{"id":424809,"date":"2026-10-11T11:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T11:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/424809\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T11:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T11:32:16","slug":"orlando-sentinel-150-central-floridas-transformation-from-segregation-to-a-gorgeous-mosaic-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/424809\/","title":{"rendered":"Orlando Sentinel 150: Central Florida\u2019s transformation from segregation to a gorgeous mosaic \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were to randomly choose a person living in Central Florida in 1876, they might have been a farmer putting his hopes on the fledgling citrus industry, a rugged cattleman roaming the ranges, or a townswoman walking the dirt streets of the tiny Orange County settlement of Orlando.<\/p>\n

They also lived amid a fast-growing population. Orange County, which included much of what would later become Osceola, Lake and Seminole, was on track to reach 6,618 people recorded by 1880, triple its headcount a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

While demographic breakdowns were not nearly as specific then, most residents were white with only about 15% \u2014 or 1,023 people \u2014 listed as being \u201ccolored.\u201d<\/p>\n

If those 1870s residents could see how Central Florida has changed in the past 150 years, it would be unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

Newcomers from all corners of the world have set down roots, driven by a mix of politics, a search for refuge and economic necessity. Population booms turned the region into a multicultural hub, with Latinos \u2014 most prominently, Puerto Ricans \u2014 making up the largest share of new Central Floridians.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0over the decades, the promise of opportunity and dreams of a new life came amid periods of terror and discrimination for many, particularly Black people and immigrants. This was often downplayed and tolerated, if not supported, by area institutions and businesses, including the Orlando Sentinel and its predecessors.<\/p>\n

Between clashes with Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan from yesteryear to modern uprisings against social injustice, the area\u2019s transformation is not linear but veers toward progress.<\/p>\n

This is not an exhaustive history of the many people and cultures who have made Central Florida home, but a series of snapshots showcasing struggle and excellence, hate as well as hope.<\/p>\n

\"AtAt a 2023 workshop on the making of the “Oscar Mack vs. The Ku Klux Klan,” Mack\u2019s great granddaughter, Vanessa Bonner, left, listens as Renee Bronson, middle, the great granddaughter of KKK member Stewart Ivey, speaks with Juanita Lesesne, right, a descendant of one of Osceola County\u2019s most prominent families. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nTrailblazers and difference-makers<\/p>\n

Juanita Lesesne\u2019s family history sits at the nexus of two of Osceola County\u2019s legendary Black pioneers.<\/p>\n

She is the granddaughter of Scipio Lesesne, a Barbados-born son of slaves whose knack for learning languages \u2014 he spoke at least five \u2014 made him indispensable as the foreman of a sugar plantation located in what is now St. Cloud in the 1880s. The following decade, he moved his family to Kissimmee and began farming 100 acres on what would someday become the Kissimmee Gateway Airport.<\/p>\n

She is also the great-niece of Lawrence Silas, whose father, Tom,\u00a0started a ranch near what is today Kenansville in the years after the Civil War. A legend in his own right, Lawrence went on to own 3,000 acres along the St. Johns River, solidifying his father\u2019s legacy while paving a way of his own.<\/p>\n

Beyond being agricultural giants, they were considered de facto liaisons between Osceola\u2019s Black and white communities at a time when Jim Crow reigned.<\/p>\n

The two families joined with the marriage of Malinda Silas and William Harleston Lesesne, better known as \u201cBuster.\u201d It\u2019s a heritage their daughter, Juanita, has spent decades preserving with a collection of records and family stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore my dad came of age, they were probably the two most respected men in the community, and maybe even the county,\u201d Lesesne said.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Central Florida, Jonestown, a community of freed slaves, became Orlando\u2019s first Black neighborhood in 1880, with Hannibal Square in Winter Park following suit in 1881.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Eatonville, founded in 1887, was in its early years as the first all-Black incorporated municipality in the U.S., while Goldsboro was established just four years later by the Freedmen\u2019s Bureau.<\/p>\n

For many decades, Black Floridians were segregated but still flexed their political muscle. Scipio Lesesne\u00a0was Osceola County\u2019s first Black voter, and his son Buster was a political insider, working on the campaigns of three Democratic governors and an invitee to Gov. Bob Graham\u2019s second inauguration in 1983.<\/p>\n

By then, Central Florida had seen many political firsts.\u00a0Arthur \u201cPappy\u201d Kennedy became the first Black man on the Orlando City Council in 1973, while Alzo Reddick of Orlando was the first elected to the Florida Legislature post-Reconstruction in 1982. Two years later, Mable Butler became the first Black woman on the Orlando City Council, later becoming Orange County\u2019s first Black commissioner in 1990.<\/p>\n

\"JerryJerry Demings gets a hug from his wife, Capt. Val Demings, after being named Orlando\u2019s first Black police chief in 1998. Val Demings would later become the department\u2019s first woman chief. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

More recently, Jerry Demings, Orlando\u2019s first Black police chief and Orange County sheriff, was elected the county\u2019s first Black mayor in 2018.<\/p>\n

George Oliver III also became Ocoee\u2019s first Black commissioner that year \u2014 decades after the city, which expelled its Black residents a century earlier, ceased being a \u201csundown town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author James Loewen wrote that many whites-only towns got the name from the unspoken \u2014 or sometimes, overt \u2014 warnings that Black people shouldn\u2019t let the sun set on them within city limits.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Jennifer Paul, a fourth-generation Osceola County resident, became the first Black member of St. Cloud\u2019s city council. One of her first acts was to issue a proclamation acknowledging St. Cloud\u2019s own dark history as a sundown town.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a diverse community, and no one should be be afraid to come to St. Cloud,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n

\"AA 1965 photo of the band at the segregated Kissimmee High School in Osceola County. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nDesegregation, terror and attempts at reconciliation<\/p>\n

As a girl, Juanita Lesesne grew up around Black royalty inside her family\u2019s Brack Street home. It was not uncommon for figures like Zora Neale Hurston and Hank Aaron to swing by, just two of the high-profile connections her father made over the years.<\/p>\n

Lesesne attended the all-Black Kissimmee High School until 1965, when she transferred to Osceola Junior High School as part of a \u201cvoluntary integration\u201d effort. Kissimmee High School closed in 1967, and Central Avenue Elementary School sits on the property where it once stood.<\/p>\n

While she did feel the racism from the white students and adults at her new school, they knew who her father was.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t treat me as an equal, but they treated me better than they did most of the kids,\u201d Lesesne said.<\/p>\n

Though the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated school desegregation, many Central Florida counties struggled to comply. In Orange County, that led to a 1962 lawsuit that placed it under federal oversight until 2010, when a judge ruled the school district phased out any remnants of segregation.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Seminole County was sued in 1970 after it failed to integrate. It wasn\u2019t until 36 years later, after following a plan to renovate Seminole\u2019s mostly-Black schools, that federal oversight ended.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Lake County schools integrated by the 1970-1971 school year, but not without immense pressure by federal regulators to either desegregate or face massive funding cuts. Osceola County schools, meanwhile, were considered desegregated by 1966.<\/p>\n

\"InIn this 1971 photo, notorious Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall stands next to a formerly segregated waiting room. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

Outside the schoolhouse, the Civil Rights Movement reached a fever pitch in the 1950s and \u201960s. Goff\u2019s frozen custard stand on Orange Blossom Trail was bombed by white criminals offended that it served Black and white customers at the same counter.<\/p>\n

In 1960, sit-ins led by Jones High School students disrupted segregated businesses and lunch counters. The following year, Black people attempting to use the beach at Orlando\u2019s Lorna Doone Park prompted city officials to respond by closing it down.<\/p>\n

While it flew under the radar nationally, the actions in Orlando and elsewhere made waves in Tallahassee. In March 1960, Gov. LeRoy Collins shocked the public when, in a televised speech, he called on businesses to voluntarily desegregate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in 1963, Orlando Mayor Bob Carr appointed an interracial committee to discuss desegregation. While it stopped short of that effort when it decided to desegregate most city-owned facilities but not its parks and lakes, the committee is credited with beginning the peaceful end of segregation in Orlando.<\/p>\n

However, with a helping hand from public officials and newspapers like the Sentinel, the region\u2019s pivotal episodes of explosive violence and terrorism, often masterminded by the Klan, were for years either poorly told or otherwise obfuscated.<\/p>\n

The 1920 Ocoee massacre, for instance, was downplayed as merely a \u201crace riot\u201d brought on by the city\u2019s Black community, turning Ocoee into a sundown town. By 1940 and until the 1970s, no Black people were recorded living in the city.<\/p>\n

A year later, World War I veteran Oscar Mack fled Kissimmee and was presumed killed by a lynch mob after fatally shooting two Klansmen in self-defense. Other than a series of expos\u00e9s by a Tampa newspaper of long-denied Klan activity in Osceola County \u2014 a story the Sentinel did not touch \u2014 Mack\u2019s name and story went forgotten until many decades later.<\/p>\n

\"LakeLake County Sheriff Willis McCall, far left, and an unidentified man stand next to Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Charles Greenlee, from left, in Florida. The three men along with a fourth were charged with rape in 1949. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a Cabinet granted posthumous pardons in 2019. (State Library and Archives of Florida)<\/p>\n

In 1949, the Groveland Four, a group of Black men falsely accused of raping a white woman, were assumed guilty even before their trial. That year, a cartoon on the Sentinel\u2019s front page featured four electric chairs with the words \u201cNo Compromise!\u201d over the top.<\/p>\n

Few, if any, of the victims of those tragedies lived to see the record set straight, and their descendants would wait decades before any wrongdoing was acknowledged, let alone rectified.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Orlando Sentinel<\/p>\n

The guilty verdicts for the Groveland Four were overturned by the state Supreme Court, which specifically criticized a front-page cartoon in The Orlando Sentinel labeled, “The Lake County Tragedy”. The cartoon of four electric chairs, which the justices called “highly prejudicial,” had appeared before a grand jury indicted the men. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

Today, the Ocoee massacre is required learning in Florida classrooms, while the Groveland Four, the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, were officially exonerated in 2021.<\/p>\n

This year, the Florida Legislature approved a $4 million compensation fund as reparations to their surviving families.<\/p>\n

\"AA large section of Buenaventura Estate, shown in 1987, shows the size of this Osceola County community that reaches up into Orange County. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nLatino migration<\/p>\n

Hispanics have long lived in Central Florida, but it wasn\u2019t until the late 1980s that their numbers exploded.<\/p>\n

Puerto Ricans made up the largest influx of Hispanics to the region, thanks in large part to Miami-based developer Landstar Homes.<\/p>\n

Setting up offices in Puerto Rico, New York and Chicago, the company bet that Florida, specifically a new subdivision called Buenaventura Lakes, or BVL, would be the next hub for the Puerto Rican diaspora.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were offering folks a free hotel stay, and if you come down you\u2019d get Disney tickets and you\u2019d get to see the new development,\u201d said Simone Delerme, a University of Mississippi professor and author of the 2023 book, \u201cLatino Orlando: Suburban Transformation and Racial Conflict.\u201d \u201cThat really appealed to folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it worked. Landstar\u2019s aggressive ad campaign prompted an exodus of Puerto Ricans from the island and the northeast to Florida as they sought cheaper, safer housing with less congestion, lower crime and weather that reminded them of home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing missing is the mountains,\u201d said a new resident, who bought a home on a whim while vacationing at Walt Disney World, to the Sentinel in 1991.<\/p>\n

Their families soon followed. By 1990, Osceola County\u2019s Hispanic population grew an eye-popping 1,100%, the largest in the U.S. at the time \u2014 and likely an undercount, the Sentinel reported. Meanwhile, BVL went from a large pasture 15 years earlier into a community with a larger population than St. Cloud, housing about a third of all Hispanics living in the county.<\/p>\n

With the newcomers came new businesses catering to Spanish-speaking customers. Some Puerto Rico-based corporations, like Banco Popular, opened branches in Central Florida while grocery stores began selling Puerto Rican products.<\/p>\n

Latinos continued moving to Central Florida from other parts of the country, while others migrated from countries like Cuba and Mexico and later Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere. In a relatively short period, it became a well-known destination for Latinos, a reputation once more closely linked to South Florida.<\/p>\n

As the region\u2019s people changed, so did the faces of its leaders. Osceola County elected its first Hispanic commissioner, Robert Guevara, in 1996. Viviana Janer was elected the first Hispanic woman commissioner 18 years later.<\/p>\n

\"CandidateCandidate Mel Martinez is congratulated at a victory party in Orlando following his victory in the 2004 U.S. Senate race. Martinez, already the first Hispanic Orange County mayor, became the first Cuban American to serve in the Senate. (Joe Burbank\/Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

Mel Martinez, Orange County\u2019s first Hispanic mayor, became the first Cuban-American in the U.S. Senate in 2005, and in 2016, U.S. Rep. Darren Soto became the first congressman of Puerto Rican descent to represent Florida.<\/p>\n

By 2024, Hispanics made up nearly a third of the population in Orange, Osceola, Lake and Seminole counties at well over a million residents, with Puerto Ricans making up the largest share with\u00a0nearly 400,000, according to the latest U.S. Census data.<\/p>\n

Osceola County has by far the largest regional concentration of Hispanics, who make up 57% of its population.<\/p>\n

\"TheAttendees at the Florida Puerto Rican Parade and Festival celebrated the island in Orlando in April 2025. Central Florida became the center of Puerto Rican culture in the mainland U.S. beginning in the 1980s. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nNews for a new audience<\/p>\n

Spanish quickly became a ubiquitous language in the region by the mid-1990s, and that came with news organizations rushing to fill a need for Spanish-language news.<\/p>\n

Before 1990, Central Florida Hispanics already had a weekly newspaper, La Prensa. Founded on a whim in 1981 by Manuel and Dora Toro after spending their savings on a typesetter, it continues today as the oldest Spanish-language paper in the region.<\/p>\n

El Osceola Star followed in 1990 as the region\u2019s first bilingual newspaper focusing on Osceola County.<\/p>\n

But the growing attention to the new demographic came expanded \u2014 and often low-hanging \u2014crime stories that too often were seen as painting Hispanics in a negative light. Then, amid renewed concerns about drugs flooding American cities, came the 1996 March for Dignity.<\/p>\n

Described by then-Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary as the \u201clargest anti-drug march in Orlando history\u201d at the time, the rally saw thousands of Hispanics, including the late legendary salsa singer Willie Col\u00f3n, marching through downtown in a bid to tear down harmful media stereotypes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are part of the community. We are not part of the problem,\u201d Orlando-based attorney Anthony Suarez said in a story about the rally. \u201cWe\u2019ve been painted with a broad, negative brush.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"InIn 2001, the Orlando Sentinel\u00a0launch El Sentinel \u2014\u00a0a free, bilingual weekly\u00a0with English and Spanish presented side-by-side. (Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

In 1997, partly in response to discontent by Hispanic readers, the Sentinel hired Puerto Rican reporter Maria Padilla, tasking her with covering the region\u2019s changing racial landscape. Two years later, the paper opened a bureau in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

The Sentinel\u2019s efforts to more competently cover the growing community culminated in the 2001 launch of El Sentinel, a free, bilingual weekly with Padilla as its founding editor.<\/p>\n

Its first issue, published Aug. 11, 2001, came out with English and Spanish presented side-by-side \u2014 a format soon dropped after confusing readers. The front page focused on helping Spanish-speaking parents navigate the public school system amid \u201cunequaled growth in the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never really done anything that just catered to the Latino community until this, and to me, we had to tell people real stories,\u201d Padilla said. \u201cIt was a big thing for me that we not write about things that would appear in the English paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Padilla left El Sentinel in 2004, but her passion for journalism never faded. She co-authored a book memorializing the testimonies of Puerto Ricans who fled to Central Florida after Hurricane Maria in 2017.<\/p>\n

But over time, El Sentinel saw severe cuts to its staff, ultimately publishing its final issues in 2022 due to dwindling readership and financial woes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very special time \u2014 it was rough, it was hard and it was fun, and we knew we were breaking ground,\u201d Padilla said. \u201cI\u2019m glad we did it. It didn\u2019t end up the way we wanted it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Orlando'sLions dance during the celebration of the Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse at the Wah Lum Kung Fu Temple in Orlando in February. The temple has been a staple of the Chinese community in Central Florida for nearly 50 years. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nTradition meets a modern age<\/p>\n

On 851 N. Goldenrod Road in Orlando, tucked between gas stations, auto repair shops and a school, sits a unique building: the Wah Lum Temple.<\/p>\n

Opened in 1980 by Grandmaster Pui Chan, it was the first of its kind in the U.S., designed with traditional architecture and decorated with artifacts within its vast training spaces.<\/p>\n

Chan\u2019s aesthetic vision and his use of techniques and customs tweaked and passed down over hundreds of years is a love letter to his native China.\u00a0It\u2019s now under the care of his eldest daughter, Mimi Chan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people from all over the world \u2026 come here and say, \u2018Hey, my family\u2019s at Disney, but I needed to come to the Wah Lum Temple,’\u201d said Mimi Chan, who told her father\u2019s story in the award-winning 2011 documentary, \u201cPui Chan: Kung Fu Pioneer.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s become a destination for people who love traditional Chinese culture. But in 1980, people had no idea what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pui Chan came to the U.S. in 1968, carrying with him his master\u2019s teachings, $24 and a dream. When Chan and his wife, Suzy, decided to leave Boston for a warmer Orlando with their daughters Mimi and Tina, they had a choice: open a Chinese restaurant or take an even bigger risk by opening a kung fu temple.<\/p>\n

Mimi Chan, who was raised in the temple and began her training as a 3-year-old, said life in Orlando at that time was very different than today. There were few Asian families at the time, and the temple itself was built when much of the area was woods.<\/p>\n

With no Chinatown and a small Chinese population, Chan quickly put on some of the first annual Chinese New Year celebrations in the region, complete with fantastical kung fu demonstrations and mesmerizing lion dances.<\/p>\n

Two years after the temple opened, Chan\u2019s Lion Dance Team performed at the opening of the China Pavilion at Epcot, where they continued performing for years.<\/p>\n

The temple\u2019s ties to Disney further deepened in the 1990s when Mimi Chan was invited to choreograph the fight scenes for the 1998 classic, \u201cMulan,\u201d animated at Disney-MGM Studios. At the time, its lead animator, Mark Henn, said meeting her was \u201clike Mulan walked in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven today \u2026 to see every generation be so connected and tell me how how impactful \u2018Mulan\u2019 was to them, to see this Chinese woman on screen doing the things she was doing,\u201d Mimi Chan said, \u201cit\u2019s absolutely wonderful and such an honor to be part of such an inspiring film.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, in a ritual passed down for generations, she was anointed grandmaster by the man who trained her all her life: her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am dedicating my life to preserving the Wah Lum culture and the history and the style and what that means for future generations,\u201d she said. \u201cThe work I\u2019m doing now is essential to ensure that this goes on in perpetuity, and it is a very heavy weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PedestriansPedestrians cross in front of the Anh Hong Vietnamese Restaurant on East Colonial Drive and North Mills Avenue, on Monday, October 5, 2026. The Mills50 neighborhood has become known as \u201cLittle Saigon\u201d due to its many Vietnamese businesses. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda\/ Orlando Sentinel)
\nBuilding home away from home<\/p>\n

Today, Central Florida makes up about a fifth of the state\u2019s Asian population with nearly 180,000 residents, mainly concentrated in Orange County.<\/p>\n

While Orange\u2019s Indian, Chinese and Filipino enclaves are the largest among local Asians, its Vietnamese population, centered in Orlando, made a habit of punching well above its weight.<\/p>\n

Waves of Vietnamese refugees came to the U.S. after the 1975 fall of Saigon. Florida was one of four states with camps welcoming them. Driven by the warmer climate, many decided to stay.<\/p>\n

By the 1990s, despite a significant language barrier, the relatively small but tight-knit community began opening new businesses in what\u2019s now the Mills50 District.<\/p>\n

What was then a run-down stretch of land was later put on the map as \u201cLittle Saigon,\u201d as families raised their kids in their newly adopted country while clutching to their heritage and sharing it with the broader community.<\/p>\n

Today, the mark left by Vietnamese immigrants continues to shape the cultural and political scene. The community was propelled into the political spotlight in 2016 with the election of Stephanie Murphy, the first Vietnamese-American to represent Florida in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a beneficiary of an America that provided opportunities for people who were willing to work hard to make the most out of them,\u201d Murphy, a refugee whose family fled Vietnam when she was an infant, told the Sentinel after her win.<\/p>\n

The Asian community\u2019s political influence continues to be felt. In 2023, the Florida chapter of Make Us Visible, led by Mimi Chan, successfully pushed legislation requiring Asian American and Pacific Islander history be taught as part of Florida\u2019s curriculum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up here in Florida and was educated in Florida; I learned nothing about the contributions of Asian-Americans,\u201d Chan said. \u201cHad I seen myself reflected, I would have had a different childhood. Had others learned about it, they would see us as American.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThousandsThousands of marchers rally in the streets of Sanford on March 31, 2012, demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. (Orlando Sentinel file)
\nCentral Florida\u2019s future<\/p>\n

Today, the region is a gorgeous mosaic, a patchwork of neighborhoods and communities reflecting the people whose roots blossomed and continue to thrive.<\/p>\n

Central Florida\u2019s legacy, like other communities, was built through hardship. But now it\u2019s in the hands of a generation eager for a reckoning.<\/p>\n

Sanford, for instance, was the birthplace of the Black Lives Matter movement, spawned in the aftermath of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. That legacy extended into future social justice movements, like the tens of thousands of people nationwide who protested police brutality following the 2020 murder of George Floyd.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Sentinel continues its modern attempts at reconciling its shameful contributions to the region\u2019s bleakest historical episodes. In 2020, the paper reckoned with its coverage of the Ocoee massacre, a year after issuing an apology for its coverage of the Groveland Four.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sorry that the newspaper at the time did between little and nothing to seek the truth,\u201d its Editorial Board wrote in a front page column. \u201cWe\u2019re sorry that our coverage of the event and its aftermath lent credibility to the cover-up and the official, racist narrative. We\u2019re sorry that reporters and editors failed in our duty to readers, to the community and to the Groveland Four and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenges remain, however, as changing national political tides renewed efforts by state and federal authorities to reshape the social landscape back into its own image.<\/p>\n

Restrictions against \u201cDiversity, Equity and Inclusion,\u201d or DEI, and the teaching of history deemed to cause \u201cdiscomfort, guilt or anguish\u201d aim to downplay or expunge the legacy of many of the people you\u2019ve just read about.<\/p>\n

\"OpponentsOpponents of mid-decade efforts to redraw congressional voting districts, undoing many majority-minority seats, gather to protest in the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee in 2025. (Kate Payne\/AP file)<\/p>\n

This year, the redrawing of minority-majority voting districts \u2014 or racial gerrymandering, depending on who you ask \u2014 following the gutting of the Voting Rights Act threatens to dull the political power of Florida\u2019s minorities.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the state\u2019s sweeping approach to immigration enforcement has left many among its targeted migrant communities uneasy, regardless of legal status or political ties.<\/p>\n

But come what may, its people persist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be able to acknowledge the history of things that have happened here,\u201d Paul, the St. Cloud commissioner, said. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to talk about the history to my children. And I hope they\u2019d be able to do the same thing when they have children in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were to randomly choose a person living in Central Florida in 1876, they might have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4773,53370,28,29,1975,2174,114,266,115,7820,1335,139,141,140,53371,1976,1014,109,5136],"class_list":["post-424809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-eatonville","tag-flashbacks","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-kissimmee","tag-lake-county","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-ocoee","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-sentinel-150","tag-osceola-county","tag-seminole-county","tag-social","tag-st-cloud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}