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On the more affluent eastern side of the like, where Palm Beach rests, property damange was the biggest issue. On the lake’s west side, where the Everglades sit, the communities were poorer and comprised mostly of Black people. The disparity in income, neighborhoods and treatment was quite apparent in this time of Jim Crow.

Black workers mostly handled the dead, and caskets were scarce. Although Black and white towns were destroyed, white families barred Black families from properly burying their dead. A mass grave for whites was the only one memorialized, while ditches were dug for the Blacks.

Because of the warm weather, the bodies began to fester in the soft lands of the swamps and began to float in puddles. State officials then ordered the burning of bodies in the region, and once more Black families were set aside from the fairer conditions of their white counterparts by way of massive unmarked graves.

The Historical Society of Palm Beach had been working on providing the full history of the infamous storm as much of what has been recorded depicts a past that Floridians would rather forget.

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Little Known Black History Fact: Lake Okeechobee Hurricane Disaster  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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