E LORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY PUBLISHED BY THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY RECEIVED UCF LIBRARY JUL 0 3 2012 Serials VOLUME 90 SPRING 2012 NUMBER 4 The Florida Historical Quarterly Published by the Florida Historical Society Connie L. Lester, Editor Daniel S. Murphree, Assistant Editor and Book Review Editor Robert Cassanello, Podcast Editor Sponsored by the University of Central Florida Board ofEditors Robert Cassanello, University of Central Florida Frederick R. Davis, Florida State University Jack Davis, University of Florida James M. Denham, Florida Southern College Andrew Frank, Florida State University Elna C. Green, San Jose State University Lu Ann Jones, ational Park Service Raymond A. Mohl, University of Alabama, Birmingham Gregory O'Brien, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Paul Ortiz, University of Florida John David Smith, University of North Carolina, Charlotte Melanie Shell-Weiss, Grand Valley University Irvin D.S. Winsboro, Florida Gulf Coast University The Florida Historical Quarterly (ISSN 0015-4113) is published quarterly by the Florida Historical Society, 435 Brevard Avenue, Cocoa, FL 32922 in cooperation with the Department of History, University of Central Florida, Orlando. Printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, PA. Periodicals postage paid at Cocoa, FL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Florida Historical Society, 435 Brevard Ave., Cocoa, FL 32922. Subscription accompanies membership in the Society. Annual membership is $50; student membership (with proof of status) is $30; family membership in $75; library and institution membership is $75; a contributing membership is $200 and higher; and a corporate membership is $500 and higher. Correspondence relating to membership and subscriptions, as well as orders for back copies of the Quarterly, should be addressed to Dr. Ben D. 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RECEIVED UCF UBRARY JUL 0 3 2012 THE FLORIDA Spring 2012 H I S T 0 R I CAL QUART E R L Y Vol. 90, No. 4 American Gibraltar: Key West during World War II by Abraham H. Gibson 393 Pragmatism, Seminoles, and Science: Opposition to Progressive Everglades Drainage by Chris Wilhelm 426 "Industrious, Thrifty and Ambitious": Jacksonville's African American Businesspeople during the Jim Crow Era by David H. Jackson, Jr. 453 "For this is an Enchanted Land": Matjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the Florida Environment by Florence M. Turcotte 488 Book Reviews 505 End Notes 530 Florida History in Publications, 2011 542 Cumulative Index, Volume 90 565 Cover Illustration: Maijorie Kinnan Rawlings with dog and rifle. Image courtesy of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville. Copyright 2012 by the Florida Historical Society, Cocoa, Fla. Book Reviews Woods, A History of the Catholic Church in the American South, 1513-1900. by Maurajane Farrelly ..................... 505 Mock, Dreaming with the Ancestors: Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico. by Kristy Feldhousen-Giles .................. 507 McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South. by Thomas G. Nester ....................... 509 Shawhan and Swain, Lucy Somerville Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist from the South. by Pamela Tyler . 512 Kinser and Tarr, eds., Maryorie Kinnan Rawlings's Cross Creek Sampler: A Book of Q]totations. by Anna Lillios. 515 Mielnik, New Deal, New Landscape: The Civilian Conseroation Carps and South Carolinas State Parks. by Jack I. Hayes ........................... 517 Foglesong, Immigrant Prince: Mel Martinez and the American Dream. by Edmund F. KallinaJr..................... 520 Desrosiers-Lauzon, Florida's Snowbirds: Spectacle, Mobility, and Community Since 1945. by Robert Cassanello ....................... 523 Oriard, Brand NFL: Making & Selling America's Favorite Sport. by Murray Sperber ......................... 525 v:··:.··.,·. Cox, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture. by Gaines M. Foster ........................ 527 American Gibraltar: Key West during World War II by Abraham H. Gibson visitors and locals alike will attest, there is no other place n America quite like Key West. Separated from the Florida eninsula by more than a hundred miles, the island city lies closer to Havana than Miami. The archipelago to which it belongs not only boasts the only tropical climate in the lower forty-eight, but also features flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth. Even the ground underfoot is unique. A mere hundred thousand years ago, Key West was not only underwater, but alive. Its entire surface teemed with millions of tiny coral which slowly built the island's limestone bedrock over countless millennia. And yet, despite its quirks, Key West just may be the most American city of all. Throughout its remarkable history, the island city has provided a curiously consistent microcosmic view of the greater United States. What is more, the city's insular nature exaggerates national trends, rendering Key West an island of extremes. The effect is most pronounced during the nation's sharpest turns of fortune. When the United States enjoyed its greatest burst of economic expansion during the fabled Gilded Age, no other city in the nation boasted more wealth per capita than Key West. 1 Rooted in a thriving cigar industry, the island's Abraham H. Gibson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Florida State University, where he studies environmental history and the history of science. He would like to acknowledge assistance from James P. Jones and Daniel Hutchinson, both of whom graciously shared their expertise. 1. Maureen Ogle, Key West: History of an Island of Dreams (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 84; Gary Boulard, "'State of Emergency': Key West in the Great Depression," Florida Historical Quarterly, 67, no. 2 (1988), 169. [393] 394 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY economy added scores of factories, thousands ofjobs, and millions of dollars. But if Key West enjoyed exaggerated wealth during the good years, its want was no less extreme during the bad ones. When ·the nation's economy crumbled during the Great Depression, no other city fell further than Key West. The island lost all of its industry, most of its jobs, and a third of its population. Significantly, the response to this crisis likewise amplified national trends, as the Roosevelt administration poured New Deal money into the city with a singularly intense focus. While federal assistance ameliorated the city's moribund economy, Key West soon discovered (as did the rest of the nation) that nothing transforms an economy like world war. Although Key West has attracted its share of historians, none have focused exclusively on the island's development during World War II. To be sure, several have studied Key West during the 1930s. Garry Boulard examines the city's crushing poverty during the Great Depression, for example, while Durward Long details its inspiring rebound during the New Deal. But neither historian addresses the still more radical events of the early 1940s.2 Other histories mention the war, but only within a larger context. Clayton Roth, Jr. reviews 150 years of defense at Key West, but his broad approach affords World War II scarcely two pages. 3 Similarly, Maureen Ogle provides an authoritative history of the island spanning several hundred years, but World War II comprises only a fraction of her narrative.4 Meanwhile, historians of World War II have long recognized the war's profound influence on the American home front, but they have generally paid Key West little heed.5 A growing number 2. See Boulard, "State of Emergency," 16&-183; Durward Long, "Key West and the New Deal, 1934-1936," Flarida Historical Q;tarterly, 46, no. 3 (1968): 209-218; William C. Barnet, "Inventing the Conch Republic: The Creation of Key West as an Escape from Modem America," Flarida Historical Q;tarterly, 88, no. 2 (2009): 139-172. 3. Clayton D. Roth, "150 Years of Defense Activity at Key West, 1820-1970," Tequesta, no. XXX (1970): 33-51. 4. Ogle, Key West. 5. There is a large historiography addressing the American home front during World War II, including: Allan M. Wmkler, Horne Front, US. A.: America during World War II (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986) ; Stephen Ambrose, Americans at War Uackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997); John Jeffries, Wartime America: the World War II Home Front (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 1996) ; William L. O'Neill, A Democracy at War: Americas Fight at Home andAlnvad in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1993) ;John M. Blum, VWas for Vutory: Politics and American Culture