The Nation - News from Aug. 16, 1987

Eatonville, Fla., the nation’s oldest incorporated black community, celebrated its 100th birthday with a parade, a street festival and an uninvited appearance by the Ku Klux Klan. Eatonville was incorporated on Aug. 18, 1887, by 27 blacks who bought lots from Josiah Eaton, a white landowner for whom the settlement was named. Leroy Filmore, an Eatonville council member, moved there in 1957 from nearby Apopka and remembered his first impression of the town. “I was amazed that I saw my first black policeman and first black fireman,” Filmore said. “It didn’t dawn on me that blacks were running the town. During that time, black people just didn’t do that.”