Residents of two historically black communities don't want their history to be forgotten.
By DUANE BOURNE
Published June 8, 2003
BROOKSVILLE - Harnell Clark, 85, waded along the banks of Blue Sink, a sinkhole that settlers say gave birth to a small black enclave north of Brooksville.
With each slow step, his feet crunched through the decayed leaves, awakening the still surroundings.
Gazing beyond the arching branch of a weeping willow, he stopped.
His eyes are bad, and the people who grew up with him here say his ears don't fare well either.
As a child, he watched friends sling their fishing lines over the branch. "Bad men" hung nooses there. In those days, black men were hanged for killing other black men.
"If this pond could talk, it would tell you some terrible things," said Clark.
Indeed, this puddle of cola-brown water, which according to many turns blue during the rainy season, can't talk. But the people who were born and lived here most of their lives can.
Funny, they say, how life revolved around this little pond.
Women washed clothes on the sloping banks, careful not to fall in. The men fished and smoked rabbit tobacco; young boys learned to swim - and later how to skinny-dip. Legend has it that Blue Sink has no bottom.
Two miles down the road, outside St. Lewis Missionary Baptist Church, located in a place now called Robins Park, they recalled their Blue Sink.
It was Memorial Day, a celebration of the country community and its people. Folks here called it a reunion.
There hadn't been one in a decade. But now some said it's time. Blue Sink is on the verge of being forgotten.
At one point, there were as many as a half-dozen small black settlements dotting Hernando County. Only a handful remain.
But the stories of the old settlements have been largely ignored in history books. Instead, they are recounted by old men and women - the only ones who can tell them right.
"This is the history . . . as I know it," Birthena Langley Riggins, 63, told the people assembled for the service, her voice barely audible over the cicadas and scampering children.
Settlers here don't know how Blue Sink was born.
All they know is that their ancestors - the Henry Butlers, the Juanita McGees,the Eugene Johnsons, the Henry Scrivenses - lived on this "spiritual ground."
"We've always been here and treated it as such," said Bernice Fletcher.
They were brought here from plantations in Georgia, South Carolina and throughout the Deep South. They settled on the lands they tended or were given. Only a few had the luxury of buying.
Mary Ann Johnson's grandfather owned 100 acres, buried throughout these cascading hills and woodlands.
"The land meant a lot to the people," said Johnson.
Some grew cotton, sugar cane and corn.
"That's how people lived," said Thomas "T.C." Newton, 75, leaning against a car, taking a sip from a soda.
His father raised hogs and cows, and was a barber. But when things got bad and there was no food, they made do with each other.
"You had to cut many heads to make money," said Newton. "That's not like it is now. Back then, you could go into town with $1 and buy things you could barely carry home."
School was just up the road, a 2-mile walk for Newton. It was a small building, the old St. Lewis Baptist Church, which doubled as a school.
Julia Scott, from Tampa, was the first-grade teacher, recalled Clifford Washington, 84. Then there was Dorothy Wheeler, from Orlando.
One day, in 1937 or 1938, the church burned. No one remembers why.
Willie Carnes - known as Uncle Dad - held school in his house until a new building could be built.
Relief came soon.
Col. Raymond Robins, a self-made man who had grown rich from the Gold Rush, offered them a new parcel of land, a quarter-mile from where St. Lewis stands today, in exchange for the one burned in the fire.
People sarcastically called him "land poor." He also brought gifts for the children of Blue Sink during Christmas.
"That's when you had a lot of land," said Pearlie Johnson, 65. "He must have had to be land poor when you give 40 acres to a slave."
The people of Blue Sink built a new church. The county subsequently decided to close the school and bus children elsewhere.
But the white building with straight lines stayed. Robins, it is believed, wanted the property to remain a church as long as people worshiped there.
"Raymond Robins was responsible for everything down here," said Gwendolyn Gates, who considers herself a local historian.
The land soon grew valuable, however, and when the Depression struck, things got worse. The county imposed a harsh property tax many could not afford, and families began to move out.
"When the white folks moved you out, you were out. Not because you wanted to; because they wanted to," said Mary Ann Johnson.
The families' destination: south about 2 miles to a place called Shady Rest, a burgeoning settlement for families with similar histories. Some of them were Blue Sink originals. Others came from as far as Russell Hill, a black settlement in Citrus County.
"We never made a problem," Pearlie Johnson explained. "This Hernando County was one of the baddest counties for black people."
As simple as her statement was, it revealed the racial tenor in Hernando County during the early 20th century.
But that's not what everyone wanted to remember on Memorial Day - not what they wanted the first reunion since 1993 to be, and not what they wanted the 20 or so children to remember.
Now, the job of remembering Blue Sink belongs to the young ones.
That's what drives members of the Blue Sink Charitable Foundation, an organization that consists of people from St. Lewis Baptist Church and First Baptist Church of Shady Rest. They hope to have more events like the reunion.
In years past, the group celebrated Memorial Day with covered dishes and a trip to Lake Lindsey Cemetery to clean the place where many of their relatives are buried.
Only recently, after they realized that the memory of Blue Sink and its people was slipping away, and perhaps out of the reach of the children, did they decide to plan more meetings and social gatherings.
Granted, Blue Sink is almost gone now.
The dirt road where Freddie Lee Johnson, 62, lived has faded into obscurity behind the Withlacoochee State Forest. There's no sign that the school stood there. And the once simple sinkhole has received manicured accoutrements: a small dam, a fountain and foot bridge. It is home to a wealthy developer.
"I like to tell my grandchildren about the past and where they came from," said Gates. "There is a lot of history in these parts. I call it a movement, because it is still moving."
- Duane Bourne can be reached at 754-6114. Send e-mail to dbourne@sptimes.com
