Honoring Black history and its contribution to Mount Dora

ABOVE: Mamie Lee Gilbert (center) with Cauley O. Lott (right).

By Susan Myers, Trish Morgan and Bill Opperman

The story of Mount Dora is incomplete without recognizing the impact Black residents had on the development of the city.  

After the end of the Civil War, freed slaves left Georgia and other Southern states, searching for a safe haven and a place to prosper. Mount Dora, unnamed and undeveloped in the late 1800s, was one of those places.  Land transactions and marriage records for Black settlers in the Mount Dora area date back to 1888.

 As the area grew, Black men were key to the success of the local citrus industry. Some found year-round work maintaining the groves, and others in citrus-related businesses. The Black women who worked as cooks and housekeepers were instrumental to the success of Lakeside Inn and other hotels catering to winter guests. Robert Edward Terrell, Jr., the Superintendent of Services at the Lakeside Inn for forty-five years, founded a civic club which sponsored many events and contributed to social services for residents in need. 

In the late 1800s, Hamp Jackson was described as "the right-hand man” of J.P. Donnelly, a builder and Mount Dora’s first mayor in 1910. Jackson was instrumental in building homes in the area and he was the first owner of a Donnelly-built home.

In the early 1920s, a decade after the city's incorporation, some white residents believed the city could draw wealthy tourists from the northeastern part of the U.S. and implemented the Mount Dora Redevelopment Project. That was official name for the policy that mandated the forcible removal of African Americans from downtown properties, and relocated them to East Town during the era of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. 

African American community leaders worked tirelessly to improve the lives of their neighbors.

Mamie Lee Gilbert and Tillman Thomas established the Helping Hands Club to provide needed items to the community; Mamie Lee Gilbert and Lilla Butler were the driving force behind the building of the Milner-Rosenwald Academy for Black children in 1926.  

Cauley Lott, who eventually became Milner-Rosenwald Academy's principal, was elected to the city council in 1972, and was affiliated with Waterman Memorial Hospital, as well as many civic and social clubs.  This was just after the tenure of Lake County Sheriff Willis V. McCall, a controversial segregationist who served seven consecutive terms from 1944 to 1972 until a grand jury indicted him in the death of a black prisoner.

In 1981, Faye Hill was the first Black woman elected to the city council.  She won 58% of the vote and served for twelve years. While the East Town community grew, the area was still a poor and underserved area of town. For example, it was not until the 1980s that the roads were paved. 

Lavond Clayton followed in the footsteps of her father, Hamp Jackson,  and became a civil rights activist for sixty years.  She was an advocate for East Town’s advancement, and in 1984 she was instrumental in convincing the City Council to again allow Black residents to be buried at the public Pine Forest Cemetery.

Mount Dora’s African-American residents also contributed to the written word of the region. Tillman Thomas covered social and church news for East Town in a weekly column in the Mount Dora Topic newspaper. R. Eugene Burley, a civil rights activist and Library Advisory Board Chairman, played a pivotal role in getting the W.T. Bland Library constructed at its current location. Burley also self-published “Mount Dora: The Rest of the Story, Plus!” a local history book from the point of view of its African-American residents.  

Another local history book was written in 2000 by Vivian Owens. “The Mount Dorans: African American History Notes of A Florida Town” relayed stories about the people who pushed past the constraints of racism, poverty and under-education to make meaningful local contributions.

Fast forward to 2021; the Northeast Community finally received representation on City Council with the addition of a new council district seat for the area. Nate Walker, a long-time advocate for that community, was the first person elected to that seat and continues his service today.

The Mount Dora History Museum's display of notable local Black residents has been expanded and can be seen during the museum's hours, Tuesday through Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 450 Royellou Lane in downtown. 

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