Jonestown: Orlando’s First African American Neighborhood

Jonestown was Orlando’s first African American community. Beginning in the 1880s, formerly enslaved African Americans made the banks of Fern Creek their home. Jonestown’s boundaries were from East Jackson Street to the north, Palmer Street to the south, Williams Street to the east, and Mills Street to the west. The northern thirty-acre segment of Greenwood Cemetery occupies Jonestown land owned by the White Magruder family until 1935.  

Orlando, in its early days, looked quite different from the city we know today. For starters, the City of Orlando originally occupied just one square mile in what is now the center of downtown.¹ As more African Americans moved south looking for economic opportunity after Reconstruction, Orlando slowly gained additional communities, including Central Florida’s first African American neighborhood, Jonestown, around 1880.² Established by formerly enslaved African Americans, this community was located one-half mile outside the city—close enough that its residents could labor in Orlando’s White-owned homes and businesses. Jonestown was, at its height, bounded by East Jackson Street to the north, Palmer Street to the south, Williams Street to the east, and Mills Street to the west. However, frequent flooding and increasing racial tensions led to shifting boundaries through the years.  

It is generally accepted that Jonestown was named for its first residents, Samuel and Penny Jones, who settled on the banks of Fern Creek in the 1880s.³ However, a White Orlando businessman and major employer also played a key role in Jonestown's establishment and rapid expansion as a Black residential neighborhood. Georgia-born James Bailey Magruder operated the Empire Hotel, the Lucerne Theater, the Arcade, an apartment house, three restaurants, a livery business, a farm, an orange grove, and a business that produced “Magruder’s Liniment,” a topical medicine for horses. To operate his various businesses, Magruder needed workers, and to provide them, he decided to encourage Black residential settlement in Jonestown, which was close to his extensive property holdings just outside of downtown Orlando.⁴ By 1890, Magruder had developed a subdivision that extended from South Street to Palmer Street containing 160 lots.⁵

Additional subdivisions owned by Jonestown’s African American residents also developed and started appearing around Magruder’s properties. These subdivisions displayed the community’s successful pursuit of the promise of the American dream and included the George W Coar’s, Burleigh’s, and the Fred Douglass subdivisions.⁶ Mt. Olive Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church was established on South Street in 1886 and, according to the 1891 Orlando City Directory, twenty-one families lived in Jonestown and worked primarily as laborers.⁷  

Geology, however, did not favor this burgeoning community when, in May 1904, a sinkhole in Jonestown flooded. At that time, it was referred to as “the Sink,” but today, it is known as Lake Greenwood.⁸ Most of the homes in Magruder’s Subdivision were one story, tin-roofed structures that quickly submerged under floodwaters.⁹ Flooding posed a problem until drainage wells solved the issue.¹⁰ Many residents fled their homes and businesses in the area and decided not to return. As a result, by 1916, more residents in Jonestown rented rather than owned their own homes.¹¹ Landlords of the new tenant buildings included James Magruder and Lawrence Burnett, a longtime resident of Jonestown.¹²

Though fewer residents now owned their homes after the devastating floods in the early part of the century, the community still witnessed growth. In 1924, the City of Orlando passed an ordinance restricting African American residents and businesses to three zones, one of which was Jonestown.¹³ By 1925, Jonestown had grown significantly, with approximately seventy houses, six commercial businesses, two churches, and one school.¹⁴  

The Great Depression ushered in the greatest change the community had yet experienced. As his father’s businesses had begun to close during the economic struggles of the 1930s, Chesley Magruder found himself in debt. In 1935, Magruder transferred thirty acres of Magruder’s Subdivision in Jonestown to the City of Orlando because he owed $21,600 in back taxes.¹⁵ The land, located north of Greenwood Street and extended to Newman Street, was used in the expansion of Greenwood Cemetery. 

As the population in the City of Orlando grew, more housing subdivisions emerged. As White residents built new homes, these new subdivisions infringed on land closer to Jonestown, placing White and African American communities in closer proximity. Some White residents publicly complained in newspaper editorials about how close Jonestown was to their property and called for the removal of its residents. One writer, who identified as “A Northerner,” complained that a “beautiful, open and sunny” property they wished to buy on East South Street was devalued by Jonestown residents, stating that “...the [N]egroes pass by going to their homes owned by the [W]hite people. Why not have these [N]egroes move west or across the tracks where they belong?”¹⁶

A fire that destroyed an African American home at 1118 East South Street on November 19, 1938, sparked new efforts by Whites to rid themselves of the Jonestown residents.¹⁷ In February 1939, less than three months later, angry White residents protested the permit needed for rebuilding, which began a chain of events that eventually led to the erasure of Jonestown.¹⁸  

On February 24, 1939, the Orlando Housing Authority announced a plan to remove Jonestown for good. An article in the Orlando Morning Sentinel described the neighborhood as “a cancer which has long gnawed at the vitals of various city administrations.”¹⁹ On the morning of Sunday October 15, 1939, while the Jonestown removal plan was being formulated, a sinkhole collapsed at the intersection of Quincy Street and East South Street in Jonestown.²⁰ City officials saw the sinkhole as an opportunity to relocate Jonestown’s residents.²¹ The following year, the Orlando Housing Authority opened the Griffin Park housing project in the Parramore community and encouraged Jonestown residents to relocate there. However, none did.²² Meanwhile, officials pushed forward with plans to build a low-income housing development for Whites to replace the remaining portions of Jonestown north of East South Street. Phase one of this housing development, called Reeve’s Terrace, was completed in 1942, eliminating forty-eight “shacks” and “a small church and a store.” Slowly, the Orlando Housing Authority purchased the homes of the remaining residents of Jonestown. ²³ According to the Orlando City Directory, only eleven families remained in Jonestown by 1951.²⁴ 

However, two longtime residents of the community showcased a tenacity of spirit by refusing to leave for decades after the city attempted to remove them. Virginia Spellman rejected offers to sell her property to the city in her lifetime. On February 2, 1962, Spellman, who had lived in her home at 1700 East South Street for at least fifty years, passed away.²⁵ One month later, Mattie Young, who had lived at 407 Quincy Street since 1919, sold her property in the Fred Douglass addition of Jonestown, for $8,200.²⁶ In October of 1962, Virginia Spellman’s property was sold by the executor of Spellman’s estate to the City of Orlando for $12,000.²⁷ Spellman’s and Young’s properties, the last vestiges of Orlando’s first African American community, now reside under the East-West Expressway. No trace of Jonestown remains today, save for the graves of residents buried in Greenwood Cemetery, on the land they once called home.   

1. Tana Mosier, Historic Orange County: The Story of Orlando and Orange County (Texas: Mahler Books, 2009), 51.

2. Melissa Procko, “The Way we Were: Jonestown: Orlando’s first Black community,” The Community Paper, July 28, 2021, accessed April 6, 2024, https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/articles/the-way-we-were-10/     

3. Procko, “Jonestown,” The Community Paper.  

4. William Fremont Blackman, History of Orange County, Florida: Narrative and Biographical (Deland: The E. O. Painter Printing Co., 1927), 431-2, Text Materials of Central Florida, accessed April 6, 2024, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-texts/110/  

5. Orange Co., FL, Plat Book D: 050.

6. Orange Co., FL, Plat Book C: 117, F: 108, 112.

7. Orlando City Directory 1891 (Orlando: The Daily Record Steam Press, 1891).; Martha Scott Lue, These Stones: Pleasant Hill/Carter Tabernacle (United States: Serving This Generation, 2006), 58.

8. “The sink hole...” The Daily Miami Metropolis, May 19, 1904, 4.; “Street Commissioner Bennett...” The Daily Miami Metropolis, May 20, 1904, 4.

9. “Flooded section of town - Orlando, Florida.” (1904), H. A. Abercromby, photograph, State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, accessed April 6, 2024, https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/35874

10. “City Deluged in Heaviest Local Rainfall,” Daily Reporter-Star, October 4, 1912, 1.; “$6,000 Damage to Drainage and Streets,” The Morning Sentinel, October 16, 1915, 1.; "Orlando’s Spouting Well Featured in Geological Report,” Evening Reporter-Star, January 8, 1915, 1. 

11. W. R. O’Neal, Memoirs of a Pioneer (Orlando: Orlando Sentinel Star, 1932), 107.; Rates of Orlando, Fla., Consolidated January 1, 1916 (Jacksonville: Florida Inspection & Rating Bureau, 1916), 188-192.

12. Rates of Orlando, 188-192.

13. “Commission Passes on Negro Zone No. 1,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, August 9, 1924, 1.

14. Orlando and Orange County Directory (Jacksonville: City of Orlando Directory Co., 1925).

15. “Orlando Takes Grave Plots for Old Taxes: Magruder Property Near Greenwood Brings $21,000,” Orlando Sentinel, June 27, 1935, 1-2.

16. “This was Jonestown,” Around the Museum Blog, August 13, 2020, Orange County Regional History Center, https://www.thehistorycenter.org/this-was-jonestown/; "Negro Problem,” The Sunday Sentinel-Star, January 17, 1937, 4. 

17. “Negro Killed in House Fire,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, November 19, 1938, 3.

18. “Negro House Permit Stopped,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, February 9, 1939, 12.

19. “Jonestown Negro Section Removal Planned in Project,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, February 24, 1939, 4. 

20. “Earth Sinks 40 Feet in Negro Sector,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, October 16, 1939, 1. 

21. “For Craft or Public,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, October 26, 1939, 6.

22. “Negro Zone No. 1,” Orlando Morning Sentinel, August 7, 1924, 3.; Porter, “This Was Jonestown,” Reflections.

23. “Housing Authority Completes Seventh Project Here,” Orlando Sunday Sentinel-Star, November 25, 1951, 42.; “Jonestown Fades from Orlando Scene After Years of Endeavor,” Orlando Sunday Sentinel-Star, November 25, 1951, 45. 

24. Polk’s Orlando City Directory 1951 (Richmond, VA: R.L. Polk & Co., 1951, 148. 

25. “Mrs. Virginia Spellman,” Orlando Sentinel, February 5, 1962, 15.; Orange Co., FL, Deed Book 1115: 463.

26. “Jonestown Vicinity Fading on E. South,” Orlando Evening Star, March 26, 1962, 8.; Orange Co., FL, Deed Book 1047: 292. 

27. Orange Co., FL, Deed Book 115: 465.