African American History in St. Petersburg — St. Petersburg, Florida

The documented African American presence in St. Petersburg predates the city's 1903 incorporation by more than three decades. According to the City of St. Petersburg's official history, John Donaldson and Anna Germain were the first African American settlers on the Pinellas peninsula, arriving in 1868. From that founding generation through a century of structured segregation, self-built institutions, and state-sanctioned displacement, the African American community shaped the geography, civic culture, and ongoing political debates of what is now Pinellas County's largest city, with a population of 260,646 as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023.

Three distinct neighborhoods — Peppertown, Methodist Town, and the Gas Plant neighborhood (originally Cooper's Quarters) — formed the spatial core of Black St. Petersburg between 1868 and 1900, all concentrated south and southeast of downtown. A commercial corridor along 22nd Street South, known as The Deuces, became the economic and cultural nerve center of the community during the Jim Crow era. The most consequential rupture in this history came in the 1980s, when the City Council voted to demolish the Gas Plant neighborhood for a baseball stadium, displacing more than 2,000 Black residents, as documented by the St. Pete Catalyst. That displacement continues to define civic debates about equity, redevelopment, and memory in St. Petersburg today.

The construction of the Orange Belt Railway in 1888–89 brought a new wave of African American laborers to the Pinellas peninsula, many of whom settled along the rail route and formed Peppertown, near 3rd and 4th Avenues South east of present-day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street, as documented by the Tampa Bay Times. By 1894, a second neighborhood called Methodist Town had taken shape around Bethel AME Church at 912 Third Avenue North — identified by the City of St. Petersburg as the first and oldest Black church in the city, founded that same year.

A third settlement, Cooper's Quarters, formed between 1890 and 1900 along 9th Street South. The Weekly Challenger documents that the neighborhood took the name Gas Plant from two large gas cylinders that became its defining landmarks. By the 1910 U.S. Census, the Tampa Bay Times reported, Black residents numbered 1,098 out of a city total of 4,127; by 1920, that Black population had grown to 2,444 out of 14,237 total residents.

The city formalized the exclusions that had already structured settlement patterns in practice. St. Petersburg's 1931 city charter explicitly mandated separate residential districts for white and Black residents, as documented by the Tampa Bay Times. In 1935, the city advanced what it called a Proposed Negro Segregation Project, intending to relocate Black residents near downtown in order to improve tourist appeal, as reported by FOX 13 Tampa Bay. The Jordan Park Housing Complex — built between 1939 and 1941 on land donated by Elder Jordan Sr. — served as the city-designated relocation destination. Bay News 9 documented Jordan Park as the state's largest public housing project of its time, opening in 1941 with 446 apartments.

The Weekly Challenger has also documented that earlier African American burial grounds in the area were displaced during the same period of 'slum-clearance' campaigns, with some cemetery sites later incorporated into Laurel Park and the Tropicana Field parking lot.

Barred from most of St. Petersburg's commercial and civic life, the African American community built a parallel infrastructure along 22nd Street South. The Tampa Bay Times documented that Mercy Hospital opened in 1923 with 21 beds — the only primary care facility available to Black residents until 1966. Elder Jordan Sr. built the Manhattan Casino on 22nd Street South in 1925, establishing a cornerstone entertainment venue for the segregation-era community. Gibbs High School opened in 1927 as the city's first all-Black high school, and Jordan Elementary School, described by the City of St. Petersburg as the oldest surviving historic African American school in the city, opened on 9th Avenue South in 1925, as documented by Bay News 9.

The City of St. Petersburg's African American Heritage Trail describes 9th Avenue South as a religious corridor anchored by nine historic Black churches. Bay News 9 reported that by 1939, 19 of the city's 123 churches were located within the 22nd Street South neighborhood. Doctors' Pharmacy, described by the Heritage Trail as the first Black-owned pharmacy in the neighborhood, and Harden's Grocery were among the businesses that gave the corridor its self-contained commercial character. The Royal Theater, which opened in 1948, was documented by Bay News 9 as one of only two theaters in St. Petersburg that African Americans were permitted to attend.

The civil rights era produced direct political change along this same corridor. The Tampa Bay Times documented that St. Petersburg's Citizens Cooperative Committee hosted Freedom Riders in 1961. In 1968, a sanitation workers' strike and the civic unrest that followed further marked the neighborhood's political history. C. Bette Wimbish, whose family's Wimbish Building stood on The Deuces, became the first woman of color elected to St. Petersburg's City Council in 1969.

Discussions about redeveloping the Gas Plant neighborhood began as early as 1973, according to the St. Pete Catalyst. On September 7, 1978, the St. Petersburg City Council formally declared the Gas Plant neighborhood a redevelopment area, with public promises of affordable housing and an industrial park as replacements, as documented by The Weekly Challenger. Community organizations including the Module 16 Advisory Committee opposed the plan, and the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1979 on community resistance to the anticipated displacement of more than 800 residents, as noted by WUSF.

The promised housing and industry never materialized. In 1986, six of nine City Council members voted to build a baseball stadium on the site instead. The Weekly Challenger documented that the gas cylinders, which had given the neighborhood its later name, were dismantled in 1984 — and that contamination from those cylinders had compromised the soil. The demolition ultimately swept away 285 buildings, relocated nine churches and approximately 500 households, displaced more than 2,000 Black residents in total, and forced the closure or relocation of approximately 40 businesses, eliminating an established commercial ecosystem, as documented by the St. Pete Catalyst and FOX 13 Tampa Bay. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays played their first game at the resulting Tropicana Field in March 1998.

In 2025, WUSF reported the release of Razed, an independently produced 75-minute documentary drawing on oral histories from 20 former Gas Plant residents and three local historians, offering a sustained examination of what the WUSF report described as the razing of 86 acres and the displacement of more than 800 residents from that specific site.

The African American Heritage Trail, administered by the City of St. Petersburg through its Parks and Recreation department, consists of 19 markers covering the period from 1868 to 1968. The trail is organized into three walking routes: one along 22nd Street South documenting the commercial corridor, one along 9th Avenue South covering the religious and educational corridor, and one encompassing the Gas Plant neighborhood and downtown area. Documented stops include the site of Mercy Hospital (now the Johnnie Ruth Clarke Health Center), the Wimbish Building, the Royal Theater, the Manhattan Casino, Jordan Elementary School, and Bethel AME Church. A free digital self-guided version is also available, as reported by FOX 13 Tampa Bay.

The Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum of Florida is located in St. Petersburg. A February 2026 City of St. Petersburg news release for Black History Month identified Terri Lipsey Scott as the museum's Executive Director. The museum's planned relocation and expansion was incorporated into the Gas Plant District redevelopment agreement approved by the City Council in July 2024, as documented by The Crow's Nest (USF St. Petersburg).

The Deuces Live District — centered at 22nd Street South and 9th Avenue South and officially designated by the City of St. Petersburg as an arts and cultural district — is described on the city's Arts Districts page as the former hub of Black business and entertainment on St. Pete's south side, retaining a mix of locally owned businesses, art galleries, and restaurants. The African American Heritage Association, led as of 2026 by Gwendolyn Reese as documented by the St. Pete Catalyst, and the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg are among the community organizations documented by WUSF as engaged in ongoing advocacy and community reunification efforts connected to the Gas Plant history.

In July 2024, the St. Petersburg City Council voted 5-3 to approve a $6.5 billion development agreement for the 86-acre Historic Gas Plant District site. As documented by The Crow's Nest (USF St. Petersburg), the agreement included a $1.3 billion stadium, 6,000 residential units of which 1,250 were designated affordable, a new home for the Woodson African American Museum, and a $50 million Intentional Equity commitment. The City of St. Petersburg's official project page described that equity commitment as directed toward affordable housing funding, employment and business support, education programs, and Minority/Women Owned Business Enterprises hiring goals, explicitly framed as honoring the legacy of the Historic Gas Plant neighborhood's residents and businesses. The development agreement runs through 2054.

The agreement's equity provisions were contested from the outset. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in February 2024 that, as initially structured, the plan included only approximately 10 percent affordable housing, and documented community groups' opposition to those terms. In March 2025, the Tampa Bay Rays announced they were withdrawing from the stadium portion of the agreement, as reported by the Business Observer. Mayor Ken Welch — identified by WUSF as St. Petersburg's first Black mayor and documented by the SPLC as having personal family roots in the Gas Plant community — stated publicly that the Rays' withdrawal was not the end of the Historic Gas Plant District story and committed the city to pursuing redevelopment through other avenues. The City of St. Petersburg confirmed its intent to continue infrastructure and redevelopment planning for the site through 2025.

Ken Welch was elected in November 2021 with more than 60 percent of the vote, as reported by FOX 13 Tampa Bay, and was sworn in as mayor in January 2022. His election, his family's documented connection to the displaced Gas Plant community, and the unresolved question of what rises on those 86 acres have made African American history in St. Petersburg a live civic issue rather than a settled one.