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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAudrey Figgs, 75, remembers the Moorehead community as though it was still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can hear my mother right now standing on the porch, Ivory, Ann, Dawn, Audrey, and Mary,\u201d Figgs recalled. \u201cWe had to run through the path to come up and eat every day at 5 o\u2019clock my mother would call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Ell6cbTX0AIQb0l.jpeg?resize=791%2C1024&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nFiggs grew up in Moorehead, which is where the first Black school and church were built in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn 1954 I went to first grade at Moorehead Elementary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
West of downtown Lakeland, African Americans moved to the 35-acre Moorehead community in the 1800s to work on the railroad. Roads like Lime Street, Orange Street and Sycamore Street were filled with Black-owned businesses, churches and schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI remember Mt. Sinai Primitive Baptist Church simply because that\u2019s where we played,\u201d Figgs said. \u201cThat was the playground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the late 1960s after desegregation, Moorehead residents were able to visit places they were once not allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can remember my sister Mary telling my momma, \u2018Momma, momma look at Audrey, she\u2019s over there drinking that white water,’\u201d Figgs recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nHowever, shortly after desegregation in 1971, the city of Lakeland purchased Moorehead using eminent domain to build an auditorium, which is now the RP funding center. \u201cThe people were not satisfied,\u201d Figgs said. \u201cThey had been on that land since the early 1800s. You just uproot people and move them? I\u2019m baffled today, I still don\u2019t understand why Mt. Sinai Primitive Baptist Church had to go, but yet WONN is still there. To me, that\u2019s blatant discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WONN is a radio station that has been operating since 1949. While that was never touched, many families were forced to relocate to areas like Westlake in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was kind of sad to see it go like that because we were one big family,\u201d Louise smith said. \u201cNow you drive through here and all you see is cement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Louise Smith, 81, also grew up in Moorehead. She moved to the area at 16 after growing up in Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe would have to work the fields in Georgia, but here I was a cook for my dad,\u201d Smith recalled. \u201cMoorehead was a family. I miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those stories and memories of Moorehead now live on through people like Figgs and Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor people who might not know the story of Moorehead, or know that Moorehead existed, after learning about it, what do you hope their take away is?\u201d WFLA\u2019s Deanne King asked Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat they will value more of where they are at and let them know what people had to give up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The city of Lakeland memorialized the Moorehead community with a plaque at the now RP Funding Center. There are archives and photos in the Lakeland Library as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Moorehead community was a bustling neighborhood in Lakeland for African-Americans before desegregation, but nothing remains from the historic town. Audrey Figgs, 75, remembers the Moorehead community as though it… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7704],"class_list":["post-42515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-remembering-moorehead-the-story-of-lakelands-erased-black-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42520,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42515\/revisions\/42520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Photo656850.jpg?resize=800%2C601&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n