In 1883 — nearly two years before the City of Lakeland became incorporated as “Lakeland” — this pivotal growing neighborhood was full of people who moved to the south to either work on the railroad, in the phosphate mines, or the orange groves of a pre-Lakeland
RP Funding Center today used to be home to an African American community created by freedmen and women from up north. Moorehead community
The Moorehead community west of downtown Lakeland began in the 1880s when Blacks moved to work on the railroad.
It was named after the Rev. H.R. Moorehead. According to the History Center, the reverend was a champion for the fair and equal treatment of Lakeland’s Black citizens until he died in 1926.
First Baptist Institutional Church was the first Black church in Lakeland. It was established as Saint John Baptist Church in 1884 in Moorehead. The church was also home to Moorehead School. As the school grew, it began to have its separate building. Both buildings were burned down several times.
“We imagine the Klan did it but there’s no proof of that,” Moorhead historian LaFrancine Burton said.
The congregation moved to what is now Martin Luther King Avenue in 1922, and the name changed to First Baptist.
The 35-acre community was annexed by the city of Lakeland and demolished in 1971 through eminent domain to build what is now the RP Funding Center.
Here are some historical facts about the Moorehead community:
- The community built one of the first churches to ever exist in the Lakeland area, St. John’s Baptist Church.
- By the late 1880s, the first school opened in Moorehead, called the Lakeland Colored School — which paved the way for secondary all-Black schools to exist like Rochelle High School and Washington Park High School. Additionally, there was also a two-story school in the community that was partially funded by the city in 1914. Under “mysterious circumstances,” it burned down and was replaced by a one-story structure that was then closed in 1960. The students were then transferred to what is now Lincoln Avenue Academy.
- Within the community, you could find a juke joint owned by Elijah “Shanghai” Jackson. The juke joint sold sandwiches, soda, and beer, but, if you paid the right price you could also purchase liquor, even though it was banned in Polk County at the time.
- In 1938, the Moorehead neighborhood made national news and was featured in Life Magazine when a mob of 200 KKK members paraded through the neighborhood.
- In the 1970s, the city decided to use the neighborhood as the site for a new civic center + purchased 131 homes and vacant houses for $2,000-$10,000 per property — an act that ended up displacing over 122 families within the community
This uprooted people from their family homes and relocated them to other neighborhoods in Lakeland such as Westlake and Washington Park Apartments.
“The older folks when they were working was very low and the social security that they were getting was minimal,” Burton said. “No one wanted to move because it was a community.”
Many of the elders died within a few years after moving out of Moorehead.
“Everybody was saying that they were heartbroken because they had to move out of Moorehead,” Burton said.
Burton, 73, said moving caused people to have more financial hardships.
“Even though they were relocated to better homes than what they had in Moorehead, they ended up with mortgages and they never had a mortgage before. And that was an adjustment for them,” Burton said.
Burton’s mother grew up in Moorehead and her father owned a juke joint called Black & Tan. Burton grew up in Crescent Heights, formerly known as Robinson’s Quarters, on her paternal grandfather’s land which has been in the family for 100 years. She said it would be traumatic for Burton to experience the same situation that the community of Moorehead faced.
“I get all these calls about selling, and I won’t sell it. He worked too hard for it,” said Burton. “I sympathize with the people from Moorehead.”
While Moorehead was one of the first neighborhoods in Lakeland — a thriving and vibrant community — there is still so much more to be recorded about its existence.
Near the RP Funding Center, passersby can find a plaque with a brief history of the Moorehead community.
Inscription. In the early 1880’s one of Lakeland’s first settlements developed on these 35 acres. Railroad laborers working on the Henry B. Plant railroad lines and other African-Americans moved here to begin construction in 1882 on a railroad line from Tampa eastward through Lakeland to Bartow junction. In 1884, Lakeland’s first African-American Church, St. John’s Baptist, was founded and the city’s first Black school was established, soon thereafter. Rev. H.R. Morehead (?-1916) became pastor of the St. John’s Church in 1906. He was an esteemed champion for the rights of his people and it is believed that the Moorehead Community was named in his honor. This neighborhood experienced rapid growth of homes, churches and businesses that included Lakeland’s first African-American physician, Dr. David Simpson (1870 – 1955). Thousands of African-Americans lived in Moorehead at one time or another until 1971 when they city of Lakeland acquired this land in order to build The Lakeland Center.