Pompano museum will honor educator Ely

POMPANO BEACH — Pompano Beach will open a museum memorializing one of the city’s educational pioneers.

The former home of Blanche Ely, who taught children to rise above race in the age of segregation, is expected to be turned into a repository for yearbooks, photographs and other archives describing life at the time Ely and her husband were educators in the city.

The City Commission this past week approved a $298,750 contract to renovate and restore the building at 1500 NW Sixth Ave., which the city has owned since 1997.

“We’re hoping people can come and realize what Ms. Ely was all about — excellence and the continuation of education,” says Katheryn Gillis, one of those on a committee intent on turning the 2,700-square-foot house into a historical landmark.

Ely’s impact was felt so intensely, the school she led was called Blanche Ely High School beginning in 1951, when she was principal and the school included grades one through 12.

In those early days of Ely’s career, the city’s black children were segregated from white students, attending school on a different calendar than others so they could pick beans in the city’s fields. Ely rose through the ranks and became the principal to children whose parents she taught. Ely died in 1993, a few

months after the city rechristened Northwest Sixth Avenue as Blanche Ely Avenue.

“She changed us as students,” Emma Ellington, 76, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in August. “She taught us if we could read and write, we could make it in life.”

The city bought her home in 1997, and it was briefly opened as a museum in 2000, but the volunteers could not sustain the effort and the city discovered the house wasn't zoned to be a museum, so it closed, according to city officials.

Making it a public attraction has presented a number of challenges, particularly parking and accessibility.

With money approved this past week, the house will be thoroughly cleaned, repaired and renovated. Improvements also will make the house accessible to people with disabilities and add parking.

The city also accepted a $50,000 grant from the Florida State Department, Historical Resources Division, which the city agreed to match.

COURTESY Pompano Beach educator Blanche Ely died in 1993.

COURTESY The Pompano Beach City Commission has approved a contract to renovate and restore the building at 1500 NW Sixth Ave. An architect’s drawing shows what the fininshed museum would look like.