The contestants for queen of the 1951 Gladioli Festival. The festival lives on as the annual Delray Affair. Photo provided by the Delray Beach Historical Society
Related: Along the Coast: A view from the home front
By Anne Geggis
The 20-year stretch that tripled Delray Beach’s population and propelled it into the modern, air-conditioned era gets the limelight at the Delray Beach Historical Society’s new exhibit.
“Land of Sunshine & Dreams!” — covering 1950 to 1969 — opened Feb. 23 and is expected to be on display at the historical society for at least two years, showing how the waves of change from the post-World War II era to the Summer of Love hit Delray Beach.
It’s when Black people’s struggle to use the city’s public beach drew the national spotlight as the civil rights movement came to the fore. It’s also when the city elected its first female mayor. And an unprecedented wave of new residents settled here — the city’s biggest leap in population since the 1920s land boom.
“I think it’s going to be really great for Delray, really great for all ages” to come to the exhibit, said Winnie Diggans Edwards, executive director of the Delray Beach Historical Society. “With all the debates going on in Delray … people are going to be able to link now … (and) how it all got started after World War II with this influx of people that hasn’t slowed down.”
The story is told with more than 100 artifacts, including the first surfboard made in Delray Beach, as well as 250 news articles, including an original Jet magazine article showing the unrest resulting from the fight to desegregate the beach.
The exhibit’s photographs include a variety of perspectives: downtown as it was back then, beach revetments installed to control erosion, and dark chapters like police stopping and frisking Black men.
It’s the first time the historical society has put on an exhibit focused exclusively on any part of the second half of the 20th century.
Growing up mid-century
The scope of Delray’s transformation is something Delray natives Sandy Simon, a 1955 Delray Beach High School graduate, and the Rev. Marcia Beam, a 1964 Carver High School graduate, definitely agree on.
Living in Delray all this time, “you get a Ph.D. in adapting — it’s gone from a small community of like-minded people to an urban city,” said Simon, who’s written three books on local history, including Remembering: A History of Florida’s South Palm Beach County 1894-1998 (Cedars Group, 1999).
Beam, now priest-in-charge at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, also recalls a much sparser population.
“Of course there were not as many houses around and the roads were, at first, dirt,” Beam said. “And then gradually they were paved.”
Simon’s recollection is that Delray was “pretty much de facto integrated” during his youth — Carver High School (the Black high school) and Delray Beach High School (for whites) both played on the same football field, he said.
“Delray was more liberal than most cities,” Simon said.
But that’s not what Beam recalls at all, even if she didn’t think much about the prohibition against Blacks going east of Swinton Avenue at night or on East Atlantic Avenue in her youth. But she’s glad others, like Zack Straghn and George McKay, made the push for change on the beaches and in the schools.
“Black people would not give up,” she said. “They just had to make it happen. … And there was a lot of opposition to” desegregation.
Finding history
The historical society faced a challenge in putting together the exhibit because materials in its archives newer than the 1940s are not plentiful. Outreach to the community was required, Edwards said.
“To say, ‘Hey, do you have photographs in shoe boxes under your bed or in your attic?’” Edwards said. “And it’s always interesting because they don’t think we need what they have.
“Sometimes the most boring pictures to family are the most interesting to learn about what was happening here. From an educational standpoint, you see the cars, the fashion — the backdrop for what was happening. …”
Innovations like the widening use of air conditioning are covered, as are the swampland peddlers who sold worthless real estate to unsuspecting northerners.
The 1926 Bungalow on the historical society’s campus has a station for people to hear original recordings of music and political speeches. Next door, the Cason Cottage will feature a different movie from the 1960s every month.
It’s easy for recent history to get lost to time, especially in Florida, said Ginger Pedersen, who wrote a book, Pioneering Palm Beach, focused on the area’s pioneers of the early 1900s.
“It was quite a different place,” she said, recalling how that was the era when manufacturers such as IBM and RCA made their way to the Sunshine State, bringing mainstream America with them.
If You Go
What: Delray Beach Historical Society’s “Land of Sunshine & Dreams! Delray Beach: 1950s-1960s” exhibit
Where: 1926 Bungalow and Cason Cottage, at 3 and 5 NE First St., Delray Beach.
When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Cost: $5 per person; members free
Information: https://delraybeachhistory.org/visit/#exhibits
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