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1945 Council Minutes
Collection
The Apopka Negro Business League Collection
Format
Original paper slip
Date
1945-09-10
People
Michael Gladden Jr.; Michael Gladden
Tom Barnes
Location
Apopka, Florida, United States of America.
Historical Background
The council minutes for a September 10th, 1945, meeting of the Apopka Negro Business League. In this typewritten slip of paper, the secretary details that Tom Barnes requested a permit to repair the "old colored hall," known as the meeting place of the Odd-Fellows fraternity, to convert it into a theatre. The permit was confirmed to be granted on the condition that the old hall was safe and sanitary for public use. This moving picture theatre would later become a hot spot for Black residents of Apopka in the mid 20th century.
A photograph of Thomas "Tom" Barnes dressed in a suit for a professional portrait, circa 1927. Thomas Barnes was born in Georgia in 1882 and moved to Apopka in the early 20th century seeking employment in either agriculture or saw mills. According to his loved ones, he was a skilled farmer, expert beekeeper with an apiary, a shoe cobbler, and a propagator of trees.Thomas Barnes served as a trustee for the Apopka Colored School, later renamed to Phyllis Wheatley High School. In 1926, Thomas Barnes opened a moving picture theatre for Black residents in coordination with Cecil Ross in the Apopka chapter of the Odd-Fellows Hall, a fraternal organization founded in England and brought to the United States in 1819. Thomas Barnes himself was a trustee of the Odd-Fellows, alongside other notable Black business owners in Apopka: H. W. Mobley, Richard Hayward, and Robert Williams. The theatre Barnes opened was later replaced by the Ace Theatre on Central Ave in Apopka.
