Pearl City is a neighborhood in Boca Raton,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, immediately north of downtown. The neighborhood was originally platted on May 30, 1915 for the

blue-collar A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involving manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and powe ...

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

s employed at the Boca Raton Resort and similar establishments, on area farms, in construction, and various other jobs. There is little evidence on the origin of the name, but it is often theorized that Pearl City was named after the Hawaiian pearl pineapple, a major crop grown in the area at the time.

Crime

Pearl City, and the adjourning community of Lincoln Court, as well as the Dixie Manor housing projects (a property of the Boca Raton Housing Authority), are classified as low-income because of the high levels of poverty. The Boca Raton Police Department held an investigation in the 1980s, after identifying the area as a place of communal crack cocaine use.

Revitalization

The neighborhood was designated a historic district by the decree of the Boca Raton City Council in 2002

Streets had also been resurfaced with asphalt after decades of urban decay, neglect and deterioration. There is a Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

Memorial, set in a small park on the grounds of Ebenezer Baptist Church, at the northeast corner of the Pearl City neighborhood.

References

External links

Boca Raton Historical Society: Pearl City
{{authority control Boca Raton, Florida Neighborhoods in Florida Populated places established in 1915 African-American history of Florida