Many of Lakeland’s first Black residents were men who arrived in about 1883 to build a section of railroad in the area. They camped on the southern shore of Lake Wire and worked for Herbert Drane, said to be the first white settler in the territory of Lakeland.
According to M.F. Hetherington’s “History of Polk County, Florida,” published in 1928, as the population of Black workers grew, they began settling on land about a quarter of a mile south of Lake Wire, between Lake Beulah and Lake Hunter.
Today, a four-lane road winds around Lake Hunter. But in 1883, bears and panthers still prowled the area. There were no paved roads, there was no air-conditioning and there was no integration of racial groups. In the Jim Crow South, Black and white children attended separate schools.
Black families living in Lakeland needed a place to attend church and their children needed a place to go to school. They built St. John’s Baptist Church in 1884, which housed the first school for Lakeland’s Black children.
“Lakeland had a (Black) population in 1887 of 160,” Hetherington wrote. “They had a neat church and a good school, and were described as industrious and thrifty.”
Lakeland historian LaFrancine Burton wrote in The Ledger in 2003 that the “1887 Polk County School Board minutes show that Amos Stewart, a pioneer of this early African-American community, was appointed supervisor of the ‘Lakeland Colored School.’ Since there was no mention of a teacher, it could be surmised that Stewart assumed both duties during his tenure.”
Beginning in 1898, a series of fires destroyed the church and then two subsequent school buildings.
When the first fire burned down St. John’s Baptist Church in 1898, “members built a new wood-frame sanctuary, and, they, with the help of others, also built a separate schoolhouse.”
Just seven years later, the school burned down. Burton wrote that School Board minutes showed the board ordered, “the Lakeland Colored School suspended until a suitable building could be provided in which to continue the school.”
She continued that the next year in 1906, “the charismatic and educated Rev. H.K. Moorehead was appointed pastor of the St. John’s church and, in all probability, offered the church as a temporary setting for the school. The neighborhood was eventually named for him following his death in 1916.
Another name that Lakeland residents might recognize is William A. Rochelle, who moved to Lakeland in 1907 and began a long teaching career at the school in Moorehead. Lakeland’s second Black high school was named for him. Burton wrote that Rochelle was born in 1866 on a boat on the St. John’s River. He graduated from what is now Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and did graduate work at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Va.
Rochelle was principal in 1913 when the School Board paid $2,300 for a 10-room, two-story wood-frame school, called Flanagan Hall, to be built on West Orange Street and South Ohio Avenue. A city Facebook post, however, states that Flanagan Hall was bought in 1917 to be used as a school. Whether it was bought or built, it served as both a schoolhouse and an auditorium where Lakeland’s Black community could host “social activities, special programs and civic gatherings.”
A photograph from the Nettie Adderley Collection that appeared in The Ledger in 2003 shows 23 students standing on the schoolhouse steps in 1913 — the girls all in dresses and the boys in knee-length knickers and shirts. Many of them are barefoot. Two teachers stand with them, including Nettie Adderly.
Adderley was born on April 24, 1886, in Sedalia, South Carolina, and taught at the Moorehead School before transferring in 1931 to Washington Park High School. According to a post on the city’s Facebook page, “Adderley continued to teach English in this secondary setting. She brought classical literature to life in the form of plays performed by the students. Proceeds from these events went toward the Junior-Senior Banquet. Adderley retired after 40 years in education. Even then, she financially assisted students in their pursuit of higher education.”
She lived to be nearly 101 years old and is buried beside her husband Nathan at Tiger Flowers Cemetery.
Burton wrote that a letter was published on Aug. 23, 1918 from Rochelle, asking parents to pay 25 cents per child “for the current expenses of the school.” The teachers were: Nettie Adderley, Lucy Rochelle, Sadie Young, Mattie Williams, Sara Bigham, Zallie Houston, Iola Simmons, Christine Hector and Callie Johnson.
In the 1920s, the second Moorehead School burned down, as did the original Lakeland High School, which was built in 1902 at 400 North Florida Avenue, and caught fire on June 9, 1927. According to the city of Lakeland, “The (LHS) fire was believed to have been started by a vagrant. The school was rebuilt the same year only this time with brick.” It is now Lawton Chiles Academy.
Several train stations in Lakeland also burned down and some local historians speculate that the town might have been home to an arsonist.
A 1922 newspaper article reported that, “The colored schools of Lakeland open Monday, Sept. 4, with Professor W.A. Rochelle in charge as principal. Both schools, one in Moorehead and the other on the hill, will open at 9:30 and Professor Rochelle asked the student to bring the books they studied last term. All children from Plum Street north, up through the fourth grade, will go to the [Florida Baptist] Seminary building in north Lakeland, and all other students will go to the Moorehead school.”
In addition to segregation and all that came with it — including used and damaged textbooks and inferior classroom equipment — there were three stark differences in Black education today compared to the early 1900s. The school year wasn’t today’s 10 months, it was only four months. It wasn’t free and it didn’t include high school.
Local Black leaders had to fight for the right to a longer school year like the white students had, with Rochelle petitioning the School Board. But he was denied. In 1923, Lakeland’s Colored Ministers Alliance asked the City Commission to lend “assistance in securing a longer school term than four months.”
After at least three years of asking for change, the School Board finally relented in 1926, “provided the people raise the money for an additional month, making six months in all, and a start was made in the colored churches toward raising money.” At the time, Burton wrote, “it was common for the School Board to make the communities responsible for building and furnishing the schoolhouses, or for paying the cost of extending their school’s allotted term.”
A 1926 Ledger story reported that the wood-frame Washington Park School at the corner of 10th Street and Dakota Avenue (which is now Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue) was too small to accommodate the growing number of students as more people migrated to Florida. There were 299 pupils in five rooms.
“A total of 1,105 pupils are now enrolled in the two colored schools, Washington Park and Moorehead,” the story stated. “And the available rooms are filled with 39 pupils housed in the old Seminary Building in Washington Park [at Fourth Street and New York Avenue].”
The total enrollment in the two schools was:
- Chart classes: 299 (learning the alphabet, numbers and shapes)
- First grade: 175
- Second grade: 146
- Third grade: 158
- Fourth grade: 130
- Fifth grade: 70
- Sixth grade: 65
- Seventh grade: 30
- Eighth grade: 20
- Ninth grade: 12
The School Board — then called “The County Board of Public Instruction” — proposed a new school to be built of red brick. It would become Washington Park High School and the older wooden building would become the elementary school.
According to a story in The Ledger in 1928, the “Negro Schools” would open on Sept. 1 and “All grades One to 10″ were expected to report. Washington Park High School staff is listed as: Edward W. Murray, Principal, and teachers: William A. Rochelle, Elsie L. Dunbar, James F. Gilchrist, Jessie M. Payne, Nettie L. Adderley, Louise W. Rochelle-Diggs and Leola Jones. Teachers in the grades: Christine B. Hector, Louise M. Longworth, Blanche C. Daniels, Lucy C. Rochelle, and Bertha Nearns,” along with a dozen others listed using just their initials and last names.
At the Moorehead Schools were: Mrs. Zallie E. Houston, principal, and Earnestine R. Stewart, Marie Lucas, Pansy W. Ralfe, Mr. L.W. Logan and Lillie M. Kearse.
Washington Park High School became only the eighth Black high school in Florida.
Professor Edward W. Murray was named principal in 1929. The following year, Washington Park High School began to offer a 12th-grade education and, on June 8, 1930, 10 Black students received the first high school diplomas: Elnora Bryant, Velma Dickerson, Peaches Felder, Celeste P. Green, Inez Harris, Lucy Lloyd, Maxwell Saxon, Inez Shipp, Vera Lucas and Maggie Jordan.
In January 1931, the Moorehead school acquired a library and was the first in the state to secure a radio through the Rosenwald Fund. The Moorehead School remained a fixture in the community until the mid-1960s, when it was torn down and students began attending the new Lincoln Avenue Elementary School.
Washington Park High School became a junior high school in 1951 when the new Rochelle High School was built a few blocks north. It later served the community as a grammar school before being torn down in the early 1970’s.
Rochelle High School graduated its final all-black class in 1969. Students had already begun to integrate both Lakeland and Kathleen Senior High schools.
Rochelle is now Rochelle School of the Arts and is a feeder school for Harrison School for the Arts. Lincoln Avenue Elementary is now Lincoln Avenue Academy, an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme World School and consistently earns an A rating in the state’s school grade system.
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