After watching a CBS Sunday morning special on Eatonville, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Karen Hunter reached out to architect and historian Everett Fly to talk about the town’s history. After the end of the Civil War, formerly enslaved African Americans traveled to central Florida to work. White property owners refused to sell them land until Joe Clark convinced two white Northerner homeowners in the area, Lewis Lawrence and Josiah Eaton, to make available plots they could buy. Land was the only way they could vote. The town would become Eatonville, one of the first Black towns to incorporate.
About Everett Fly
Everett Fly is a licensed professional landscape architect (Texas) and licensed professional architect (Texas). He is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Expertise includes detailed urban design, site design, irrigation design, architectural design and photography. His Black Settlements in America (TM) research and methodology have been referenced by the National Park Service, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Library of Congress. His expertise on African American settlements has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR). Mr. Fly has researched and produced nominations for designed and vernacular resources that have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and has prepared Historic American Buildings Survey (H.A.B.S.) documents for the National Park Service. During his 35-year career, he has worked on projects in sixteen states and the District of Columbia. He has served as a grants panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts Design Arts Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs. Mr. Fly served seven years on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. In 2014 he received one of ten National Humanities Medals from President Barack Obama for his body of work preserving the integrity of African American communities settlements. In 2020 he received a Texas Heroes of Preservation Award. In 2021 he received the Daughters of the American Revolution Historic Preservation Award and one of three Harvard University Graduate School of Design Distinguished Alumni Awards.
