Eatonville

Eatonville
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A TOWN OWNED AND CONTROLLED BY COLORED MEN.
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April 4, 1891
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They have full set of municipal Officers-Something about the Business of the Place.

Eatonville, situated just two miles and a half North of Winter Park is a town, incorporated by colored people, inhabited by colored people and the officers from the Mayor down are colored men. It is a strange thing in the history of our country, yet such does exist. It has been two year or more since this little village, with Ethiopian inhabitants first planned for incorporation. What first prompted them to turn their heads in such a direction, has been the querry of hundreds of people who did not know the gist and energy of its leading citizens. It was once thought that it was a crave and a fancy for office that caused this suggestion to spring into the minds of the people of this place: but since truth has sprung into existence and become a live power the real cause why Eatonville was incorporated is known in a different light to what many had supposed. It was not for office, but the incorporation of Eatonville was intended to be a salution for bourbon talk “that the colored people had no executive ability about them, and would ruin rather than build up.”

There, exist a government by men only partially educated, who are carrying out their laws with asmuch strictness as anywhere in the Country. Leaving the government and taking the business–we find Eatonville has th?? stores, which proprietors carry groceries, dry goods, crockery and almost every other line of goods carried in any first class store in much larger towns.