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Pahokee, Florida

Coordinates: 26°49′29″N 80°39′35″W / 26.82472°N 80.65972°W / 26.82472; -80.65972
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For the 2019 documentary film, see Pahokee (film).

Pahokee, Florida
City
City of Pahokee
Flag of Pahokee, Florida
Flag
Official seal of Pahokee, Florida
Seal
Nickname(s): 
Muck City (shared with nearby Belle Glade, Florida)
Location in Palm Beach County and the state of Florida
Location in Palm Beach County and the state of Florida
Coordinates: 26°49′29″N 80°39′35″W / 26.82472°N 80.65972°W / 26.82472; -80.65972
Country United States
State Florida
County Palm Beach
Incorporated1922[1]
Government
 • TypeCommission-Manager
 • MayorKeith W. Babb, Jr. (D)[2][3]
 • Vice MayorClara "Tasha" Murvin
 • CommissionersDerrick Boldin,
Juan Gonzalez, and
Sara Perez
 • City ManagerRodney D. Lucas
 • City ClerkTijauna L. Warner
Area
[4]
 • Total
5.32 sq mi (13.77 km2)
 • Land5.32 sq mi (13.77 km2)
 • Water0.00 sq mi (0.00 km2)
Elevation
[5]
13 ft (4 m)
Population
 (2020)
 • Total
5,524
 • Density1,039.32/sq mi (401.28/km2)
Time zoneUTC-5 (Eastern (EST))
 • Summer (DST)UTC-4 (EDT)
ZIP code
33476
Area code(s)561, 728
FIPS code12-53800[6]
GNIS feature ID0288376[5]
Websitecityofpahokee.com/Pages/index
Royal Palms line the main thoroughfare through downtown Pahokee.

Pahokee is a city located on the shore of Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The population was 5,524 in the 2020 census.[7]

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, 57% of the residents of Pahokee were African American and 33% were Hispanic or Latino.[8] In 2018, the Mayor, Kenneth W. Babb, as well as the four members of the City Commission were all African American.[9]

History

[edit]

Pahokee was incorporated in 1922.[1] The name "Pahokee" means "grassy waters" in the Creek language.[10] Local residents refer to Pahokee as "The Muck", which signifies the mineral-rich dark soil in which sugar cane, citrus fruits, and corn are grown by agribusinesses. In the 1930s, it was known as the "Winter Vegetable Capital of the World".[11]

The city was severely affected, as were the other communities to the south of the lake, by the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane.[12] Hurricane Wilma, in 2005, destroyed a newly built marina.

Economy

[edit]

Pahokee was founded on the produce grown in the muck, the fertile bottom of the Everglades after part of it was drained in the early 20th century. In 1939, the Federal Writers' Project guide said of Pahokee: "From Christmas until April, Pahokee is a 24-hour town; long trains of refrigerated cars roll out for northern markets day and night." "The streets are noisy and crowded; bars, restaurants and gambling places are never closed."[13]

In 1963, with access to Cuban sugar restricted, a sugar plant was built, and agriculture shifted to the mechanized crop of sugar cane. The plant closed in 2009.[11]

As a result, it is one of two Palm Beach County cities—the other is South Bay—on a list of 13 Florida municipalities in "a state of financial emergency."[when?] Records[which?] suggest it has been on the list continually since 1994. Unemployment exceeds 25%. Taxable property values dropped from about $99 million in 2007 to $66 million in 2014. A fifth of the population has migrated in the past 15 years. Dissolution of the city has been proposed.[14]

On November 15, 1996, the old Pahokee High School building, built in 1928, was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.[15]

Everglades Regional Medical Center

[edit]

Everglades Regional Medical Center, at 200 S. Barfield Highway was founded in 1936 as Everglades General Hospital; the current building opened in 1950. The 63-bed general hospital, financially nonviable, closed in 1998 after years of contention, a change from public to private ownership, and three lawsuits.[16]

Glades Health Care Center

[edit]

Adjacent to the former hospital, at 230 S. Barfield Highway, is Glades Health Care Center, a 120-bed skilled nursing facility, with about 70 full-time employees.[17]

Schools

[edit]

Public

[edit]

Pahokee belongs to the School District of Palm Beach County.

  • Pahokee Elementary School, 560 East Main Place (grades pre-K–5). Enrollment: 375 (2015). Pahokee Elementary School is an IB (International Baccalaureate) school. Enrollment is 63% black, 35% Hispanic, 1% white, 1% other. 96% are from low-income families.[18]
  • K. E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School, 37000 Main Street, Canal Point (grades K–5). Enrollment: 329. The racial makeup of the student body is 69% black, 29% Hispanic, 2% white. 99% of the students are from low-income families.[19]
  • Pahokee Middle–High School, 900 Larrimore Rd. (grades 6–12). Enrollment: 857 (2015). Enrollment is 68% black, 39% Hispanic, 2% white, 1% other. 93% are from low-income families.[20]
Pahokee High School is best known for its football program that consistently ranks among the state's best. Pahokee, together with nearby rival Belle Glade, with whom it competes each year in the "Muck Bowl", has "sent at least 60 players to the National Football League". "In Muck City, football is salvation, an escape from the likelihood of prison or early death."[21] "Football is the chief subject taught at Pahokee High," a town historian wrote in 1963.[11] In 2014 five former Blue Devils were in the NFL, the second most from any high school in the country.[11]

Public charter

[edit]
  • Glades Academy, 7368 State Road 15 (grades K–8). Enrollment: 195 (2015). Enrollment is 72% black, 18% Hispanic, 9% white, 1% other. 97% are from low-income families.[22]

Private

[edit]
  • Everglades Preparatory Academy, 380 East Main St. (grades 9–12). Enrollment: 106 (2016). (There is another, unrelated Everglades Preparatory Academy in Homestead, Florida.) Enrollment is 92% black, 6% Hispanic, 2% white. 90% are from low-income families.[23]
  • The Shepherd's School, 1800 Bacom Point Road, a Christian school (grades K–12). Enrollment: 71 (2016).
  • G.A.P Christian Academy, 183 S Lake Ave. (K–12 Education)

Miracle Village

[edit]

Miracle Village, founded by a minister, offers a small residential community for registered sex offenders, who sometimes have great difficulty in finding housing, or are homeless (see Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender colony), because of Florida's strict regulations limiting where sex offenders can live. It is located about three miles east of Pahokee, on Muck City Road, in a former migrant worker facility, surrounded by sugar cane fields. This helps the offenders better integrate into society and not be a burden or commit further crimes in order to survive after serving their time mandated by the state and being released with little or no assistance from the Department of Corrections.

Pahokee in the media

[edit]

On December 18, 2009, Damien Cave, Miami Bureau Chief of the New York Times, wrote an article describing Pahokee's economic plight and the town's hopes that a new marina project might help rejuvenate business.[24] In 2014, Governor Rick Scott pledged $1.3 million towards the restoration of Pahokee's infrastructure,[25] in addition to $200,000 pledged by Senator Abruzzo.[26]

Creative arts about Pahokee

[edit]

Movies

[edit]

Chasing Rabbits (2008)

[edit]

A short by Aaron Kyle. Rabbit hunting as running training for would-be football players.[27] Famous Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden makes a cameo appearance. Days after its release, it was shown on ESPN,[28] and an Adidas commercial was made using footage from it.[29]

Murder of a Small Town (2015)

[edit]
  • James Patterson asks "What the hell happened here?" in the PBS documentary Murder of a Small Town, which examines unemployment, crime, drugs and high school football.[30] The documentary deals with Belle Glade as well as Pahokee.[31]

The Send-Off (2016)

[edit]

The Rabbit Hunt (2017)

[edit]
  • The Rabbit Hunt, another short by Patrick Bresnan and Yvette Lucas. It differs from Chasing Rabbits in its approach to the topic, although the action scenes are similar. The rabbits are driven out of the sugar cane fields by the harvesting machinery, or by smoky, slow-moving fires (humidity is high) deliberately set after harvest to clean up leaves and other waste. The emerging rabbits are killed with clubs, gutted, skinned, cooked, and eaten, or sold to others as meat. Rabbits are a food source for a very poor community; the atmosphere has been called "primitive". "In the Florida Everglades rabbit hunting is a rite of passage for young men, practiced since the early 1900s. The Rabbit Hunt follows a family as they hunt in the fields of an industrial sugar farm."[33] Everyone who appears in the film is African-American. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, and won the award of Outstanding Non-fiction Short in the Cinema Eye awards of the Museum of the Moving Image.[34]

Pahokee (2019)

[edit]
  • Pahokee is a full-length (110 min.) feature from Bresnan and Lucas. It was shown at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The description of its content is: "In the rural town of Pahokee, four teenagers experience the joys and heartbreaks of their last year in high school. This tightly knit community in the Florida everglades struggles with financial insecurity and pin their hopes for the future on their graduating seniors."
    • The film was shown on PBS on February 16, 2021, in the series America ReFramed.[35]

Outta The Muck (2023)

[edit]
  • Outta The Muck is a full-length (125 min.) feature from Ira McKinley, Bhawin Suchak, and Tracy Rector. The description of its content is: "Wade into the rich soil of Pahokee, Florida, a town on the banks of Lake Okeechobee. Beyond its football legacy, including sending over a dozen players to the NFL (like Anquan Boldin, Fred Taylor, and Rickey Jackson), the fiercely self-determined community tells their stories of Black achievement and resilience in the face of tragic storms and personal trauma."
    • The film was shown on PBS on February 6, 2023, in the series Independent Lens.[36]

Local media

[edit]

Pahokee's most recent local newspaper was A Better Pahokee, a free digital e-newspaper, founded in 2013 by Jessie Tsang and Minister Freddie Lee Peterkin.[37] It ceased issuing new material in 2016.

Geography

[edit]
The Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail in Pahokee

Pahokee is located at 26°49′29″N 80°39′35″W / 26.82472°N 80.65972°W / 26.82472; -80.65972 (26.824717, –80.659660).[38]

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 5.4 square miles (14 km2), all land.

Demographics

[edit]
Historical population
CensusPop.Note%±
19302,256—
19404,766111.3%
19504,472−6.2%
19604,7095.3%
19705,66320.3%
19806,34612.1%
19906,8227.5%
20005,985−12.3%
20105,649−5.6%
20205,524−2.2%
U.S. Decennial Census[39]

2020 census

[edit]
Pahokee racial composition
(Hispanics excluded from racial categories)
(NH = Non-Hispanic)[8]
Race Number Percentage
White (NH) 457 8.27%
Black or African American (NH) 3,136 56.77%
Native American or Alaska Native (NH) 2 0.04%
Asian (NH) 22 0.40%
Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian (NH) 1 0.02%
Some other race (NH) 10 0.18%
Two or more races/Multiracial (NH) 60 1.09%
Hispanic or Latino (any race) 1,836 33.24%
Total 5,524

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 5,524 people, 1,718 households, and 1,227 families residing in the city.[40]

2010 census

[edit]
Pahokee Demographics
2010 Census Pahokee Palm Beach County Florida
Total population 5,649 1,320,134 18,801,310
Population, percent change, 2000 to 2010 −5.6% +16.7% +17.6%
Population density 1,019.7/sq mi 670.2/sq mi 350.6/sq mi
White or Caucasian (including White Hispanic) 28.9% 73.5% 75.0%
(Non-Hispanic White or Caucasian) 9.7% 60.1% 57.9%
Black or African-American 55.4% 17.3% 16.0%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 33.8% 19.0% 22.5%
Asian 0.3% 2.4% 2.4%
Native American or Native Alaskan 0.1% 0.5% 0.4%
Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian 0.0% 0.1% 0.1%
Two or more races (Multiracial) 0.6% 2.3% 2.5%
Some Other Race 0.1% 3.9% 3.6%

As of the 2010 United States census, there were 5,649 people, 1,749 households, and 1,219 families residing in the city.[41]

2000 census

[edit]

As of the US census of 2000, there were 5,985 people, 1,710 households, and 1,328 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,109.4 inhabitants per square mile (428.3/km2). There were 1,936 housing units at an average density of 358.9 per square mile (138.6/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 25.21% White (13.6% Non-Hispanic White),[42] 56.06% African American, 0.10% Native American, 0.50% Asian, 15.20% from other races, and 2.92% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 29.46% of the population.

As of 2000, there were 1,710 households, out of which 44.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.3% were married couples living together, 22.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 22.3% were non-families. 18.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.35 and the average family size was 3.79.

In 2000, in the city, 38.4% of the population were under the age of 18, 10.3% were aged 18 to 24, 25.0% from 25 to 44, 18.1% from 45 to 64, and 8.2% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 26 years. For every 100 females, there were 104.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 100.2 males.

In 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $26,731, and the median income for a family was $26,265. Males had a median income of $28,859 versus $20,066 for females. The per capita income for the city was $10,346. About 29.4% of families and 32.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 39.9% of those under age 18 and 32.0% of those age 65 or over.

In 2000, 72.78% of the population spoke only English at home, while those who spoke Spanish made up 26.65%, and those who spoke French Creole made up 0.56%.[43]

Notable people

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Eliot Kleinberg (September 16, 1987). "What's in a name? Lots of history if it's a town". The Palm Beach Post. p. 7D. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved March 9, 2021 – via Newspapers.com. Free access icon
  2. ^ "February 2016 Voter Guide" (PDF). League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County. February 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 20, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  3. ^ "Keith W. Babb Jr., Mayor". City of Pahokee, Fl. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  4. ^ "2020 U.S. Gazetteer Files". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved October 31, 2021.
  5. ^ a b U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Pahokee, Florida
  6. ^ "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved January 31, 2008.
  7. ^ "U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Pahokee city, Florida". www.census.gov. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved April 1, 2019.
  8. ^ a b "Explore Census Data". data.census.gov. Retrieved February 11, 2022.
  9. ^ "City Commission". Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  10. ^ "Pahokee Florida Profile and Resource Guide, City or community of Pahokee, Florida Facts, Information, Relocation, Real Estate, Advertising". usacitiesonline.com. Archived from the original on July 24, 2008. Retrieved December 27, 2007.
  11. ^ a b c d DeGregory, Lane (December 4, 2014). "In Pahokee, football serves as a way out". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
  12. ^ Leyshon, Hal (September 19, 1928). "Storm Victims Filthy Black From Muck Water; Cabins Floating Coffins". The Bee. Danville, Virginia. p. 3. Archived from the original on February 22, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ Federal Writers' Project (1939). Florida. A Guide to the Southernmost State. New York: Oxford University Press.
  14. ^ Kleinberg, Eliot (August 21, 2015). "Dissolution talk once again a song on the jukebox in Pahokee". Palm Beach Post. Archived from the original on February 13, 2018. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
  15. ^ Emporis. "Old Pahokee High School". Archived from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved February 4, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  16. ^ Writer, GLENN SINGER Staff (September 21, 1994). "HOSPITAL SUBSIDY TIED TO COST CUTS". Sun-Sentinel.com. Archived from the original on August 8, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  17. ^ Hospital-Data.Com. "Glades Health Care Center". Archived from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
  18. ^ GreatSchools. "Pahokee Elementary School". Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  19. ^ GreatSchools. "K. E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School". Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  20. ^ GreatSchools. "Pahokee Middle–High School". Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
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  22. ^ GreatSchools. "Glades Academy Elementary School Inc". Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2018.
  23. ^ GreatSchools. "Everglades Preparatory Academy". Archived from the original on May 24, 2016. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  24. ^ Cave, Damien (December 19, 2009). "A Town's Hopes (and Doubts) Ride on a New Marina". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 22, 2015. Retrieved May 20, 2010.
  25. ^ Derby, Kevin (December 12, 2014). "Rick Scott Showcases Rural Road Improvements in Palm Beach County". Sunshine State News. Archived from the original on January 23, 2015.
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  29. ^ "[365Voice] Muck City Adidas "Chasing Rabbits" Commercial - YouTube". YouTube. Archived from the original on July 11, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2018.
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  31. ^ Shammas, Brittany (April 2, 2015). "Novelist James Patterson chronicles ups and downs in impoverished So. Fla. towns". Sun-Sentinel. Archived from the original on February 6, 2018. Retrieved February 2, 2018.
  32. ^ a b "The Send-Off (2016)". IMDb. Archived from the original on July 20, 2021. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
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  34. ^ Kilday, Gregg (January 14, 2018). "'Strong Island' Takes Top Cinema Eye Documentary Honors". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on January 22, 2018. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
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  48. ^ Shandel Richardson (January 12, 2005). "Dowdell Proves He's Street-smart". South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013. Retrieved May 31, 2011. He managed to stay away from the street-football games in Pahokee...
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  53. ^ "Biography". freddieleepeterkin.com. Archived from the original on March 24, 2012. Retrieved May 31, 2011.
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  57. ^ "Mel Tillis Comes Back Home For Fair". South Florida Sun-Sentinel. January 14, 2005. Archived from the original on February 3, 2013. Retrieved May 31, 2011. ... Mel Tillis was just a skinny kid with a stutter from Pahokee
  58. ^ "'Football killed him': The legacy of Pahokee's Andre Waters". Palm Beach Post. September 14, 2010. Archived from the original on March 3, 2011. Retrieved June 1, 2011. The Pahokee native
  59. ^ "Riquna Williams - Sun Sentinel". Sun Sentinel. Archived from the original on September 2, 2012. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
[edit]
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