Demolition of Pensacola's Sunday House
DEREK COSSON
JULY 18, 2016
... Born to an enslaved woman and her white master, Sunday served in the Civil War alongside General Ulysses S. Grant before coming home to serve as a state legislator and city official during Reconstruction. In the heart of the Jim Crow South, Sunday somehow built a successful construction business that made him one of the wealthiest black men in America. He later led the establishment of the Belmont-Devilliers area as a black commercial district ...
... the house was one of the few remaining original structures in the Tanyard, the historically black neighborhood west of downtown which has been decimated over the past four decades by redevelopment ...
... If the home had been built by a white Confederate general, we’d have saved it. How do I know? Because we’ve been there and done that. Look no further than the Perry House at Palafox and Wright streets, onetime home to Confederate general Edward Aylesworth Perry, who would go on to serve as governor of Florida. Of course, Perry didn’t build that house. Hell, he never even owned it — his wife did. And Perry wasn’t even a Pensacola native — he was from Massachusetts. Somehow, though, Pensacola managed to save the house, which served for many years as a Scottish Rite Temple before being purchased by First Methodist Church in 2008 ...
... It wasn’t because nobody cared — they did. It wasn’t because the law was on the developer’s side — it wasn’t. It was because in 2016, we are still a city which values its European history more than its African-American history. We are still a city in which thousands will rise up to defend the Confederate Battle Flag — a racist, treasonous symbol — but could care less about .. a successful black man’s house ...
http://pulsegulfcoast.com/2016/07/demolition-of-sunday-house-highlights-pensacolas-lingering-racial-divide
