The long-awaitedDansville Park opened this week with benches, restrooms and a multi-use path.
Why it matters: It's a milestone decades in the making for the historically Black community working to recover from generations of government neglect.
Flashback: Dansville was founded by Dan Henry, a former sharecropper who fled Georgia and came to Pinellas, lured by the prospect of railroad and citrus jobs.
About 20 years later, Henry bought two 40-acre parcels of land where Dansville is today, nestled just north of where Ulmerton Road curves into Walsingham Road.
It was rare in the Jim Crow South for a Black man to own land, and Henry made sure his relatives and friends got their own pieces of paradise.
