The Florida Highwaymen of Fort Pierce

The Florida Highwaymen were a small group of Black landscape painters from Fort Pierce who began painting Florida scenes in the late 1950s and were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004.

The Florida Department of State calls the name a collective one, given to a small group of Black American painters from Ft. Pierce who painted the state's sunsets, waterscapes, marshes and inlets (Florida Artists Hall of Fame, Alfred Hair and the Florida Highwaymen). The state entry credits Alfred Hair, the group's original member, with leading the Fort Pierce painters away from traditional methods toward quick, brisk images in bright colors, often on wood or masonite, and puts their output at an estimated 200,000 paintings sold along Florida's east coast. It also records that the group fell on hard times in the 1970s and 1980s as consumer tastes changed.

The City of Fort Pierce describes the same 26 artists as mostly self-taught African American landscape painters who originated in the city, and places them in the late Jim Crow era in Lincoln Park, which it calls an iconic minority neighborhood in Fort Pierce (City of Fort Pierce, About the Highwaymen Heritage Trail). Its museum page adds that they sold their landscapes along the roadside when segregation kept them out of traditional galleries (City of Fort Pierce, Highwaymen Museum).

Albert Ernest Backus, a Fort Pierce landscape painter, mentored Alfred Hair in the early 1950s, and the state says the Highwaymen legacy began in his Ft. Pierce studio.

The Florida Artists Hall of Fame entry for Backus says he was born Albert Ernest Backus in Ft. Pierce in 1906, gave free art lessons on weekends, and counted Alfred Hair among his students of the early 1950s (Florida Artists Hall of Fame, A. E. Backus). The same entry says Hair and Harold Newton were heavily influenced by the Backus technique of applying thick strokes of vivid color with a palette knife, and that the two went on to influence a group of Black artists who made their living selling paintings at roadside stands across Central and South Florida.

The school link runs through Lincoln Park. On the city's trail page, Lincoln Park Academy at 1806 Avenue I is where many of the Highwaymen received art lessons from a teacher who introduced Alfred Hair to Backus, and the school's roots go back to 1921, when it became the area's first four-year black high school (Highwaymen Heritage Trail, stop 4). The city's Lincoln Park Master Plan page calls the neighborhood the birthplace of the Florida Highwaymen and one of the oldest and most culturally significant neighborhoods in Fort Pierce (City of Fort Pierce, Lincoln Park Master Plan).

The state recognizes 26 artists as the original Florida Highwaymen, from Alfred Hair and Harold Newton to Mary Ann Carroll, the one woman among them.

The names and years above are exactly as printed on the Florida Artists Hall of Fame entry, which says a group of the original Highwaymen are still active artists. The Fort Pierce trail page describes Mary Ann Carroll as the only Highwaywoman, the lone female of the original twenty-six, and says her family moved to Fort Pierce when she was 8 and that Harold Newton mentored her (Highwaymen Heritage Trail, stop 8). The same page calls Newton a central and founding member of the loose-knit group. Three of the 26, Alfred Hair, Livingston Roberts and Johnny Daniels, have decorated graves at Pine Grove Cemetery in Fort Pierce, the trail's third stop.

The City of Fort Pierce Florida Highwaymen Museum is at 1234 Avenue D in the historic Lincoln Park community, in a two-story building that was once a church and later a rooming house.

The city calls it Fort Pierce's newest cultural landmark and the nation's only museum with exhibitions that include paintings from each of the 26 Highwaymen (City of Fort Pierce, Highwaymen Museum). The building is a 3,200 square foot, two-story structure, once a church and later a rooming house, and its conversion is part of the City of Fort Pierce and Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency plan to revitalize the Avenue D commercial corridor. Inside, the city lists rotating and permanent exhibitions of original paintings of beaches, wetlands and royal poinciana trees, with exhibits on the artists' techniques and the conditions that shaped their work.

The museum's soft opening celebration took place on Friday, February 20, 2026, at 1234 Avenue D, according to the city's news notice, which said the museum would feature original artwork from all 26 Highwaymen (City of Fort Pierce news, museum soft opening). In a notice posted June 25, 2026, the city said the museum had been selected as a featured stop on the America 250 Road Trip and pointed visitors from it to the nearby Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail (City of Fort Pierce news, America 250 Road Trip).

For visiting, the museum page is the one to check: it posts the hours of operation by season, says private tours are available upon request, and says the museum is closed most federal holidays (Highwaymen Museum, hours of operation). Avenue D is the same corridor the Lincoln Park guide covers.

The Highwaymen Heritage Trail is a self-guided route with stops numbered 1 to 10 on the city list, from the Seven Gables House visitor center to the Intermodal Transit Station on Avenue D.

Every row comes from the city's Highwaymen Heritage Trail page, which says the trail website is designed to accompany the large kiosks, site markers and public art along the route. The page says the Seven Gables House was built around 1905, donated to the City of Fort Pierce in 1997, moved to its present location and restored as the city's Visitor Center, and that Backus was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1984. At Pine Grove Cemetery, the page notes, blacks and whites were still segregated when the cemetery began. Several stops are on Avenue D, the Lincoln Park street the city describes as St. Lucie County's center for African American owned shops, restaurants and a theater in the 1950s and 1960s (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park).

The Highwaymen name dates to a 1995 arts journal article by Jim Fitch, a Sebring gallery owner, who named the Fort Pierce painters for selling their work along I-95 and A1A.

The state Hall of Fame entry says an interest in outsider art grew in the art world in the 1990s, that Fitch's article was soon followed by an article in The New York Times, and that demand for the group's work soared (Florida Artists Hall of Fame, Highwaymen). The Backus entry gives the same turn in broader terms, saying the group of 26 became famous as The Highwaymen in the 1990s when critics recognized their collective work as serious art (Florida Artists Hall of Fame, A. E. Backus).

The official accounts differ on timing, and each is stated here as written. The state entry says the Fort Pierce painters began in the late 1950s; the city museum page says they began painting in the 1950s; and the city's Historical Lincoln Park page says they sold some 200,000 landscapes from the trunks of their cars during the 1960s to 1980s (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park). All three agree on Fort Pierce as the place the group started and on 2004 as the year of the Hall of Fame induction.

Fort Pierce marks the Highwaymen with 26 name plaques at the Intermodal Transit Station, the heritage trail, the city museum and a yearly festival in Lincoln Park.

The west wall of the Intermodal Transit Station at 8th Street and Avenue D carries 26 engraved plaques with each artist's name, set on a mosaic of a Royal Poinciana tree, a tree many of the painters put in their scenes (Highwaymen Heritage Trail, stop 10). The city's Historical Lincoln Park page says Lincoln Park celebrates the artists each February with the Highwaymen Heritage Trail Art Show and Festival, and that their landscapes are displayed in the Florida Governor's Mansion, the White House and around the world (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park). The Lincoln Park Master Plan, which the city page says is underway in partnership with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, lists revitalizing Avenue D among its aims (Lincoln Park Master Plan). The Zora Neale Hurston guide covers the other Lincoln Park heritage trail, and the Fort Pierce history hub places both in the city's longer story.