American Beach is located on Amelia Island, just north of Jacksonville, Florida located between two upscale sentinels -- the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island and Amelia Island Plantation.. Founded in 1935 by Abraham Lincoln Lewis, American Beach was created as a vacation haven for African-Americans, for whom access to other resorts was denied in the days before desegregation. In the early 1930s, A.L. Lewis, Florida's first black millionaire and president of Florida's first insurance company, the Afro-American Insurance Company in Jacksonville, bought 200 acres of prime Florida beachfront so his employees could enjoy the Florida shore.