The Newtown Historic Conservation District is among 18 projects nationwide—the only one in Florida—to be awarded an Underrepresented Community Grant from the National Park Service.

The $50,000 grant will give the city of Sarasota “all the tools in our toolbox” to put together the nomination to have the Newtown Historic Conservation District placed on the National Register of Historic Places, says city planner and historic preservation expert Dr. Clifford Smith.

“This is huge,” says Smith. “Being on the National Register means more grant opportunities for historic preservation. And it means it will allow more flexibility under the Florida Building Code; you’d be exempt from elevating [a structure] under the FEMA 50-percent rule, for example.”

Including the city of Sarasota, eight states, six Native American tribes, two local governments, the District of Columbia and the Federated States of Micronesia were the recipients of a total of $750,000 in Underrepresented Community grants from the National Park Service. This will help them focus on “documenting the homes, lives, landscapes, and experiences of underrepresented peoples who played a significant role in national history,” according to a NPS release.

Smith says more than 500 Newtown buildings, most of them “a really amazing collection of historic single-family residences,” fall within the Newtown Historic Conservation District. “It will be one of the largest national historic districts out there.”

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It may not be a lot of money, but it’s a very big deal. And it’s earmarked for Newtown, a unique Sarasota community where folks have always known how to make a little bit go a long way.

Just as intense pressure over time can create diamonds out of coal, the brutal and self-sabotaging practices of chronic racial segregation — compounded by the blithe indifference of snowbirds and retirees flocking here from elsewhere — isolated and forged a close-knit Black community in Sarasota that is distinguished by its authenticity and a vibrant sense of its own past.

This month the U.S. National Park Service has singled out the Newtown Conservation Historic District as one of 18 recipients in its Underrepresented Community Grant Program, which “focuses on documenting the homes, lives, landscapes, and experiences of underrepresented peoples who played a significant role in national history.”

The $50,000 — one of only five grants that large in this year’s program — will pay about a third of the costs involved in qualifying Newtown for the National Register of Historic Places, which in turn would unlock the door to larger grants for preserving some of Newtown’s 500 structures that bear witness to its legacy — as a century-old home for Floridians who felt unwelcome and unappreciated elsewhere.

Especially at this present moment, when new generations of Americans are coming of age less burdened by the self-exonerating narratives that have long impeded progress for our Black citizens, honest reevaluations of our nation’s past are being allowed to resonate. Because of the singular combination of forces that created Newtown — not simply as a Black section of the city but as a coherent and largely self-determining community — it can be restored and interpreted as a living testimony to hard truths that we forget at our peril.

Years of neglect brought hardship and trouble to Newtown. But, left to their own devices, its residents rose up to foster pride and joy in their own community. Central to this solidarity were Newtown’s dozens of churches, many of which still stand.

Newtown Alive, a team of local historians led by community scholar Vickie Oldham, started the work of officially documenting Black Sarasota in 2016. The task force’s full report, available at newtownalive.org, describes the communities’ churches as centers of empowerment.

“The church offered a place of refuge and peace,” Oldham told the Herald-Tribune in 2018. “It was also a meeting place to develop a plan to deal with hatred head-on.”

This redemptive and courageous aspect of a shameful past is instructive for us all, and well worth preserving. Sarasota is fortunate to have this diamond in our midst, and this federal recognition of Newtown’s distinctive character could enable us to reframe that past more authentically for future generations of Florida tourists.

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Cultural arts centers, museums and libraries situated in the heart of African American neighborhoods add texture, vibrancy and richness to a community. The facilities bring diverse people together and invite residents, visitors and guests to venture into underrepresented communities. Welcome doors swing open both ways for an understanding and exploration of the unknown and unfamiliar.

Beauty can be found in places considered dangerous and mysterious. Important connections can be made between institutions — arts, cultural, historical and educational — and students, researchers and residents.

So imagine if there were a place in Sarasota’s Newtown where our well-known institutions could make guest artists, collections, exhibitions and lecturers available to local audiences.

Issues of race, identity, class, social justice, history and culture could be explored at this community gathering spot. Programmers could organize interactions with underserved communities.

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