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Seniors remember Mims By Corey Schubert
Like the rail lines that divided their community in the late 1800s, time has separated memories from many elderly residents in Mims, a small community north of Titusville. For residents like 97-year-old Raleigh McKenzie, the faces of friends long gone have blurred. Recalling the locations and details of old wooden buildings that only exist today in rare photographs from mid-century is a serious undertaking. "It's ever so long ago," he said with a raspy voice, running a skinny hand through a wisp of gray hair as if trying to shake away cobwebs from his mind. But local historian Roz Foster is helping senior black residents remember and share everything they can about the traditions and lifestyles of their culture in the little-documented East Mims community before they're no longer able to. Equipped with a digital video camera and an interest in preserving times gone by, Foster will head into the neighborhood each week through August to capture the oral histories of dozens of elders. It's only the first phase of a much larger project, as Foster and other area historians plan to interview black residents in communities throughout Brevard County within the next year. After piecing together the tales of East Mims she began recording in June, Foster, a member of the Brevard Historical Commission, plans to offer a video montage of the interviews to be used in the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Park and Cultural Center in Mims. Videos spotlighting black history in other Brevard communities will follow. The $1.2 million park, designed as a tribute to the late pioneering civil rights couple, will include a center for social and cultural activities with a civil rights museum and research library. It is slated for completion in November at the 10-acre site located at the south end of Freedom Avenue. "The future generations have to know who paved the way for what we have today," said Foster, 62. While many people recognize Mims as the place where the first civil rights leaders died, few may know the unincorporated area as a volatile piece of the Space Coast's history. Already, the interviews have uncovered tidbits of new information like puzzle pieces, inspiring Foster to scour through yellowed copies of early Star-Advocate newspapers and thumb through old property records at the Brevard County Courthouse to correlate residents' accounts and fit the jigsaw together. 'Something new'
Charlie Ree Mitchell's family was among about 20 other groups who lived in a turpentine camp in the 1940s on a dirt road that is now State Road 46. The camp included a grocery store, where workers bought goods on an account that was deducted from their pay. A midwife lived at the camp and each house had an outdoor bathroom, said 81-year-old Mitchell. Since there were no trash collectors, residents gathered the trash and buried it in the yard, she said. "Most of the streets here today hadn't been cut or paved," said the soft-spoken Mitchell, her hands gently folded in her lap as if in prayer. Anyone sending a message by mail could simply write the recipients' name and "Mims, Fla." on the front of an envelope and the letter would arrive at the community post office, she said. Mitchell remembers riding the Florida East Coast Railway from Titusville to Jacksonville as a young woman. It followed a separate railway from the one set up in 1885, which split the community geographically in a way that still exists today. In the groves, many blacks lived and worked along that original mail-service line and the area east of that line is still a predominantly black community. Foster was surprised to hear from Mitchell that a church existed near the entrance to the camp. "We learn a little something new each time we interview someone," Foster said, while checking the batteries in her video camera. When several residents mentioned they believed St. James Missionary Baptist Church had existed prior to 1904 -- the date church officials thought it was formed -- Foster searched the Brevard Clerk of Courts records to discover the congregation was formed prior to 1894. She is now in the process of requesting the state provide a historical marker recognizing the significance of the church.
As a child, many of the home remedies that 80-year-old Katherine Campbell Bouie's mother relied on to combat illnesses seemed worse than the symptoms. To treat a common cold, she rubbed a mixture of kerosene and beef fat on Bouie's chest. "If we got a really bad cold, our mother gave us castor oil (to drink)," Bouie said. "We all dreaded that." The inexpensive therapies were traditions passed from one family to another, some of which are still practiced today. Lena Stokes, 59, recalled watching a woman in her neighborhood apply a piece of "fatback bacon" to the foot of an unfortunate youth who stepped on a nail. To stop a cut from bleeding, many black residents searched for a spider web and wound the silky thread tightly around a stick, then applied it to the wound. But there were few tricks clever enough to keep residents from being bitten several times a day by the massive number of mosquitoes that buzzed around North Brevard decades ago. "You could just cup your hand and wave it in front of you and you'd have a hand full of them," McKenzie said. "That's how bad they were while working in the groves in the summertime." Stokes remembers when bobcats roamed the area, sometimes pouncing through the brush near the wooden house she lived in without electricity as a child. She got along well with the white and black children who lived near her lantern-lit home within the integrated turpentine camp where she was born. Bouie said she learned a lot about life from her neighbors, but especially remembers admiring Harriette V. Moore, her first grade teacher at Mims Elementary School. "She was very kind. I respected her a lot," said Bouie, who later became a teacher at the same school. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
