Frenchtown: The Soul of a City That Built Itself Twice

The neighborhood known as Frenchtown sits northwest of downtown Tallahassee, and its name is a historical accident that became a source of pride. The name is usually traced to French settlers who came to the area in the early nineteenth century, and it stuck.

What the newly freed people built here, starting from eighteen sixty-five, is described as the oldest historically Black community in Florida. The land they received was wet, prone to flooding, and laced with mosquitoes, the kind of real estate that no one who had a choice would accept. They had no choice. And on that land they built a world.

By the early twentieth century, Frenchtown had become a complete community. The intersection of Virginia Street and Macomb Street was its commercial heart, radiating outward into barber shops, restaurants, a grocery, a photography studio, a taxi stand, and clubs. The Red Bird Cafe was a stop on the Chitlin Circuit, the network of Black-owned venues that allowed Black performers to tour the South safely. Ray Charles, who grew up not far away in north Florida, played Frenchtown.

Urban renewal in the nineteen fifties and sixties erased parts of the neighborhood, as it erased Black neighborhoods in cities across America. But Frenchtown did not disappear entirely. Churches that have stood for over a century still anchor the streets. Longtime families still live here. The neighborhood is now designated a historic district, and efforts to document its history and support its residents have been ongoing for decades.

When you drive through Frenchtown today, you are moving through a place that chose to endure when almost every force around it was pushing toward erasure. That is the actual story of the neighborhood, and it is worth knowing.