OLLI - FAU Lecture Series: Delray Beach’s Desegregation Story

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James “Bay” McBride

This lecture explores the long struggle to desegregate Delray Beach’s famous white sands in the middle of the twentieth century while placing it in the context of Black Floridians’ longer struggle to unseat Jim Crow.

James “Bay” McBride drowned on Mother’s Day 1956 while saving his brother from a rip current south of Delray Beach’s municipal beach. McBride and his family lived in Delray, but could not use the city’s beach because of the city’s segregation ordinance. McBride was not Delray’s first Black citizen to drown in the rough, unguarded waters south of town, but the community members fought to make sure he’d be the last. This lecture explores the long struggle to desegregate Delray Beach’s famous white sands in the middle of the twentieth century while placing it in the context of Black Floridians’ longer struggle to unseat Jim Crow.

Biography of Evan P. Bennett, Ph.D: Bennett is a historian of the American South whose research focuses on the intersection of rural, environmental, and labor history. He recently wrote a book on the environmental history of Tampa Bay. He is the author of “When Tobacco was King: Families, Farm, Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont”, (University Press of Florida, 2014). He is also co-editor of “Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families Since Reconstruction,” (University Press of Florida, 2012).