Early in the twentieth century, rural blacks in southeastern Florida clustered on farmor scrubland. In urban areas, black zones arose on vacant fringes and later expanded into white sections. By the 1920s, the black urban areas grew as contiguous corridors along transportation lines. Small black communities also remained separated from each other by commercial or white residential districts. During the 1950s urban expansion was extensive, but discrimination forced blacks into small, disconnected communities and to travel longer distances for goods and services than did whites. This pattern suggests that separate sets of central-place hexagons developed in areas of racial bias. THIS study examines the location of the black population in southeastern Florida, specifically the eastern parts of Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade counties. The settlement patterns of blacks and their relationship to those of the white population are traced historically, and generalizations are offered to explain past and present racial locations. Furthermore, this analysis challenges certain generalizations that seek to account for the location of blacks, especially in Palm Beach and Broward counties. The classical centralplace model explains the location of population in southeastern Florida, but the specific configuration differed by race before the civil-rights era. The central-place network of blacks was rapidly reconfigured during the 1960s. This shift suggests that separate sets of central-place hexagons may develop in areas where bias restricts the mobility of a disenfranchised group. According to the 1990 census (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1990), Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade counties contained slightly more than four million people (Table I). Racially, the population was 78.2 percent white, 17.2 percent black, and 4.6 percent other races. Though not a racial category, Hispanics constituted 27.8 percent. Of the 642 census tracts in the three-county region, twelve, most of them in Palm Beach County on the shores of Lake Okeechobee, were omitted from the analysis because they were far west of the regional ecumene and functionally were discrete from the coastal communities. GROWTH OF BLACK SETTLEMENTS In the antebellum southern city, four patterns of black housing existed: small black districts on out-of-the-way streets, houses of free blacks who were homeowners; shantytowns near a city edge where slaves not needed in agricultural or domestic activities were quartered; and back-alley sites. The last, the most universal of the patterns, interspersed blacks in white residential districts. Those blacks were usually domestics who were housed near the residences of their masters. In that preindustrial era, congregation * DR. LEE is a professor of geography at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.117 on Sun, 23 Oct 2016 04:39:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW TABLE I-RACIAL-ETHNIC COMPOSITION IN STUDY AREA COUNTY POPULATIONa WHITE BLACK OTHERSb HISPANICS Palm Beach 0.83 0.72 0.09 0.02 0.06 Broward 1.26 1.03 0.19 0.03 0.11 Dade 1.93 1.41 0.40 0.13 0.95 Total 4.02 3.16 0.68 0.18 1.12 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 1990. a Population data are in millions and tallies are for the 630 tracts in the eastern parts of the counties. b Includes native American, Asian, and other racial groups. close to sites of employment was limited. The few jobs that used large numbers of workers, such as the docks in Charleston or Savannah, could be manned by male slaves who lived with female domestics in the residential areas of a city (Rose 1969; Kellogg 1977; Ford and Griffin 1979). After the Civil War, freed slaves migrated not only to the North but also into southern cities. The new immigrants located in marginal areas on the outskirts of town that were often poorly drained or otherwise unesteemed sites. Owners of such land made handsome profits by dividing and selling plots to the poor blacks. This became a classic southern pattern (Rose 1969, 327; Kellogg 1977, 312; Ford and Griffin 1979, 156). The districts contained substandard housing and were often bounded by obvious barriers such as railroad lines and natural features. The barriers eliminated any zone of transition: black districts directly abutted white ones, separated by the sharp line of the barrier. This pattern was typical of Florida in the post-Reconstruction era. As a black district was surrounded by white housing, a new black area, often with substandard housing, arose elsewhere (Kharif 1985, 170). Southeastern Florida was settled late in the nineteenth century after the Florida East Coast Railway was built from West Palm Beach to Miami. Miami and West Palm Beach were the two largest urban centers. Between them, as well as in Dade County to the south of Miami, numerous small agricultural communities arose along the railroad corridor. Recruited from outside the area, much of the labor to work the farms consisted of blacks from the Deep South. There were few blacks in the rural areas, and they generally lived close to whites. Some lived in shanties for agricultural laborers on whiteowned farms. Some occupied isolated squatter shacks of subsistence farmers or farm laborers. Separated from white urban centers, both types of black settlement arose under the always watchful eye of white authority. As the urban centers of southeastern Florida grew and incorporated, they attracted more black residents. Towns adopted segregation laws of the state and passed Jim Crow ordinances of their own. As a result, blacks were restricted to areas with inadequate services. Tiny communities of blacks dotted the landscapes. Often the areas initially set aside for black housing 376 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.117 on Sun, 23 Oct 2016 04:39:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BLACKS IN SOUTHEASTERN FLORIDA were adjacent to railroad tracks, removed from white zones by unoccupied scrubland. With the arrival of increased numbers of workers, blacks began to settle the vacant zones in agricultural communities (George 1978). The population of both races increased greatly during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and agriculture declined in relative importance. White settlement expanded beyond the confines of the railroad-focused urban centers. Beach and Intracoastal Waterway sites were highly desired by wealthy whites. As population grew, the areas of both white and black housing expanded, and a continuous band of settlement extended north and south along the railroad and highway corridors. The former agricultural centers agglomerated into an urban conurbation from the northern border of Palm Beach County to south of Miami.