine, Florida. [1] It is located in the former Excelsior School, St. Augustine's first black public high school. The museum opened in 2005.
Lincolnville is now a neighborhood of the city of St. Augustine, but was originally a distinct town. It was settled by freed Black slaves after the American Civil War. [2]
The museum is located in the former Excelsior High School, the first public high school for African Americans to open in St. Augustine. [2] The first public school for African American children was built in St. Augustine in 1901. As with all public schools in Florida at the time, it was segregated. "School #2" or "the Colored School" was built in 1925 as St. Augustine's high school for Black students. It was designed by St. Augustine architect Fred A. Henderich, and renamed Excelsior in 1928. Alumni include NFL star Willie Galimore and St. Augustine Movement civil rights leaders Henry and Kat Twine. Excelsior School closed in 1968 and was used for several years for local government offices.
The museum was primarily founded by Otis Mason. Mason was an Excelsion High School alumnus who, in 1984, became the first Black superintendent of the St. Johns County School District. It opened as the Excelsior Museum and Cultural Center in 2005, [2] and changed its name to the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center in 2012. In 2017, the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center became regularly open to visitors. [3]
The museum's focus is on the history, culture, and contributions of African Americans in the greater St. Augustine area. [2] This includes the history of Lincolnville, the role runaway slaves played in building Fort Mose, the history of the area's Black churches, Black historical and social societies, Black businesspeople in the area, and visits to St. Augustine by Martin Luther King Jr. The museum's collections include artwork, memorabilia, and photographs. Most of the exhibits focus on the civil rights era in St. Augustine history, but in 2016 the museum began expanding its coverage to other parts of area history. [2]
It had 9,000 square feet (840 m2) of exhibit space in 2019. [1]
In 2018, St. Johns County used a portion of its bed tax revenues to support a new exhibit at the museum. The new exhibit, Lincolnville LifeWays, focuses on individuals and places of importance in Lincolnville history. Included are photos by Richard Twine, an African American photographer who took extensive photographs of everyday people and places Lincolnville in the 1920s. [1]
The Lincolnville Museum received a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service in September 2019 for the repair, preservation, and renovation of the building and exhibits. [1]
St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.
David Nolan is an American author, civil rights activist, and historian.
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St. Benedict the Moor School is a former Black Catholic primary school located in the Lincolnville Historic District of St. Augustine, Florida. The school is a contributing property of the Lincolnville Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.
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Fred A Henderich was a leading architect of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. He was a native of New York and graduated from Columbia University. Henderich came to Saint Augustine in 1905 to work for Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Hotel Company and lived and worked in the city for over twenty years.
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The 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest was part of a series of events during the civil rights movement in the United States which occurred on June 18, 1964, at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. The campaign between June and July 1964 was led by Robert Hayling, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian and Fred Shuttlesworth, among others. St. Augustine was chosen to be the next battleground against racial segregation on account of it being both highly racist yet also relying heavily on the northern tourism dollar. Furthermore, the city was due to celebrate its 400th anniversary the following year, which would heighten the campaign's profile even more. Nightly marches to the slave market were organized, which were regularly attacked and saw the marchers beaten.
Frank Bertran Butler (1885–1973) was an American businessman who established a beach resort for African Americans in northeast Florida during the segregation era. He worked in Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, and then St. Augustine's Lincolnville neighborhood where he established his own market as well as a real estate business. He acquired land on Anastasia Island stretching between the Atlantic Ocean and the Matanzas River on which he established a beach area resort open to African Americans. The Tampa Times reported it to be the only beach open to them between the Jacksonville area and Daytona Beach during segregation. It became known as Butler Beach. The unincorporated community and a park in it are named for him.
Richard Aloysius Twine was a professional photographer in the Lincolnville section of St. Augustine, Florida in the 1920s. He was born in St. Augustine. After five years there he moved to Miami and worked at a restaurant before establishing a hotel.