In 2023, the Bartow CRA launched a program that has since turned three of the city’s corridors into an open-air gallery of local achievement. The Banner Pole Program, presented publicly as Achievers on Display, honors African Americans with ties to Bartow whose accomplishments have made a mark on the city, the county, the state, the nation, or the world. Today, 145 banners line Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Polk Street, and L.B. Brown Avenue, each one carrying the name and image of a person whose story belongs to Bartow.
The program is deliberately simple. It is a recognition program, not a grant; no funds are awarded to honorees. Nominations may be submitted by family members, colleagues, or community members, and they are accepted year-round through the CRA’s Banner Pole Nomination Form. Candidates qualify through their connection to Bartow, whether they were born here, lived here, worked here, or went to school here, and both living and deceased individuals may be nominated. A Banner Committee scores each nomination against eight criteria, and selections are made on a recurring cycle, so the collection keeps growing.
Honorees are recognized across seven categories: Home of Champions for athletes, Artist, Military, Educator, Civic Leadership, Law Enforcement, and Entrepreneur and Business. Together the categories trace the full range of ways Bartow’s people have led, from classrooms and squad cars to playing fields and storefronts. The most recent scored round drew dozens of nominations across six of the seven categories, and a new set of banner designs was completed in 2026 to carry the program forward.
The program sits within the CRA’s District Activation and Placemaking work for a reason. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard runs through the heart of Bartow’s historic African American community, and the banners do placemaking in its most literal form: they put the community’s own history on its own streets, overhead, where residents and visitors pass it every day. For young people growing up in Bartow, the banners are a standing answer to the question of what someone from here can become.
Each new round of honorees is announced publicly, and honorees are invited to share their stories at community engagement sessions. A banner is a small object, but 145 of them together are a statement: Bartow knows its own history, and it flies it from the poles.
