From Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade, 11 cities are celebrating their centennials in 2025 and 2026. WLRN News' series History We Call Home spotlights the moments, ideas, and people that made these cities part of our community's fabric over the past century.
Before Boca Raton became the upscale coastal city we know today, it was a small agricultural town with fields of pineapples and a nearby U.S. military base.
As the city celebrates its 100th anniversary, stories of early pioneers from Pearl City — a historic Black neighborhood established in 1915, ten years before Boca Raton was incorporated — not only shed light on a past that is often overlooked but also celebrate all that remains, from churches to remodeled homes.
During the height of racial segregation in Boca Raton, the residents of Pearl City provided everything needed to sustain itself, thriving through family-run businesses like mom-and-pop grocery stores, beauty salons and juke joints — the informal music and dance establishments where unity took root and joy drowned out Jim Crow.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, the neighborhood's peak population was a few hundred. And during World War II, Black soldiers stationed at the nearby segregated Boca Raton Army Air Field often visited the neighborhood.
Remembering Pearl City isn't just about honoring the past. It's about preserving the story of a people who helped shape Boca Raton from the ground up.
"I began to like Pearl City because I found that all the people there were so close-knit," said Archie Carswell, a Black soldier who arrived in Boca in 1942 for basic training at the Air Field.
In a 1985 interview, archived by the Boca Raton Historical Society, the late Carswell said Pearl City became more than a weekend escape from military life. He remembered the tiny all-Black enclave as a place where a sense of community meant everything.
"If one hurt, the other one hurt. If one needed something, the others would go to their rescue," he said. "I just fell in love with Pearl City after going out and meeting the people."
Shortly after meeting his wife in one of those juke joints, where jazz and blues music ruled the evenings, he eventually settled in the neighborhood.
Spots like the Sun Dream — owned by Collin and George Spain Sr, relatives of Alex Hughes, who was the first person to purchase land in Pearl City — were rare places where Black residents could find comfort and let loose.
A community that looked after itself
Pearl City, likely named after the Hawaiian Pearl, a popular variety of pineapple grown within Boca at the time, was built specifically for Black farm workers who were essential to the booming farming industry.
Marie Hester, Archie Carswell’s 77-year-old niece, told WLRN that residents at the time, “could dance and you could play music and get your hamburgers and hot dogs.”
Born in 1947, Hester, a descendant of early pioneers, is one of the few remaining Black residents with generational ties to the once segregated neighborhood.
As a child, she fondly remembers her grandmother sending her to a small neighborhood store run by a woman named Ms. Blanche, where she’d buy bologna, bread and medicine like BC tablets and “snuff,” a form of tobacco.
"But my favorite thing was a cookie that she used to sell, called the Big Wheel Cookie, and they were two for a penny,” Hester said.
Hester holds memories of a community that looked after itself. But those mom-and-pop type stores are now long gone — gradual integration, gentrification and typical migration patterns led many Black residents, including her, to move away for marriage or career opportunities.
She retired and came back after decades of working in several federal agencies in Washington, D.C. She eventually remodeled the home that her grandfather built in 1915 — the same property she was born and raised in.
“We had a pump, a water pump, a well in the yard. And we also had an outhouse in the yard. Little by little, the property improved, and finally, we got water in the house. And then we got a septic tank and a bathroom, and that took a long, long time,” Hester said.
“I think I was in the fifth grade before we even got a bathroom in the house.”
Although Hester’s memories are steeped in love, she recalls that survival in Boca Raton for Black adults and children meant following unwritten racial rules passed down from protective parents. It was a time when “Blacks have to go through the back door” or “drink out of the Black water fountain.”
As a kid, “most of the pioneers did not tell you why. They just would say, 'You do what I tell you to do, and this could save your life,'” she added.
Boca Raton's farming roots
The story of Pearl City is also the story of the Black farm workers who had a hand in building Boca’s early economy. The neighborhood was originally built to house the labor force behind the area’s booming farming industry.
Historian Susan Gillis of the Boca Raton Historical Society told WLRN that Boca’s humble beginnings were driven by economic need, for "both Black, white, and Japanese residents alike.“
"The reason people came here, 100 years, 150 years ago, was to farm — not for the beach or the Gulf or anything like that,” Gillis said.
There were simply more opportunities for full-time work.
“A lot of North Floridians and South Georgians, be they white [or] Black, came down here in the 1890s and early 20th century to farm because it was better pay,” she added.
This stands in stark contrast with today, when major sectors driving employment and growth include broad technical services like finance, tech and healthcare.
Some of the Black folks who moved down from the north are still around. Dorothee Overstreet, Marie Hester's 96-year-old mother, said life and the economy were simpler then.
“Mom and Daddy, after they brought us down here from Millen, Georgia, we lived on a farm,” she told WLRN. “We picked beans, we went to school, mostly half a day then.”
In 1920, according to city data, Boca Raton was a remarkably small and diverse community of just 238 people. Nearly half the population — about 45% — were Black; 40% were white and 14% were Japanese, including a group of farmers in Boca’s Yamato area. Today, Boca Raton is home to more than 102,000 residents, while less than 6% is Black, according to the latest Census Bureau estimate.
READ MORE: How Jupiter's forgotten life-saving station impacted South Florida and U.S. history
For Black children growing up in 1950s Boca, a segregated childhood was interwoven with labor — sisters Zadia Brown Tyson, Julia Brown Newsom and Louise Brown Perry were part of the Black community who juggled schoolwork with long hours of bean picking in fields once owned by white farmers like August Butts, Dewey Strickland, and Frank Howard Chesebro.
The sisters lived and worked on Butts Farm, and were bused into Pearl City to attend school.
“We enjoyed dancing. We played the piccolo,” Tyson remembers, painting a picture of hard work and pastime. “When we were children, we used to walk to the Boca Raton post office to mail letters for our mom.
"The stamps were three cents. We would walk down Dixie, and then we'd have to cross over Federal Highway.”
Boca Raton transitioned from agriculture to urban development in the 1970s. Today, the farmland where the sisters once toiled is long gone, replaced by condominiums and shopping plazas like Town Center Mall and Boca Square.
Julia Brown Newsom is often amazed by Boca’s transformation. “It’s a marvelous feeling,” Newsom told WLRN. “It’s just good to know that you were a part of it … to see this development and everything.”
'Walk by faith and not by sight'
The sisters said families in the neighborhood prioritized education. Louise Brown Perry said most of the people in Pearl City valued economic stability, especially through homeownership.
“We knew the importance of homeownership and stuff like that,” she said. “So it was always nice to know that somebody around us was getting their own home.”
Today, landmarks endure, archiving both past and present. Pearl City is anchored by two churches — Macedonia A.M.E and Ebenezer Missionary Baptist — where services continue to this day. At a recent Sunday service at Ebenezer, the gospel choir, led by musician Earnest Gonder, sang songs including Hold On Just A Little While Longer, which conveyed a metaphorical message of hope and resilience.
The call and response, backed by piano, organ, drums and tambourines, was followed by a sermon from guest pastor and long-time resident George Spain, filling in for the church’s pastor, Ronald Brown, who was away for the day.
Spain, whose grandfather — also named George Spain — was an early pioneer of Pearl City, preached the importance of embracing local community affairs over national politics, and of upholding faith in God during changing times.
“We walk by faith and not by sight,” Spain told the congregants.
On that same Ruby St, just west of Ebenezer, the Tree of Knowledge stands tall as another anchor, symbolizing the community’s deep roots — residents once gathered under this historic banyan to escape Florida’s heat.
In 2023, the site was officially designated as Lois D. Martin Way, named for the long-time resident, educator and activist who helped save the tree from road expansion in the 1970s.
As Boca Raton celebrates its centennial and continues to grow, remembering Pearl City isn't just about honoring the past. It's about preserving the story of a people who helped shape Boca from the ground up.
And as one of Pearl City's few remaining elders, 96-year-old Overstreet still represents the living memory of both the neighborhood and Boca's legacy for nearly a century.
“I’m blessed to be living to see celebrating this 100 years because I didn't think I’d be here this long,” Overstreet said. “I thought I'd have been gone, but the Lord saw fit for me to still be here.”
