Editing Belle Glade, Florida (section)

==History==
[[File:African American migratory workers by a 'juke joint'. Belle Glade, Florida, February 1941.jpg|thumb|left|African American migratory workers by a [[juke joint]] in Belle Glade, 1941.  Photo by [[Marion Post Wolcott]].]]

=== Pre-historic ===
The [[Belle Glade culture|Belle Glade]] or Okeechobee culture was an [[archaeological culture]] that extended around Lake Okeechobee and included the lower [[Kissimmee River]] valley. It existed from as early as 1000 [[Common Era|BCE]] until about 1700 [[Common Era|CE]]. The culture is named for the Belle Glade site, which was excavated in the mid-1930s as part of a [[Civil Works Administration]] project. The Belle Glade site included a [[midden]] and a [[Tumulus|burial mound]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Milanich |first=Jerald T. |title= Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida |year=1994 |publisher= University press of Florida |location= Gainesville, FL |pages=279–283, 290–297 |isbn=0-8130-1273-2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Setzler |first=F. M. |last2=Strong |first2=W. D. |date=Winter 1936 |title=Archaeology and Relief |journal=The American Scholar |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=109–117 |jstor=41206419}}</ref>

=== Settlement ===
The town of Belle Glade was founded during the [[Florida land boom of the 1920s]].<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.oberlin.edu/library/papers/honorshistory/2001-Gorman/jookjoints/belleglade/introtobelleglade.html
|title=Introduction to Belle Glade|publisher=www.oberlin.edu|access-date=2008-06-08|last=Gorman|first=Juliet| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080514124634/http://www.oberlin.edu/library/papers/honorshistory/2001-Gorman/jookjoints/belleglade/introtobelleglade.html| archive-date= 14 May 2008 | url-status= live}}
</ref> During that period, there were a series of efforts made to put in place drainage systems to reclaim dry land from the Everglades, including land around [[Lake Okeechobee]]. It was hoped that the reclaimed acreage could be put to better use, including agriculture. In 1921 the Florida legislature established an agricultural research station at Belle Glade to study methods of growing crops on reclaimed Everglades land. At that time, there were already 16 settlements on and around Lake Okeechobee, inhabited by around 2,000 people.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tebeau |first1=Charleton W. |title=A History of Florida |date=1971 |publisher=University of Miami Press |location=Coral Gables, Florida |isbn=0-87024-303-9 |pages=348–351 |edition=revised 1980}}</ref>

A settlement, originally named Hillsboro, was built at what is now Belle Glade in 1925.<ref>{{cite web |title=Belle Glade |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Belle-Glade |website=Britannica.com |access-date=30 April 2022}}</ref> In 1926 the Florida East Coast Railway extended its system to Belle Glade, which helped the town's development.<ref>{{cite book |title=Tebeau op cit |page=351}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Monmaney |first1=Terence |title=The Strange Beauty at the Edge of the Everglades |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/edge-everglades-belle-glade-photography-180977940/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=20 April 2022}}</ref>

=== 1928 hurricane ===
A [[1928 Okeechobee hurricane|powerful hurricane]] struck the area on September 16, 1928. The storm winds caused Lake Okeechobee to overflow its banks, inundating towns around the lake and causing widespread damage in Belle Glade. According to figures compiled by the Florida  Department of Health, the storm killed 611 people in Belle Glade alone, and a total of over 1,800 statewide. Contemporary accounts stated that most of the dead were Black migrant farmworkers, a "large percentage" of whom were believed to be from the [[The Bahamas|Bahamas]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kleinberg |first1=Elliot |title=Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 |date=September 16, 2023 |publisher=Carroll & Graf |location=New York |isbn=978-0-7867-1146-8 |pages=98–99, 213, 243–244}}</ref> Belle Glade was rebuilt, and [[Herbert Hoover Dike|a large dike]] was erected to protect towns around the lake from storm-driven overflows.

=== World War II ===
German prisoners of war were confined in camps located at Belle Glade and nearby [[Clewiston, Florida|Clewiston]] during [[World War II]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Kleinberg |first1=Eliot |title=Florida history: German prisoners of war – the enemy in our midst |publisher=The Palm Beach Post |date=January 2, 2022}}</ref>

=== HIV/AIDS ===
In the early 1980s, researchers began to notice a large number of people with AIDS in Belle Glade. The disease had first been identified by doctors in New York and California in 1981, and it was largely associated with communities of gay men in and around large cities. In Belle Glade, however, people with AIDS mainly identified as heterosexual, and around half were women. Some researchers, and notably Dr. Mark Whiteside and Dr. Carolyn MacLeod of the [[Institute of Tropical Medicine]], in Miami, hypothesized that AIDS in Belle Glade might be connected to poverty and poor living conditions in the city's "colored town," where many people diagnosed with the disease also lived. Their theory, along with the very high per capita AIDS rate in Belle Glade, brought notoriety to the town as the "AIDS capital of the world." Whiteside and MacLeod's theory turned out to be incorrect, but subsequent research conducted in Belle Glade shaped scientific knowledge about the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, through heterosexual sex.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Royles |first=Dan |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1176467984 |title=To make the wounded whole : the African American struggle against HIV/AIDS |date=2020 |isbn=978-1-4696-5952-7 |location=Chapel Hill |oclc=1176467984}}</ref>

=== In recent years ===
Today, the area around Lake Okeechobee is fertile and farming is an important industry. Sugar cane and vegetables are grown.<ref>{{cite news |title="Black Gold" Keeps Local Farmers Rooted Around Belle Glade; Belle Glade's Black Soil Is Among Richest In Country |url=https://www.wpbf.com/article/black-gold-keeps-local-farmers-rooted-in-belle-glade/1302829 |access-date=30 April 2022 |agency=WPBF25 |publisher=ABC News |date=October 4, 2009}}</ref>

Migrant [[farmworker]]s are an important part of the labor force. Belle Glade received national attention when a 1960 CBS television documentary, ''[[Harvest of Shame]]'', graphically depicted the local migrant farmerworkers' daily existence and working conditions.<ref>{{cite book |title=Kleinberg op cit. p. 216}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Monmaney op cit}}</ref>
<blockquote>
Men and women still gather around 5 a.m. in the same lot you see at the beginning of ''Harvest of Shame'', waiting for buses to take them to the fields. The "loading ramp," as it's called, is a bleak, empty lot, surrounded by some small buildings with bars on the windows and a boarded up storefront.<ref name = "npr">{{Cite web
| title = In Confronting Poverty, 'Harvest Of Shame' Reaped Praise And Criticism
| work = NPR
| access-date = 2014-05-31
| url = https://www.npr.org/2014/05/31/317364146/in-confronting-poverty-harvest-of-shame-reaped-praise-and-criticism
}}</ref>
</blockquote>
As of May 2014 the city has plans "to demolish the loading ramp and turn it into a park."<ref name = "npr" />

The town is known for its [[American football|football]] tradition, and together with nearby [[Pahokee, Florida|Pahokee]] has "sent at least 60 players to the [[National Football League]]".<ref name=MC>{{cite news
|last=Ovaska|first=Mark|quote="In Muck City, football is salvation, an escape from the likelihood of prison or early death."
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/02/02/opinion/sunday/20120203_EXPOSURES.html
|title=Muck City. Way Out.
|newspaper=The New York Times
|date=February 2, 2012
|access-date=February 6, 2018}}</ref>