Historical markers placed along MLK Jr. Blvd honoring late black-owned businesses

BAY COUNTY, Fla. ( WMBB ) – To preserve and remember the black-owned businesses that lined Glenwood, historical markers have been placed along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

A ceremony was held on Saturday to commemorate those businesses along with family members.

The street formerly known as Cove Boulevard used to be filled with numerous black-owned businesses. After the roadway expansion, however, many of those businesses are now gone to the past.

To remember the once-bustling neighborhood, historical markers have been created.

“The historian in me says, if we’re going to go forward, we must remember in the spirit of Sankofa that says, look back and fetch it. Go back and get it so that we can move forward with the wings of the spirit of our ancestors and their sticking to it that we are going to honor with this unveiling now,” Panama City commissioner Janice Lucas said.

In April, the city of Panama City dedicated signs to five black-owned businesses.

On Saturday, five more businesses were memorialized during a ceremony at the St. John Missionary Baptist church.

Charlie’s time, Grady’s one-stop drive-in, Barnes Cleaners, Triumph church, and St. John’s missionary baptist received markers.

“If you don’t look back, you don’t know where you’re going. You forget where you came from… And the kids these days never, never learn to pay us. So nice to have you on to learn what they can exist and what we were segregated. They can see where our life was, if they learn that now, they can keep it the way it is now instead of the way it was back then,” residents George Hines Jr and Myron Hines said.

The Hines brothers got the chance to relive some memories that they had at Club Charlie’s time.

“I went there with the thing I liked, by the way. Loud music, didn’t have a jukebox. He played everything himself in this group. He always had a group in there, and they had good food. It was always loud music,” volunteer George Hines said.

Niece, of Tony Barnes, Geislia, got to remember her uncle’s business Barnes Cleaners. She looks back now at her time working there, and what it means for her to be in the Barnes family.

She looks back now at her time working there, and what it means for her to be in the Barnes family.

“On Saturday afternoons and Sundays. You could find him at the dry cleaners fixing everything that broke down in the week. He didn’t believe in paying people to come in maintenance equipment. At the time, it was all about his money and he fixed his own equipment. He settled in the words of my family he is a Barnes because it was a trait that even down to us, we all have that,” Geislia Barnes said.

She lives in Maryland now but says when she heard about the historical markers, she immediately bought a plane ticket so she could be part of the ceremony.

“He deserved this acknowledgment. So when I start telling other people and I posted on Facebook, I’m on my way down, I can just hear the excitement in my friends was like, Wow, you know, what a wonderful accomplishment. You know, that’s amazing. So we are all beaming with pride. As a matter of fact, we went Facebook Live, so the family that couldn’t make it, they can see, know everything that’s taken place,” Geislia said.

Commissioner Lucas says that there will be another unveiling of historical markers sometime in November.

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