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Town Welcomes Change But Cherishes Its History

Tribune photo by JAY NOLAN

Bealsville has grown to include 547 homes, churches and other buildings, some dating to 1850, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraisers Office.

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com

Published: February 21, 2009

Updated: 02/21/2009 12:12 am

BEALSVILLE - "Jesus, Jesus," whispers Lottie Mae Durant.

That's Barack Obama taking the presidential oath on a TV at the old William Glover School, where Durant and other blacks once learned from first-rate teachers and secondhand books.

She was a Broadnax then, descendant of the freed slaves who founded this community in the last year of the Civil War. Roots run deep in the fertile soil that brought its owners real freedom, but liberty always has a price.

Durant no longer knows everybody in Bealsville. Fields where she grew up picking strawberries are disappearing beneath monolithic, beige houses. Neighbors along two-lane roads with names like Peggy Walden Circle and Ed Brown Lane still work the land, but they tend gardens now instead of farms.

Some aren't even black.

For Durant, one of the first blacks to work at the five-and-dime in downtown Plant City, this is progress.

"I love it because that's the thing about a community," the 78-year-old retired chef says. "We've got to come together."

The historic black settlement in eastern Hillsborough County gave its earliest, most vulnerable residents their first tangible foothold on an upward path toward independence.

Like those in other black communities across the South, the great-great-grandparents of Durant's generation worked together to establish their collective freedom, forging among them spiritual bonds as thick as blood.

In their first decade, they built a church and then a school. Through Jim Crow, the Depression and the battle to gain civil rights, they clung together and persevered.

That unity is diluted today, a blessing to Durant because it's not so necessary anymore.

Bealsville was never insulated from missteps or sorrows, but the community thrived, grew and contributed to society. Its history reflects much of the history of black America. So, too, its future holds the promise of America: Change means we can overcome racial divides and learn from economic disasters.

Building New Lives

One thing has always served as the glue for this town: its land. At one time, roughly all 4 square miles were owned by descendants of about a dozen former slaves who had worked on plantations and farms in Hopewell, Knights and Springhead, communities in what is largely unincorporated Hillsborough County.

After the abolition, those freed men and women gathered at the plantation of Sarah Hopewell. She provided them with horses, hoes, a mule and a plow and allowed them to stay on her property until they completed the town they named Howell's Creek on Dec. 24, 1865.

Three years later, Durant's great-great-uncle helped found Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, which is still active today. Congregants sat on logs and children went to school under the guidance of the area's first teacher, William Glover.

It was the center of life for these families and the start of generations of preachers and teachers, doctors and lawyers. The Hortons and Reddicks and Hargretts continue to produce leaders, from the school district to the state capital.

Howell's Creek would change its name to Alafia before becoming Bealsville in 1923 in honor of Alfred Beal. The son of founder Mary Reddick, he helped save the community when neighbors fell behind on their mortgages and taxes. Beal bought their land and kept it until they could buy it back.

His efforts set a precedent. Keeping the land in the hands of descendants became the mission - and everyone hereabouts knew it.

"You can't get property in Bealsville," Gwen Thomas says of the common knowledge back when she eyed acreage some 40 years ago.

"You wouldn't like it," the seller told her.

"It was totally African-American descendants," recalls Thomas, 58, who finally moved to Bealsville from her native Plant City 15 years ago. "But it has become a very diverse community."

Farmworkers from Mexico and South America like the area's proximity to the fields, and white families have discovered the community's rural charm. Its boundaries are loosely described as Smith Ryals Road to the west, Holloman Road to the south, Berry Road to the north and the Polk County line to the east.

Bealsville has grown to include 547 homes, churches and other buildings, some dating to 1850, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraisers Office. Nearly 140 houses and vacant lots were bought and sold in the past six years, including more than 40 in a new subdivision just north of Berry Road. Home values range from $25,424 to $797,329.

There are no census figures specifically for the community; the 2000 count put the population at about 3,400, but that included some surrounding areas. About 1,829 residents were white; 1,026 were black.

New blood is good, Thomas says, but "I pray it won't change the dedication of the ones who live here."

If they aren't related, they might as well be.

It's a town that takes care of its own.

Seeds Sown

Pastor Correggio Reaves dabs at sweat above his upper lip and stumps for the Lord during the annual Homecoming Revival at Antioch Missionary Baptist.

"We never should have made it," he tells his flock, standing in their Sunday best with hands stretched to the heavens. "We never should have made it."

Sister Lottie Mae Durant, beaming beneath a wide-brimmed hat tilted rakishly across her forehead, sings with the choir while her daughter, Stephanie Reaves, elegant black feathers sprouting from one glorious crown, sways in the front pew.

Across the aisle is Sister Leola McDonald, with lace clipped atop her neat graying bun. At 91, the petite firecracker nicknamed "Little Bit" is one of the oldest residents in Bealsville, a retired teacher who volunteers twice a week delivering food to shut-ins - many 20 years her junior.

"I just can't sit home and watch TV," says McDonald, a widow who owns 5 acres inherited from her father, World War I veteran Samuel Peter Berry. He got the land by way of his father's father, Isaac "Ike" Berry, another founding father.

McDonald remembers when Samuel made charcoal from pine trees and her cousin, Alfred Beal, held church in a barn. She fell hard for a local boy, Ellie McDonald Jr., who seemed so much worldlier after a trip to Polk County.

"When he came back, oooh! He was so different," a lovesick McDonald recalls.

They were married on her daddy's porch on a windy afternoon in 1941. Later, the newlyweds drove into the city, Plant City, to have their wedding portrait made. The pair moved to Chicago, where Ellie was drafted into the Army.

McDonald gave birth to their son, Chris, in 1942, but the call to come home was strong. She returned alone and eventually earned her teaching degree in 1953 from Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach.

She taught for years at Glover, a little country school she loved. Especially the children. In 1963, her only child, 21 at the time, was killed by a car while walking near the school on Horton Road.

"It hurt so bad," says McDonald, whose husband died of a stroke in 1989.

She never stops counting her blessings, though. McDonald has her health and her mind and her beloved Bealsville.

"God has really been good to me."

Family Struggles

Durant's family practically gave her and her late husband, Harvey, their precious property along Horton Road. She passed down most of it to her kids and prays their kin will understand the value of holding on to something as much a part of their identity as the color of their skin.

"But you know, children don't do nothing you tell 'em," she says and laughs.

Young folks have moved away to bigger paychecks and better opportunities in Plant City, Tampa and beyond. Durant keeps track of her 27 grandchildren, but loses count of great-grands at 20.

In her lifetime, in her corner of the world, racial divides began eroding years ago. She remembers blacks and whites working together to harvest crops and feed their families. After leaving the field, they played ball against each other and drank homemade liquor at parties.

"We got along fine," she says. "Bealsville was already living the dream."

Seeing a black man become president makes her hopeful for the country, and Bealsville.

But there's always work to do.

The community copes with drugs and violence. Durant and others blame big-city influences, the kind that gnaw at a rural town's past and threaten its future. Thomas points to a lack of police presence. In such a rural area, minor break-ins go unreported, drugs are sold openly and teens have little to keep them occupied.

Yet, there's a sense of pride among the youth. Even if they can't fully grasp the sacrifices their elders made generations ago, they surely respect them.

That's most evident at the Glover School, which closed in 1980 due to a lack of students and reopened years later as a community center and meeting place.

"It might be an unwritten rule," says Thomas, who's helping push for the historical building's renovation. "Don't touch the school!"

The schoolhouse is a reminder of just how hard it was for black Americans, and how far they've come. It also serves as inspiration, says Oliver "Petey" Smith, one of Durant's "adopted" grandsons.

"Growing up in 'B's-ville' means you are different than the other kids," says the 22-year-old KFC worker who is saving for college.

"I'm proud to be a part of history ... a good history moving in the right direction."

Researchers Melanie Coon and Stephanie Pincus contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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