SARASOTA, Fla. — If you take a drive around the Rosemary District in downtown Sarasota, you may notice some new art on the side of buildings.
They are helping tell the story of what used to be Overtown, Sarasota's first Black community, and the historical Black pioneers and indigenes of Sarasota people who once lived there.
Two new murals were recently added to this homage to history. The organizer of the initiative said there was a need for the legacy of those people to be kept alive.
"That's Mr. Leonard Reid, this is his original home site where his house sat, and the entire block was his property," Walter Gilbert of Sarasota said.
Gilbert was referring to a 25-foot-long mural of an iconic photo of Reid driving a carriage, which now sits on the side of the Modern Hotel.
He is one of the founding members of the Rosemary Arts & Design District (RADD) and the convener of The Gilbert Mural Initiative.
According to Gilbert and county historians, Reid has been described as the right-hand man of Sarasota's Mayor John Gillespie. He helped Gillespie run his home and build many golf courses across the state of Florida.
Reid's home, which now sits at the corner of Orange Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Newtown and is being turned into a museum, drew many people into the thriving Black community of Overtown before it was gentrified.
"If you look around in this community, you would never know that a Black man owned this entire corner of the property in the prime area of Sarasota," said Gilbert.
Gilbert started the mural initiative in 2021. A mural of Baseball Hall of Famer Buck O'Neil debuted last year and was the first in the series of six murals that would eventually adorn buildings in the Rosemary District. There is also a mural of Emma Booker who established the first school for Black children.
Among the latest murals completed is of developer Lewis Colson and his wife Irene who set up and built Sarasota's first Black church.
That mural is located on the Planned Parenthood building on Central Avenue.
According to historians with Newtown Alive, the Colsons were Sarasota's first Black settlers and Mr. Colson was the one who drove the first stake into the ground at Five Points as an assistant to Richard Paulson, who was platting the town of Sarasota in 1885.
"You know, you hear of Ringling, you hear of Gillespie, you hear of Bertha Palmer, but all those people had these people doing that labor building the city," Gilbert said. "They did the farming, they did the building, they did the bridge building, they were the domestics, they kept those people's children. So these people that came here in the late 1800s, they were here from the start and that's an important aspect of this whole development here."
"We used to call ourselves the Overtown kids, those of us who were born and raised over there," said Mary Simmons Mack.
Mack is Reid's great-grandniece and one of his only few living relatives still in Sarasota. She said she remains honored that her ancestor and other Black trailblazers of the community are being recognized.
"It's about time. We are here and there is a lot of history that should have been documented and I'm glad it's getting there," Mack said.
Mack said because that history is being deliberately endangered and pushed to the back burner, communities must be intentional in preserving and presenting it.
"If we have to do it individually or collectively, we must find our history and keep it in front of our young people," she said.
The mural initiative is in partnership with the Rosemary Arts & Design District, the city of Sarasota and the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition
"I feel like with this mural, we are bringing Mr. Reid home," Gilbert said.
The official unveiling and celebration of the Leonard Reid Mural will happen at 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 12 at the Sarasota Modern Hotel.