Week Six: If These "Walls" Could Talk

Three Florida Public Service bills for Michael Gladden Jr., Eva Godfrey, and Ella Walls, c. 1931.

Hello, reader! I am excited to report that the Michael Gladden Jr. Digital Archive has surpassed 50 digitized object pages! This week, I established the Ella Walls Collection on the website, complete with six new objects related to her larger-than-life footprint on Apopka’s history. In her day, Ella Walls was a well-known Black businesswoman and entrepreneur in the Apopka area. After relocating to Central Florida as a widow, Ms. Walls’ empire blossomed from tragedy to triumph through the profits of her abundant orange groves and the specially constructed shanty shotgun houses she rented out to migrant workers. Ms. Walls would accumulate a hefty total of four parcels of land over her lifetime. She is known to have even inspired a character in Zora Neale Hurston’s famous auto-ethnographical work, Mules and Men. Fun fact: Ella Walls’ influence has even reached UCF! She is featured alongside Michael Gladden Jr. in the RICHES’ exhibit, “Vibrant African-American Community in the 1920s and 1930s.”

Letter from Ella Walls to Michael Gladden Jr., c. 1931.

Ella Walls’ friendship with Michael Gladden Jr. was potentially rooted in the fact that he was college-educated. Similar to other Black pioneer families in Apopka, it is likely that Ms. Walls had limited schooling and literacy, which didn't stop her charismatic business acumen. Within the Gladden Collection, I am extremely lucky to have artifactual confirmation that Michael Gladden Jr. managed Ms. Walls’ rent payments, supported her financial ventures, and managed her bills. Among these materials in the new Ella Walls Collection are three Florida Public Service utility receipts issued to Michael Gladden Jr., Eva Godfrey (a tenant of Walls’), and Ella Walls herself. This theme of Mr. Gladden serving in an accountant-like capacity continues in three handwritten letters addressed to him, two of which were written by an “H. R. Mason,” possibly Ms. Walls’ assistant. Beyond requesting grocery lists in these correspondences, Ms. Walls also asks Mr. Gladden to grant her monetary loans and to coordinate the transfer of funds to her customers or business partners for her. The rarest of these letters bears Ms. Walls’ own signature, making it the only artifact in the entire Gladden Collection to preserve her personal handwriting. I can’t help but wonder if this document could be one of the last surviving instances of her direct correspondence!

Rent Receipt for Mrs. Seamore to Ella Walls, c. 1931.

Further evidence of Mr. Gladden’s intrinsic involvement in Ella Walls’ affairs can be viewed in a set of three 1931 store receipts documenting rent payments made to Ella Walls by a “Mrs. Seamore.” On each receipt, the notation “per M. Gladden” appears in the lower left corner. This minute but mighty detail confirms that the payment was processed through Michael Gladden Jr. rather than exchanged directly between Ms. Walls and her tenants. Remarkably, each of the Walls artifacts keeps a record of Michael Gladden Jr.’s various roles within his community, but especially as a financial intermediary to the most famous of Central Florida’s Black entrepreneurs.

A copy of a 1927 photograph of Michael Gladden Jr. and three signs designed by the intern himself for Black History Month 2026.

Aside from making updates to the Michael Gladden Jr. Digital Archive, I also assisted Ms. Boykin with the Museum of the Apopkans’ Black History Month 2026 exhibit. In the attached picture, you can see three of my contributions: a biographical information sheet, a flyer advertising the website, and a sign with Michael Gladden Jr.’s name themed to his store receipts. I plan on writing a similar information sheet for Marie Stapler Gladden in time for the Georgetown History Harvest, coming up next Saturday, February 28th! I will share news of my preparations for this event in my next blog post in hopes of spreading the word about the Gladden family to the communities they historically impacted. See you next week, reader!