American Beach was founded in 1935 by Jacksonville, Florida’s Afro-American Life Insurance Company when it purchased 33 acres on Amelia Island. It provided its employees, and later, the wider Black community, a place to relax and enjoy the ocean when they were barred from “Whites Only” beaches. I moved to Jacksonville in the summer of 1984 to take a job as a staff photographer at the city’s newspaper. On assignments, I would occasionally hear about American Beach, but information about it was scarce. My inquiries were often met with a dismissive, “Isn’t that the Black beach?” In July of 1988, I made my first trip there. With two Leicas and a pocketful of Tri-X, I waded into the crowded parking lot that was the social hub. I was instantly taken with the energy of the gathering, the smell of grilling, and the pulsing music. The light that day was magic, and I knew this was a place I wanted to explore. I was initially met with some suspicion, as one of the rare white visitors, but I kept coming back on my days off. They got to know me, and I got to know them. I didn’t go there with a particular story to tell. I documented small moments that became a three-summer-long project and let the narrative reveal itself to me.
What I did not anticipate during those summers was how quickly what I documented would end. By the late 1990s, the last businesses closed, and the large weekend crowds went away.
This project has been out of the public eye since 1999. It will be reintroduced as a book by the University of Georgia Press and an exhibition at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in early February 2027.
