100 YEARS OF THE WOMENS VOTE: On the front porch of history – Palm Beach Post

Jan Tuckwood| Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Alice Moore put both hands on Tim Hullihans face and stared into his eyes.

I am going to serve you breakfast on my porch, the lifelong educator told the architect.

This was in October 2009, when Hullihan had just saved a two-story rooming house, built in 1921 by Moores adoptive father, Haley Mickens, from demolition.

Moores porch was across the street from the rooming house, behind the white picket fence. It wraps around the stately two-story home Mickens built for himself and his wife, Alice Frederick Mickens, in 1917.

That porch has seen a lot of important people and things.

Moore had been crying when she grasped Hullihans face, so desperate was the then-92-year-old to save her familys history and heritage an important heritage that would have been forgotten now if not for Hullihan and a small band of fellow historians.

The look in her eyes and the strength and sincerity of her voice said that she trusted me and that she was counting on me to do what she was no longer able to, Hullihan said in his eulogy for Moore, who died Jan. 13, 2014, at 96. The invitation for a meal in her home was more than a traditional Southern gesture of friendship. It recalled the numerous important moments her front porch had witnessed and evoked her neighborhoods affluent past.

Thats right. Moores neighborhood, the Historic Northwest neighborhood in West Palm Beach, had been affluent once upon a time.

The Mickens family home had been impressive, one of many impressive homes built by upper-middle-class Blacks around 1920.

Moore told Hullihan how the Mickens family and their home at 801 4th St. played host to Count Basie and Louis Armstrong, and how members of their bands stayed across the street, at the Mickens rooming house.

She regaled him with tales from the porch, where Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph Bunche had once shared tea, and where Asa Philip Randolph, who had organized the first predominantly Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, had chatted with Haley and Alice Mickens in the 1920s.

And where Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach in 1929, worked with Mrs. Mickens to raise money and persuade the state Legislature to build a home for young Black women who would have otherwise been put in prison.

They both worked to get women the vote, though that was particularly tough for Black women.

Florida was still the South in 1920. Although Congress had passed the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote and 36 states had ratified it by 1920 making it the law of the land not every state voted to ratify it at the time, and racial tensions often kept Black women from voting.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Florida women had been voting since 1920 but it took the Legislature until 1969 to finally ratify the 19th Amendment.

It takes time to change minds and hearts. Women like Bethune, Mickens and Moore knew that and kept the wheels of womens equality moving.

In her obituary in The Palm Beach Post, Alice Mickens, who died in 1988 at 99, was called an ambassador of interracial good will.

She served as a trustee at Bethune-Cookman for more than three decades and received an honorary doctorate from the university. A science hall there is named for her, and another hall is named for Alice Moore.

Their legacy of education continues, beyond their deaths, because of their friends, who remember.

Dr. Moores front porch was a classroom for those willing to listen, Hullihan said in his eulogy for Moore.Sitting with her, I learned that during the 1920s, 30s and 40s, when at least one of the teams in the Negro Baseball League used Lincoln Park (now Coleman Park) as their spring training site, it was a Mickens family standard to host Sunday afternoon garden parties for the professional baseball players of both the home and visiting teams.As I listened to the prideful and confident voice of a retired educator, I imagined Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson making their way up the front porch steps and being welcomed into her home.

Dr. Moores front porch is part of a home and a neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places largely because of her persistent efforts to keep their rich histories alive.

And of Hullihans persistent efforts.

As she reminisced, I let my eyes look upon the historic neighborhood her adopted father helped establish and she had called home for 80-plus years, Hullihan said. As my eyes wandered, I hoped her 92-year-old eyes could not see it as it was.I hoped in her minds eye it was still a thriving and prosperous neighborhood.It was then that I realized that this front porch deserves to face a better future a future more like its affluent past.It was then that I realized that I was friends with an extraordinary lady who deserved my very best efforts in preserving her familys legacy.

Hullihan drew up plans for Mickens Village, a plan for the 1917 Mickens house, the 1921 boarding house and a 1903 house also built by Haley Mickens.

That plan was a dream it went nowhere for years, and it may never succeed.

But today, the wheels keep moving, slowly.

West Palm Beachs Community Redevelopment Agency has plans to move another historic structure The Edgewater, a two-story hotel built by white pioneer George Potter 100 years ago from 316 Gardenia St., to a spot on the Mickens property where their garage once stood.

The hotel was supposed to be moved in June, and then in August. Perhaps it will be moved this fall, but the coronavirus pandemicis one of many complicating factors.

Whether these projects work or not depends on several factors the most important is filling a need, Hullihan, a West Palm Beach native, said. Too often grand projects are out of step with the community that will surround it. In the case of Mickens Village, it is intended to be in step with the community and be part of it.

The idea is to make the Edgewater a bed-and-breakfast, and the proprietor of the B&B would live in the historic Mickens house.

Creating a bed-and-breakfast creates an opportunity for a local business person to earn and keep local dollars in the community, says Hullihan, who has been involved in preserving many downtown buildings, including the 1917 courthouse, now home to the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum. That's very different from grand projects that often overlook the key element of success: local proprietors keeping local dollars in the community.

Across Division Avenue from the Mickens house, a three-building local history museum is planned, using the two-story Mickens boarding house, a home Haley Mickens built in 1903, and a 1920 house recreation. The three buildings would be linked by a storytelling plaza, a public gathering space.

Telling the story of the Northwest neighborhood and preserving it for future generations was Dr. Moore's dream, Hullihan says. With a B&B across the street, the potential to tie the museum in with heritage tourism makes a lot of sense to me. Keeping the neighborhood's history alive in present and future generations is essential.

Women making history: 100 years of the womens vote

To celebrate a century of suffrage, The Palm Beach Post is featuring a series on influential women.

Next Tuesday: How sororities in historically black colleges and universities have supported local women, personally and professionally

On Sept. 22: Local women who have spent most of their lives volunteering with the League of Women Voters

On Sept. 29: 2020 Election Guide, produced by the League of Women Voters, appears in The Post

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100 YEARS OF THE WOMENS VOTE: On the front porch of history - Palm Beach Post