American Beach Featured in
PBS Documentary

    American Beach, a small community on the south end of Amelia Island, was recently featured in
a documentary film that aired on WJCT, the PBS affiliate in Jacksonville.
    Almost six years in the making, "An American Beach" provides a detailed look into the history of
this unique beach town nestled in between two modern resorts, Amelia Island Plantation and
Summer Beach.
    In the film, director Kathleen Donaghy covers the origin of American Beach in the early 1930s
and continues to its present situation, trying to survive as a small neighborhood of single-family
homes located on some of the most valuable oceanfront property on the East Coast.

American Beach is listed as a site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail.
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     American Beach was founded in 1935 by A. L. Lewis and other executives of the
Afro-American Life Insurance Company, the first insurance company in the state of Florida. Mr.
Lewis envisioned American Beach as a retreat for company employees and their families.
    As with most all of the newspaper and magazine articles written about American Beach, this
documentary devotes plenty of coverage to the community's most visible resident, MaVynee
    Betsch, or "The Beach Lady" as she is widely known. Betsch is the great-granddaughter of A. L.
Lewis. She is a dedicated environmentalist, political activist and historian. It is largely through her
efforts that American Beach has enjoyed widespread media coverage in recent years. She is also a
central character in Russ Rymer¹s 1998 book entitled American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth
and Memory.
    Though it has a local focus, "An American Beach" will be distributed nationally because it is a
story that stands on its own and should appeal to viewers throughout the country.