Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Serene retreat or racist reminder?
Some believe that Plantation should change its name
PLANTATION – The name seemed so bucolic six decades ago: Plantation.
When the western Broward city was created in 1953, it was promoted as a idyllic refuge from the hubbub in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
The image is more complicated today.
As social justice protests continue across the nation, some people wonder if it’s appropriate for a city’s name to conjure up memories of slavery and the antebellum South.
Florida was home to slave plantations as far back as the 16th century. Most of South Florida was settled by the Seminole Tribe, which was largely displaced by swampdraining efforts in the early 20th century, according to Evan Bennett, associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University.
The area now known as Plantation started as fruit and rice fields. Some of the land was owned in 1900s by the Everglades Plantation Co.
“That name would have struck a chord,” Bennett said. “For Americans in the 20th century, that name comes to represent that sort of rural, rustic ideal. And a lot of the early advertising for town of Plantation homes focused on getting away from the
city, which in some ways is a code for ‘getting away from people of color who are in places like Fort Lauderdale and Miami,’ and of course when it’s established, it’s established as a segregated community.”
By 1980, the census counted only 432 black residents among the city’s 48,000 residents, less than 1% of the population. In 1990, the number of black residents had jumped to 4,112, about 6% of the 66,700 residents. Census data from 2018 shows nearly 20% of the city’s 95,000 residents are black.
Efforts to change the city’s name in 2017 and 2019 were unsuccessful, including petitions with less than 1,000 signatures.
But Plantation resident Dharyl Auguste says recent events inspired him to start raising conversations about his own city and Broward County as a whole.
“I want our great city to have a name that reflects how truly great and beautiful it is,” Auguste, 27, said. “I’ve been seeing so much of the protests and the movements and the pain and the suffering and people wanting change, and I’ve been feeling this great need to do something and when I started seeing that people were tearing down all these racist and Confederate monuments, I got so inspired.”
Auguste’s online petition to change the city’s name had more than 6,500 signatures Tuesday. Another petition to keep the name had more than 3,000 signatures.
Plantation High School also has tried to change the name and imagery of its teams, the “Colonels.” Originally, they used the image of a Southern colonel, often connected to the Confederacy. In the 1990s, the school changed the imagery to the letter “C.”
Steve Davis, who has coached the school’s football team for 14 seasons, supports changing the city’s name.
“The name ‘Plantation’ conjures up feelings for African Americans of a time in our history that wasn’t good for black people,” Davis said. “We’ve become desensitized here in South Florida because the name ‘Plantation’ doesn’t conjure up those feelings because we hear it all the time. … It’s become the name of a school, the name of a city.
But when you go out of our area and people [see] ‘Plantation High School,’ or you wear a T-shirt [that says] ‘Plantation Football,’ they’re like, ‘Is that really the name of a school?’”
On his Twitter account, Davis proposed naming the school after W. George Allen, who filed the 1970 lawsuit that led to the integration of Broward County schools. Auguste said he wants ideas for a new name to come from residents. One suggestion was “Jacaranda,” after the tree that grows in Florida. Countless neighborhoods and shopping plazas are named
“Jacaranda.” Other suggestions on social media included Evergreen, North Davie, Greene City and Everglades City. There’s already an Everglades City in Collier County.
Plantation Mayor Lynn Stoner did not respond to requests for comment this week, but Auguste said he feels he has an ally in Councilwoman Denise Horland.
“I think everyone’s opinion matters and that we need to take that into consideration,” Horland said at a recent city council meeting where she told Auguste she wanted to hear more of his ideas.
Horland did not return requests for comment for this story.
Auguste said he also wants to explore the possibility of changing the name of Broward County, named after Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, an outspoken segregationist who served as Florida governor from 1905 to 1908.