Foreverglades, 2019.
For decades after Western Expansion, South Florida was still a wilderness. Only once pioneers dredged canals and redirected the flow of Lake Okeechobee did this area become habitable. These once considered “useless” territories of marshes and swamps ultimately gave way to development and industry. On the southern tip of the lake lies Belle Glade, a small agricultural town that one might pass on a road trip today, just a couple of stoplights and it’s gone. It hides a rich history that leads to how we arrived here to Florida. In 2015, I moved to Belle Glade into a former rooming house apartment and soon after came across books by Lawrence E. Will and Zora Neale Hurston. Will painted a picture of the pioneers who developed the area through persistence and foresight, and for me, Hurston gave a voice to the workers who built the Glades with their bare hands. Their writing became my framework for exploring the past and looking at its contemporary parallels. In this time capsule, history is present. Roots run deep and the pioneer spirit can still be felt.
Foreverglades is a public art installation and photography exhibit. I produced a replica of a 1920s freight boat, which inside houses my photographic project that was developed over the course of four years. Nearly 100 years ago before roads were paved in Florida, boats arrived at a crowded and busy inland port called the Stub Canal Turning Basin. This basin once hosted the arrival of steamboats from the Everglades agricultural region delivering their farm products. Today, the Stub Canal is a retention pond with no trace of its historic identity. My project involves bringing the stories of the Glades, Western Palm Beach County, back to the original site, and transporting residents to another time in history. I reveal connections to this past through an overall portrait of a region, including images of modern-day workers, farmers, and the life.
A thick forest of custard apple trees once covered Lake Okeechobee’s southern shore. The area became the most sought-after land for farming, with Lawrence E. Will writing that “it could raise the most stupendous vegetables, solid and delicious, and without a pound of fertilizer.”
Antonio, a local resident, caught a rabbit as it tried to escape from the burning fields. Ag companies set the sugarcane on fire to remove excess waste before harvesting. Rabbits are sold in town.
At the turn of the 19th century, South Florida was an undisturbed wilderness of sawgrass that stretched for hundreds of miles south from Lake Okeechobee to the sea.
From the Lawrence E. Will Museum archives, a photograph of a dredge boat circa the early 1900’s.
The Disston dredge boat, whose shipwreck can be seen, was the first attempt at digging a canal from Lake Okeechobee to Miami. The goal of early pioneers was making the swamplands inhabitable by draining them. Hamilton Disston was an early investor and the first who took on the task of draining South Florida.
An advertisement from Real Estate Sales Company Inc. in Miami promises lucrative investments for land buyers.
Willie Lee operates a crop dusting business in Belle Glade. His family was among the first to establish a homestead on Torry Island at the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee. His family spent generations clearing the land to make it productive for farming and decades later were forced to sell it to the South Florida Water Management District. The District raised the water level, leaving the farmland under water.
A photograph of Willie Lee and his parents at their home on Torry Island.
An area of Belle Glade known as Chosen was an early community on the lake. Its history goes back hundreds of years to Native American settlements.
Sonny is a fourth-generation Stein family member. His great grandfather, Hans Stein, was a lock tender on the lake. Sonny keeps retired farming equipment on his land, including the very first tractors and draglines used in the Glades.
Smoke cloud from a sugarcane fire.
Belle Glade Mayor Steve Wilson and City Manager Lomax Harrelle.
A nightclub in Immokalee is frequented by immigrant farmworkers on their night off. Women are paid $5 a dance to join them.
A crocheted Virgen Maria in a yard at the Osceola Housing Authority Project in Belle Glade. The complex was created by the federal government in the 1930's during the Great Depression to provide housing for migrant farm workers.
Workers arrive hours before sunrise for buses bound for the fields.
Mule train (workers picking corn).
The Loading Ramp has many uses in downtown Belle Glade. Workers gather there most mornings before 5 a.m. to get picked up in school buses and transported to the fields where they will work each day.
Hurricane Irma rain floods the low-lying areas of Belle Glade.
The Schelecter Tree survived the Storm of 1928. It marks the spot where the Schelecter home used to be and where several members of the family perished during the hurricane.
Belle Glade's memorial statue for the Storm of 1928. It was made during the city's centennial celebration in 1975.
Lake Okeechobee
The Herbert Hoover Dike was constructed after the Storm of 1928 to provide a barrier between the towns and the lake water. The hurricane is one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history, which killed thousands of Glades residents in a matter of hours.
A medicine cabinet inside the Osceola Housing Authority project in Belle Glade.
To help passengers, someone's writing on a wall at a local Winn-Dixie provides the daily bus schedule. Every so often, store management has this "bus-to-Walmart" schedule painted over.
A rooming house is an apartment building with single rooms for rent and shared communal bathrooms. They were constructed to house the large number of agriculture workers, foreign and domestic, who flocked to the Glades for seasonal farm work. There are still some in use.
Loose cigarettes for sale.
“The Sara Lee Doll” was the first anatomically accurate black doll produced in the United States. It was made by Sara Creech of Belle Glade. Author Zora Neale Hurston, who was friends with Ms. Creech, also played a role in its production. Mary Evans, featured in the photo, was one of the original models for the doll.
T.I. cared for his dog Gator as he ran a laundromat in downtown Belle Glade.
Martin Luther King Day Parade in Downtown Pahokee.
After work, Ms. Balla’s place is the gathering spot for old friends in downtown Belle Glade.
The Sunday domino tournaments rotate from bar to bar each week so that each club owner can make a profit. Participants compete for first place and $40. Scores are tallied to see who wins the domino tournament.
Gregory celebrates two wins: he won the Sunday domino tournament and his son, who plays for the New England Patriots, won the Super Bowl.
2017 New Years Eve party in Downtown Pahokee.
Dreddy and David at Dee’s Lounge.
Fish for sale.
Mourners at Cowboy’s Deadyard (funeral celebration). When a friend or family member dies, the Jamaican community celebrates their lives with a “deadyard”, drinking, dancing, and feeding people for days.
A baptism at St. John 1st Missionary Baptist Church, one of the oldest churches in the Glades. In the beginning they’d meet for service under a tree.
Uncle Bill was known for his dancing and for being Belle Glade’s best pool player.
Local Glades artist, Donal Neal.
Sugarmama where she sits most days, the second floor of her apartment building overlooking a busy downtown Belle Glade. She grew up working in the fields, but farm work has taken a toll on her body. These hands helped build the area.
A makeshift shrine honors a Belle Glade man who was shot and killed.
Tape keeps bugs from climbing in through a bullet hole in my wall.
High school students practice for a tractor driving competition at Glades Day, a private school in Belle Glade.
Kids in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) program learn to care for livestock, which they then sell at the annual South Florida Fair.
From the Lawrence E. Will Archives, one of the first Harvest Queens.
Each year the Harvest Queen makes an appearance at the end of harvest celebration, Black Gold Jubilee, on Torry Island. This year's winner, Caroline Stein, is a fifth-generation member of the pioneer Stein Family. Her family originally settled on nearby Kreamer Island.
Business pioneer George Wedgworth founded the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida in the 1960s by proposing that many smaller farmers join to pool their resources. Together, these pioneer farming families were able to compete and survive.
The Fanjul Brothers, owners of Domino Sugar, receive Farm Family of the Year Award at the 2017 annual Farm Bureau Dinner.
Sugarcane harvesting is done by heavy machinery, but planting sugarcane is still done by hand.
Workers personalize their machetes on the farm fields.
Former farmworkers from Jamaica have taken root in Lake Harbor. Jamaicans were originally selected to come work under contract in America and cut sugarcane by hand. Heavy machinery has replaced that work but some Jamaicans have stayed and built their lives in the Glades.
Local Historian Butch Wilson at the Clewiston Museum.
Angie and her family spend time together outside a motel room they rented out in Belle Glade.
Installation shot of Foreverglades, the public art exhibit. Stub Canal Turning Basin, West Palm Beach, Florida 2020