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And what you don't know about Miami
is that back in the 1640s black pirates came here.
They came from the Bahamas,
Andros Island was a hotbed for pirates.
About a third of the crew members of pirate ships
were black.
In fact, piracy was the first opportunity for equal employment
that blacks had in the new world.
Many brothers took advantage of that.
If you go to Disney world and you go through
the Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit
you don't see blacks among the pirates.
But they were there.
They had a very very stable presence in the industry.
They were free, they shared equally
in the spoils that the ships took,
and in fact some of the emerged
as captains of their own ships.
The most well known black pirate that we know of
who came to the South Keyes was Black Cesar.
He operated around Biscay bay back in the 1640s.
In fact there is a place on the map today in the Florida Keyes
shown as Cesar's Creek.
That was one of his headquarters
in the South Florida area.
A notorious pirate who was
eventually pressed by the British,
there was no US government at that time
the US didn't exist at that time,
Pressed by the British government
went around the West Coast of Florida
hooked up with Blackbeard, who were then notorious
during their reign of piracy,
until finally the British caught them both,
and they were executed.
(PAUL) Well Black Cesar would be...
well he's either mythological or he's real,
or somewhere in between that
hanging around South Biscay Bay, there's Cesar's Creek,
he might have been a fugitive slave from Virginia,
(MARVIN) There were two of them.
But the main one was the one that operated
back in the 1640s.
The one who came after about 100 years later
was just a copycat of no consequence.
Well the next movement of blacks into what became Miami
would have been Bahamians,
who came in just during the fishing season,
just during the turtling season.
Because tens of thousands of turtles would
crawl up on these beaches, lay their eggs,
and these Bahamians would come over
harvest the eggs, slaughter some of the turtles,
come back to Nassau and make their living that way.
So that was going on many many years
before the first English speaking white people
came to South Florida.
And those Bahamian fishermen who would be here
for weeks if not months at a time,
would encounter black escaped slaves
coming down mainly from Georgia.
And these people were trying to make it to the Bahamas
to freedom.
So the first ferrying of black escaped slaves that we know of
from Georgia to the Bahamas to freedom
happened with these Bahamian fishermen
encountering these people on these shores.
The Bahamas were so very close to South Florida
and particularly during the brief British period
in the late 1700s.
A lot of the Bahamians came to Florida.
a lot of them were wreckers
because of the Great Florida Reef.
There were no lighthouses at the time.
And the first community was Key West
and that was the wrecking capital of the world.
Many of them ended up settling in the Florida Keyes
and some even in the Miami area.
Now these Bahamians coming in then from the Bahamas
to Key West began migrating up the Florida Keyes
primarily picking pineapples,
which were a major crop during that time.
That brought many of the Bahamians here
many of them stayed so that by the time
Coconut grove emerged in the 1880s
there was a steady flow of Bahamians already
in the Florida Keys coming in from Key West.
As these Bahamians and African Americans
black settlers that were coming down from Georgia
encountered each other in Coconut Grove
there was always a little bit of friction.
Because the Bahamians had kind of an attitude.
They would tell you quickly "we're not ex-slaves.
We are subjects of the British crown."
And expected white people to treat them that was as well.
So a lot of the early friction in Miami was between
African Americans and Bahamians
but particularly between white people and Bahamians
because Bahamians simply behaved differently.
They came from a different culture.
They were not as passive or as accepting
of some of the discrimination that was so apparent
when they came into Florida.
(ARVA)The Bahamas abolished slavery in the 1830s.
So the black Bahamians, by the time they got here
had long not been slaves.
And they were educated, because the English
one of the things they tended to do everywhere
is as a colonial power they educated people
better than most.
There was some snobbery.
I think it still exists.
I find it today talking to different people
that the Bahamians just have a very...
Like the old Americans.
Like the DAR types or something.
They were here first
and they feel they have made a tremendous contribution.
And they have.
(MARVIN) The Bahamians built Vizcaya.
They provided the labour force for Vizcaya.
They built many of the early buildings in Miami.
The Bahamians built the Dade County Courthouse.
Primarily Bahamians, and other blacks too
were part of the workforce all along.
African Americans and Bahamians both.
Because you've got the railroad
coming in with with Flagler,
and its early African Americans
coming down to help build the railroad
like they did with the rest of the country.
And they're coming in and there's a tourism industry here.
there's agricultural labour
there's a need for domestic labour
and they're coming in,
they're working for white families in the homes,
they're also building the streets, the buildings,
huge estates like Vizcaya. They were working the land.
But they were particularly important in teaching whites
how to use coral rock to construct buildings.
And we still have some homes, some structures today
that reflect this influence on architecture by the Bahamians.
(ARVA) But if you've ever tried to dig in our wonderful "soil"
and you think that all they had was a grub hoe
and to plant in Coral Gables, it was all pineland
they had to grub up the pine meadows
and grub up the rock.
And that's why they built a lot of the buildings
out of coral rock.
In the early 1800s blacks began coming down from Georgia
and the other slave states, into Florida
to join up with the Seminole Indians
who were themselves trying to escape removal from Florida
to be out of the way of white settlement of the south.
And these blacks, who were not blood related to the Seminoles,
they joined them in terms of a neutral survival strategy.
Whereas the black Seminoles...
basically fought with the Seminoles,
were interpreters for the Seminoles,
and in fact there was marriage between the Seminoles
and these blacks who joined them.
One of the main reasons for the so called Seminole wars,
which are kind of forgotten wars in American History
unless you're a Floridian, was the fact that many of the slaves
were fleeing into then Spanish Florida.
And the United States wasn't very happy about that.
So they really started fighting the Seminoles
because they had provided sanctuary
to a lot of the African slaves.
(MARVIN) And it's very important to point out
that black Seminoles were not necessarily
dependent on the Seminoles.
Sometimes the Seminoles were dependent on the blacks.
So it was a very symbiotic relationship
in which both groups benefited.
I think that one of the unique things about Miami
is that if you look at African American history
there's this big period of time that they call
'The Great Northern Migration'
which happened after reconstruction in the south.
So after the civil war, reconstruction was an attempt
to rehabilitate the south.
Make it more friendly towards blacks
and to make it more friendly in general
towards northern ideals about democracy and things like that.
It didn't work. It crashed, right?
So we saw a lot of black people leaving the south.
They went to New York, they went to Chicago,
they went to major cities.
They left all these agricultural communities
they had been based in before.
So at that period of scholarship,
that period of history
in African American scholarship is called
'The Great Northern Migration'.
People don't often recognize that there was a
great southern migration too.
Miami was booming in the 1880s and the 1890s
because of the fact that it had just been founded
so there were jobs here, the railroad had arrived
there was opportunity here.
So you saw African Americans not just going to the north,
going to New York,
but there were also African Americans
from Alabama and Georgia,
who were coming down to Miami to work.
(MARVIN) Now especially around the 1880s and early 1890s
There were blacks, primarily Bahamians,
who were settled well into Coconut Grove,
who worked on these waters.
They were fishermen, they were crabbers,
they were turtlers, they were tour guides,
they were hunting guides.
So as white people started coming into South Florida
for tourism purposes, they were aided and supported
often by blacks who knew the waters,
who knew the best fishing spots,
knew the best hunting areas
and they made a living, many of them, doing exactly that.
A lot of the blacks were not maids and gardeners
and agricultural workers.
Many of them participated handily in the tourism trade.
We're standing on Charles Avenue
in front of the home of E.W.F. Stirrup.
The richest black man in Coconut Grove.
Charles Avenue was the original avenue
along which most of the homes for blacks were built.
It used to be known as Evangelist Street,
because all of the churches were on this street.
So this was the begging community of Coconut Grove
for the black community, on this street.
Mr. Stirrup was probably the first black
wealthy person in Miami-Dade County.
He acquired a great deal of property.
He owned land from Munroe County to Fort Pierce
and when he died he left a very sizeable estate.
He was one of the people who could be relied upon
to help young men when they got into trouble.
He was the one who when movers came out
would get on his horse and buggy
and go up to the white folks hotel, the Royal Palm hotel,
get the movers, bring them back down to the Odd Fellas Hall
which was the social centre of Coconut Grove.
And that's how black people got to enjoy movies.
It is a very important street.
It may be the most historically significant street
in Miami-Dade county in terms of black history.
1894 this event took place
which became known as the Great Freeze.
It was horrendous.
People had never really seen anything like it
in their lifetimes. Everything froze.
Florida was basically under ice.
They say it even snowed in North Miami.
As a result of that freeze, Henry Flagler was
convinced to bring his Florida East Coast railroad
on down from West Palm Beach on down to the Miami River.
The Great Freeze was a defining moment for the birth of Miami.
And it brought many blacks,
if not more blacks than whites, to South Florida.
Because their labour was needed on this land
that was below the freeze line.
The Big Freeze was an act of God
and this act of God lead to the city of Miami
and the arrival of thousands of blacks into this community.
So yes, it was related to a natural event.
When John Soule came down the March of 1896
he put into his memoirs about 13 or 14 African Americans
who had been working with him in West Palm Beach.
And see, West Palm Beach was a staging ground
for the elaborate Palm Beach across the lake.
And so the really gritty work was done by people
living in West Palm Beach.
Both in West Palm Beach worked
but were also building this great resort called Palm Beach.
And Soule brought down, as he later referred to it,
his Black Artillery, refering to these voters.
But these were trustworthy workers
because Flagler had told him it's now time
to build this great hotel
that I've told Mrs. Tuddle I'm going to build.
Plus I want it because I'm going to promote that
as a tourist spot.
So he brought them down,
they levelled the Indian burial mound
in the March of 1896 on the edge of Briscayne Bay then,
today it's about 3 blocks in.
And they began to lay the foundation for the hotel.
So these were workers that Soule knew from earlier jobs.
The railroad was everything.
People can't appreciate that now.
Before there was the I-95, before there was the turnpike,
before there was air travel, there were trains.
Everything moved on the railroad.
The railroad magnates had a lot of power
a lot of money, a lot of influence.
And the railroad also provided jobs.
A lot of black people worked on the railroad.
One of the best jobs you could have in Miami
was to be a Pullman car porter.
Working the railroad from Miami to Jacksonville,
back and forth, you wore a suit.
It was a clean job, you got tips.
It was wonderful. That was one of the highest status jobs
in black Miami in the early years.
(PAUL) Suddenly with the railroad converging on Miami,
the railroad was laid from West Palm Beach
down to north bank of the Miami River.
People come, because they can get jobs
working with the railroad.
They can get jobs building, get jobs as entrepreneurs.
So suddenly there's hundreds of people in Miami
in the spring of 1896.
nd the Flaglar organization said this is going to be unwieldily.
What we need to do is get this place incorporated.
So they announced in late June
they were going to have a corporation meeting
which they did, they incorporated on July 19 1896.
About a third of the voters were African Americans.
They had been workers primarily for Flagler
under the guidance of John Soule, a white man.
And as he said he marks his black artillery to the poles.
They register to vote, and they march up to the pole
to vote for incorporation.
As it turned out it was by acclimation anyway.
When the city of Miami was established in 1896
about 160 or so black men out of a total of 340 or so,
participated in the actual incorporation meeting
for the city of Miami.
Had the blacks not been there,
and women didn't have the vote at that time,
so had those black men not been there,
the city of Miami could not have been established
at that time.
Because the state required a minimum number of voters
for a place to become a city.
And there simply were not enough
white men present in 1896 to make that happen.
So they ordered all the Flagler workers into the meeting
and they were told to vote to incorporate into a city.
And they did it.
(ARVA) I didn't know that.
That wasn't taught in Miami history.
I was taught that much later, and talking to Dorothy Fields
we started reading all of this.
I had seen their names in the Soule book
and I said wait a minute,
his name is here on the incorporation list.
There's actually a list.
And the first one happens to be black. It was alphabetical.
Blacks were kind of, the pillar of the Palms,
as some people say we are today.
Essentially they were used by the railroad,
by the Flagler structure,
to move whatever political agenda the railroad had.
What's unheard of is that
we've got a very important American City
that was incorporated so late. 1896.
And it had such a sizeable percentage of incorporators
who were African American. That was unheard of.
Overtown used to be called Coloured Town.
And it was born when the city was founded, 1896,
exclusively for blacks.
As the Flagler railroad came south, a lot of towns sprung up.
North Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale.
All these towns sprung up as the railroad came through.
And in each case the black community was established
in the north-west quadrant of each of those towns.
So if you go to West Palm Beach,
blacks from the north-west quadrant.
You go to fort Lauderdale,
blacks live in the north-west quadrant.
Miami, we live in the north-west quadrant.
Unless you think that we had a chromosome that made us
gravitate to the north-west corners of communities,
there had to be a plan.
The plan by the railroad was to have blacks isolated
from the rest of the community, but close enough to get to work.
So that was the plan
for establishing the black communities
in the north-west quadrant.
When Overtown was established
it was a highly segregated community.
You couldn't leave Overtown
if you were a black person after dark
or you run the risk of being arrested.
There was a considerate effort by the powers that be
to keep blacks restricted to colour town,
particularly after dark.
Colour town- the races by law had to live apart.
And so soon as Miami incorporated in 1896
colour town is established.
Until then they lived in tents or make shift places
around white people.
But now that you've...
institutionalized a city by incorporating,
you need to do something about this.
And so the north-west quadrant of the city was set aside
as an African American community called colour town.
It was not an unusual name.
Many black communities in the south were called colour town.
(MARVIN) This area has had several names.
Originally colour town, Overtown,
the Central Negro Business District.
All of these names attended to Overtown.
But the reason I understand
that this area is called Overtown,
and there's a lot of controversy about that,
Is that if you lived in Coconut Grove, south of here,
and you wanted to visit someone black, here in Miami,
you had to go over down town to get here.
I tend to think that the earlier period
was a great period.
Now I understand, speaking as a guy born later,
and caucasian, the deprivation that many people experienced.
The outdoor privies, no library for a while,
no high school till 1927.
But I really think it was a community...
that really took care of its own needs.
So for me the golden age, even though there are these problems,
sanitation, KKK, thuggish white policemen,
I think it was a pretty good age by and large.
The community was forced to be self sufficient,
and was self sufficient.
Oh I loved it. It was great. It was like a family
everybody knew each other, everybody cared for each other.
If you didn't have some flour, if you didn't have some sugar,
you went to your neighbour and you could borrow it.
And the neighbour looked out for you.
If anybody saw us doing anything 'wrong'
they would tell my grandmother or tell my aunt.
(MARVIN) If you were to ask me
where the richest people in Dade County lived
I would have to say Fisher Island, behind me.
Probably the greatest concentration
of wealth in Dade County.
But at one time, that Island, now named after Carl Fisher
founder of Miami Beach, was owned by a black man.
His name was D. A. Dorsey. He purchased that island
for the express purpose
of having a place where black people
could actually get into the salt water.
So Fisher Island, actually owned by D.A. Dorsey
up until the Great Depression in the 30s,
was the only place blacks could come
not just from Dade County, but from other parts of the country
to swim and enjoy the benefits of beautiful Biscayne Bay.
When the depression hit,
Mr. Dorsey needed cash like everybody else.
And it was during that time that he sold the property
to Carl Fisher who was the developer of Miami Beach.
And that's why this is now called Fisher Island.
We are standing in front of the Lyric Theatre.
The Lyric was the social centre of Overtown
during its heyday.
This building was erected around 1917
owned by a black man, Juda Walker.
Everything that happened that was of social importance
happened in this building.
It's importance to the community, culturally
and historically is unsurpassed.
It's the most historic building still standing
in Overtown today.
During Overtown's boom the Lyric was the place to be.
You wanna be here to see the latest movies,
to be entertained...
by the biggest entertainers of the time.
This was a major place to be during the heyday
because of the attraction of this place to
so many performers.
A lot of the nightclubs in Overtown,
the big nightclubs attracted many white people.
They would come to Overtown not so much for the movies
or black oriented events here, but the nightclubs.
A lot of these folks
found their best entertainment in Overtown.
But even then, even in the black nightclubs in Overtown,
they were segregated. The whites had one section
the blacks had another section.
In their own neighbourhood there was segregation.
In Miami, Colortown was the Harlem of the south.
People called it that: the Harlem of the south.
Anything you could get in Harlem
you could get here on 2nd Ave. or 3rd Ave.
Overtown experienced so many problems with law enforcement.
Both legal, the police, and extra-legal.
This is a deep south community in many ways
all through the 60s.
And the police were thuggish.
My dissertation was on criminal justice
and there were stories where they would look at statistics
for a month of arrests, and I think one month
there were 38 arrests, 37 were African American
yet they only comprised 25% of the population.
Then there was the extra-legal problem.
The Klan entered Miami, as far as we know, in 1921
for the first time. They would kidnap ministers,
one in Coconut Grove and one in Overtown,
tar and feather both, push them out of speeding cars,
attempted to force them to go back to the Bahamas.
And the reverend Hayes did go back.
There were never any charges, never any arrests
never any prosecution of those cases against the Klan.
And the klan would march through Overtown
as late as 1939.
There was a spring municipal election
and there was a man named Sam Solomon
who organized a lot of new voters in Overtown
and he was going to take them to the polls the next day.
And the klan didn't march, they drove through Overtown
early May of 39, and they had a makeshift noose
and they had a black man hanging from it, you know,
"this 'N' attempted to vote."
But the next day Solomon marched those people north
on 2nd avenue which splits at 1st place,
then from 1st place up to 14th street
and over to the fire station,
which is now being restored, it's over on Miami Ave.
and 14th street. And they voted.
So the klan was a force for decades.
Not just the early and mid 20s, they remained here.
I don't know how robust it was but it appeared periodically.
By then its targets are Catholics, Jews, Philippinos,
Caucasian women- I mean they went after everybody
who didn't fit their narrow definition of
100% white American Protestant.
(MARVIN) In 1926 there was no weather bureau.
People had no way of knowing what was coming from out there.
This thing came in late at night
swept across Miami, went right across Miami.
The eye passed right over downtown Miami.
And when it did people thought the storm was over.
There were a lot of new arrivals here
they went running out on to the Ocean front to see the damage.
The Bahamians knew better.
They knew the other side of the storm was coming.
So you had many people who were killed
mainly because they exposed themselves
to the rushing water coming in
on the other side of the hurricane.
It destroyed most of Miami, but had an even greater affect
on colour town, what we now call Overtown.
The buildings there were shanties for the most part,
they were vulnerable to the storm,
many more people were left homeless in Overtown
than in other parts of the community.
So it had a great effect on the city of Miami
because aftar that...
they put buildings up with bricks and concrete
rather than wood.
But Overtown/colour town was severely damaged by the storm.
Then the city, the county and possibly others,
went to colour town and got the black men
to come and help clean up.
For free. To move bodies, clear the streets.
And you didn't get to choose not to do it.
If someone told you you were on a work crew to clean up
after the hurrican, you had to go.
This was a common practice. If there was a natural disaster,
not just in Miami, the modus operandi would be to
go to the black community and get black men
to come and help clean it up.
So this happened in most of the major events that I can think of
that required that kind of labour,
black were required to do it.
The same things that we experienced in hurricane Andrew
in 1992, people experienced that in 1926.
There was no federal government to come rushing in to help.
The people had many weeks of isolated survival.
Trying to exist under these horrendous circumstances.
But I have to reiterate that some of the folks here,
some of the blacks, knew what was going to happen.
I interviewed a lady in Coconut Grove
who was alive when it happened.
She said that that night she woke up her husband
because everything outside was yellow.
All the elements had changed colour.
She had never seen anything like that before.
So we know that this was a phenomena
associated with that hurricane.
I came here when I was a boy of 11 or 12 every week.
This was the only place a black person
could get into salt water. This was our beach.
Little did we know that there was a sewage treatment plant
right around the bend here, but we loved it.
We came out here. They would have state troopers
parked on the bridge to keep us from going to
the white beach. We weren't' allowed to go there.
This was just fine as we saw it at the time.
The beach was available to us after the Navy stopped using it
to train black sailors to swim during the second world war.
That's how blacks first got on the Virginia Key Beach.
It was a military training site for the Navy
because the white people would not allow black sailors
to be trained to swim at the white beach.
Blacks could not go anywhere in Miami-Dade County
to a beach.
And a group of blacks got together
and went to Haulover beach.
And Judge Thomas went out there with them.
He didn't go in the water, but people like
Mrs. Madelle Bramen who was active in the PTA,
and some of the PTA people, they went out there
and they went in the water.
And when it was reported they expected to be arrested
and Judge Thomas had money to bail them out.
But when the sherif went out there, he just said:
"Well, we'll talk about this."
And so they got some of the leaders together
to decide how to resolve the problem.
(MARVIN) The NAACP and other groups
had weighed in on Haulover Beach in north Miami,
which is a county owned beach, as a way of
showing the county that if you don't allow us
to have Virginia Key Beach, we will come to this beach.
And that scared the county commission.
For that reason they voted to establish this beach for blacks
within weeks of that demonstration.
and that was before the civil rights movement started.
The demonstration that lead to the opening of
Virginia Key Beach was probably the only civil rights effort
that touched almost all the black folks.
Because you could argue that some blacks got the benefits
of the civil rights movement because they had an education,
they went to colleges and what have you,
but everybody could come to Virginia Key Beach.
So that one effort issued in a freedom for all blacks
regardless of education or status.
A very significant change.
In the late 1950s, the interstate system was expanding
in this country. This is I-95 behind me.
I-95 was put in to go directly through Overtown.
It divided Overtown into east and west.
So that afar this expressway was built,
people could have easy access to other parts of Overtown.
People had to move.
Overtyown went from some 40,000 to about 12-15,00 people
in less than a decade.
This overpass behind me is just one example of
how the interstate as built to ride over the community.
So that if you didn't want to see black people,
all you had to do was not look down.
It only comes down when you get up to Liberty City.
So the expressway didn't kill overtown,
but it added to the decline very significantly.
more things added to it, but the interstate system
was a major factor in its decline.
Well you know what? It was called urban renewal.
And it meant black removal, I think.
Because my parents were offered money for their house
and I'm sure that it wasn't the value.
The initial thought was to put it right overtop of the
Florida East railroad right of way,
but then they decided to move it west
and it came right through a lot of Overtown.
Overtown's population in 1960 was 34,000 plus people,
today it's about 9500.
The expressway's probably the major villain there.
(ENID)The I-95 helped to tear up the community.
The urban renewal did the same thing.
And I think that if we had the insight back then
that we have today,
we should have stood up for our community.
We should have fight for our community.
Because now, the way it's going,
we're not going to be able to stay there
because it's being taken over by developers.
(MARVIN) Fidel Castro came to power in 1960.
And that changed everything in Miami.
It changed life for whites in Miami,
it changed life for blacks in Miami,
and it provided a phenomena that
the country had never seen before.
The influx of tens of thousands of people
in a very short period of time, almost all of them
settling in the same place.
That was the impact of the Cuban migration,
the 1st migration into Miami.
Another one followed in 1980 when the Marioles came in.
Another large group of Cubans coming in,
and this time with many blacks among them.
The 1st wave of Cubans that came in
were basically privileged Cubans who were
trying to get away from Castro.
They had education, businesses.
Many of them were doctors or teachers.
They sort of fit into South Florida seamlessly.
The government also provided a lot of help for them
during this transition as a way of poking Castro in the eye.
Those who came later in 1980 were more impoverished Cubans.
Many of them black,
a significant number of them had mental problems,
law enforcement problems. And they just overwhelmed
South Florida in their numbers
and the suddenness of that migration.
But the black community became very difficult
because just when people were starting to hire blacks
they hired all these Cubans instead.
I remember Dorothy Fields saying:
"We went from 2nd class
to 3d class citizens overnight."
I think that's very well said.
When they came, they got privileges that black Americans
didn't have. Our government was able to give them things
that we didn't get.
So naturally there was this jealousy of all these people
coming to town and being able to get jobs
and most coloured people felt that they were taking the jobs
from coloured people.
My late husband at the time, who wasn't my husband then,
he was the presided of the NAACP was saying that
they were not taking your jobs, you didn't want those jobs.
Blacks had reached a point where they no longer
wanted to be waiters and doing all those things on Miami Beach.
So these people came and they were wiling to do that.
And you had to give them credit for what they did.
A lot of them came already professionals.
A lot of doctors, a lot of lawyers, a lot of nurses came
and they didn't mind doing almost anything to make a living
until they could get to where they wanted to go.
And because of this division of Americans, Bahamians,
that for some reason...
we have always been like crabs in a barrel.
We just didn't want to see one another get ahead.
The Cubans and hispanics that came here?
Different attitude altogether about what they were gonna do.
They stuck together and were able to get something.
Just like the jews.
When the Jews came,
and they were segregated around Miami Beach,
they didn't do anything but go ahead and buy up the beach.
They use said we'll put our monies together
and we'll take over the beach.
So there was no dogs allowed and no Jews allowed
and no coloureds allowed.
And the lines were all over the place on Miami Beach.
And the Jewish came and found moneys to buy Miami Beach.
They did what they had to do.
We just hadn't been able to do it as a people.
Well Haitians started coming in...
in significant numbers in the 1970s.
Surprisingly they began arriving.
No help from the government, the only support they got
was from the Catholic church.
Notre Dame Church in little Haiti helped them.
They were left on their own.
Even those of us who were African Americans
didn't do nearly as much as we should have to help them.
But they came in looking for work, looking for freedom,
just like the Cubans, but they were treated shabbily
by our government.
During the 50s you start to see a trickle. A trickle?
There is always a trickle
before there are these mass migrations,
of other Caribbean groups coming in.
In particular you start to see Haitians coming in and
start to work in the travel and tourism industry
because at the time Haiti is a major travel destination.
So they're coming to promote that.
Some people from the diplomatic core are living here.
And then there's this huge number of labourers
coming in to work in the garment industry
which is very huge in Miami in the 50s as well.
So you start to see Haitian seamstresses coming in
and starting to work during that period,
but at that time it was just a trickle.
You don't start to see mass migration of Haitians
until the 1970s.
I have never heard of the US government
locking out Swedes, Norwegians, Germans-
Any white folks that want to come here
they more or less have an open access into this country.
The browner the people that come, the darker they come,
the less welcome they are here in America.
That was true when Castro came into power and it's true today.
So what you see in the 1970s is that boat loads of Haitians,
because of the political turmoil in Haiti
and also the need for increased economic opportunity,
start coming to Miami.
They're assuming they're going to be treated
maybe the same way the Cubans are being treated.
And so there is going to be more opportunity
for them to stay here. That's not the case of course.
After they land here,
I mean thousands and thousands of people,
it freaks the city of Miami out.
They're dealing with all the influx of a huge amount
of Cubans at the time, so these policies developed
which are known as wet-foot dry-foot.
So the wet-foot dry-foot policy means that
if you are caught at sea you get returned automatically.
But if you get caught on land you get processed here.
If your boat lands on the beaches on Miami
you get to go through the process of figuring out
if you get political asylum here, wether you can stay.
You're not turned around right away.
But that policy gets in place mainly because of
the Haitian migration in particular.
It is only applied to the Haitians.
Unfortunately, the lowest stereotyped group among blacks
are the Haitians.
We are treating Haitians in the same way that
southern white folks treated us.
We expect them to do the worst jobs,
we expect them to be submissive and passive,
we distain their culture, their habits,
their religion.
I don't see that much of a difference in the way
that African Americans treat Haitians today
and the way that southern whites treated us.
The influx of Jamaicans was not nearly as impactfull
as the influx of Haitians.
Mainly because the Jamaicans that came were of a
more educated class. Many of them already had businesses.
Many of them settled in north Dade County.
So they didn't just move into Liberty City,
they moved into the more upscale black communities.
So there was not this kind of problem
with the Jamaicans coming in.
I did a study in terms of which black ethnic groups
were doing best in terms of income, education, etcetera.
And Jamaicans came out far ahead of African Americans,
Haitians, Cuban blacks...
because of what they brought into the country.
A work ethic, a business acumen, no emotional baggage
with slavery, a willingness to take chances with businesses
in the white community.
So we got to give the Caribbean blacks in general
and the Jamaicans in particular, credit for having
ventured out beyond the normal boundaries that
we African Americans set for ourselves.
We have a lot of growth to do. Just as black people
coming together for mutual goals.
I do not see that happening- happen yet.
My experience has been that the thing that brings
people together is crisis.
If you have somebody shooting water hoses and putting
police dogs on black people, and you show it on TV,
a lot of people are moved to act.
If you have dead bodies washed up on the shore
of Biscayne Bay, Haitian bodies, that moves people
to action. If there is some sort of
incredible act of atrocity against people,
it moves people together.
Even natural events bring us together.
So those are the kinds of things that happen
or have to happen before you see real movement
emotionally bringing people form whatever race together.
That and winning the super bowl.
Or the Miami Heat winning the championship,
that'll bring us together quick.
When people think of Miami today
they should think Latin, they should think Hispanic.
That's what we are.
If you want to get away from Hispanics,
you need to move to Idaho.
They're here, they're not leaving.
We need to live together, they're not taking over.
If they did it couldn't be worse than what it was
when the white folks were in charge,
it couldn't be worse than in Detroit
when black folks took over.
I am not moved by this fear that the Cubans are taking over.
Miami, interestingly enough,
was an early civil rights town.
Which means you had some pretty aggressive activity
here against communism as early as late 1940s.
In the 50s you had civil rights activities, for example
the attempt to de-segregate city park swimming pools.
And you had not only African Americans,
but you had Jews working with them.
Which was really interesting. Really great.
You had lunch counter sit ins in late 59,
leading to the de-segregation of the DeCriox lunch counter
in 59, a year before Greens-borough Carolina.
And it was a combination of African American leaders
like Dr. John Brown, but also some Jewish people.
Jewish women, some Jewish men but mainly Jewish women.
There were a lot of black ministers involved with that.
Martin Luther King was here on way more than one occasion
with civil rights stuff. So I see Miami as quite progressive
in terms of the civil rights movements.
One of the reasons people don't recognize Miami
as having that civil rights movement is because
Miami is this tourism town that's always been
a tourism town...
since the beginning of its period in time.
So the leaders are very concerned
about its public image.
So they don't want TV picking up news of blacks protesting
and bringing up issues of racial discrimination
because that's going to but your tourism down.
People aren't' going to come if there's a bad image if Miami.
So what's different about Miami from other places
is that at that point in time where blacks are protesting
when they would bring up a point like that
that lunch counters needed to be de-segregated
or beaches be de-segregated,
you see all these back room meetings
where white leaders are meeting with black leaders
and they're talking about what they can do
to get things changed and done together.
So they're working on a more cooperative level
than you would see in other states because they're
very concerned about making sure that tourism doesn't die
and it's to the advantage of blacks here.
So I think it's done faster or at least
a little more cooperatively than you see
in other cities.
There were a number of riots in Miami history
including a very significant one in 1968.
but the darkest day in Miami history started here
in 1979 at this spot, where Arthur McDuffie,
a young black insurance man,
was set upon by at least a half dozen white Miami-Dade
police officers and beaten to death.
That was the start of the great riot of 1980.
McDuffie was speeding, coming up North Miami Ave.
and here at North East 38 st. came to a halt.
Several police officers were chasing him,
and once he stopped they set upon him,
handcuffed him, hands behind his back.
And with McDuffie on the ground started to beat him.
One of the officers, a man named Alex Marrero,
took his flashlight, one of these long flashlights
the police carry, straddled McDuffie's body
as he was prone on the ground
face down with his head against the curb
and struck the back of his head.
That split McDuffie's skull.
It took him another day or 2 to die,
but Alex Marrero, one of those officers on the scene,
struck the killing blow.
They did some things to try to cover up what they had done.
One of the things they did was to get some of the
police cars to roll up onto the motorcycle
to try to make tend to the idea that McDuffie lost control
of the motorcycle, slipped over and died
when his head hit the pavement.
Unfortunately, the medical examiner, wondered why-
and they took their flashlights and nightsticks
and they broke the gas tank on the motorcycle on both sides.
Big mistake because the medical examiner wanted to know
if the motorcycle fell on one side,
why were the gauges on the motorcycle on both sides busted.
And that began the official investigation into this murder.
The trail of these officers was moved to Tampa
because of concerns about tensions in the community
and these men getting a fair trial.
On May 17, 1980, this all white all male jury in Tampa
heard this case and came back with a not guilty verdict
for all of the officers involved.
And that sparked this riot.
Blacks in Miami-Dade County did not riot
because McDuffie was beaten to death by the officers.
The beating death itself and the riot
were several months apart.
The riots happened because the people who committed that murder
got away with it by the law.
And the blacks were simply outraged.
McDuffie was a young insurance man,
a former corporal in the United States Marine Corps,
father of at least 2 children,
no police record.
And he left a very large family of McDuffles
living in Dade County today.
Family members of McDuffie did eventually receive
a settlement from the county for his murder,
but the scar on the community never left.
I think the riots hurt the city terribly.
And it really complicated them that you
had the whole Marrero issue, the cocaine cowboy issue,
so you had all these counter-veiling problems.
A girlfriend of mine at the time said
"that's gotta be the worse city to live in"
She came from Nebraska.
And then some friends of mine at Tallahassee said
"How can you go back to that place?"
(MARVIN) When Mr. McDuffie was killed
and the trial happened, that saturday I got a phone call
from an associated press reporter
asking me if I knew of trouble
up on 62nd street in Liberty City.
I was at home still reeling from this verdict.
I couldn't believe, most of Dade County couldn't believe
that these people were innocent.
They had been found innocent.
I came up 62nd street to the Liberty City
housing project that afternoon
and the riot was in full force by the time I got here.
Hundreds of young men, mostly men, on the streets
pouring out of the housing projects
and they set upon a car load of 3 white people.
The Colt brothers and a young girl
who was in the car with them.
They were stoned, the car was attacked, the car hit a wall
a little girl was standing there, she was 8 years old.
Her name was Shanrika Perry,
and the impact of the vehicle severed her leg.
That really set off the riot in a big way.
well that day I was outside playing baseball
with my friends, and I say my Aunt and my sister
going to the store.
So instead of me running to 2nd base,
cause I was standing on 1st base,
I ran the other way to tell my aunt and my sister
to bring me something from the store.
And I saw people on the street
but I didn't know what a riot was.
And the riots, I guess they was just starting.
There was people on the streets but there was
no violence going on at the time.
And that's the last thing I remember of that day.
The police had a difficult time responding to this.
They had blocked off north west 7th ave.
and north west 17th ave.
to prevent white people from coming into Liberty City.
But somehow a car slipped though with these 2 brothers
the Colt brothers driving with the girl,
and they got caught in this.
And the amount of anger
the amount of absolute rage was incredible.
I saw a group of 20, maybe 30 black men
around these 2 boys, they were on the ground
and they were using a Miami Herald newspaper box
that you get the paper in, to crash down on this boys head.
Repeatedly.
And then there were hundreds of people watching.
Including me.
It was as horrible as any lynching in Mississippi
because it was purely motivated by rage and race.
I called the police department to tell them
that there were people being killed on 62nd st.
They told me they weren't' ready to come up yet.
It was late that night that they finally got
an armoured vehicle to come up into Liberty City
and get these boys who were now almost dead
and this young girl rescued from this riot.
I know one named Michael Colt.
That's the one that survived.
And I forgot the girlfriend's name, she was in the car.
And the other Colt brother,
I don't remember his 1st name
but I remember they killed him.
I think initially when they threw the rock
it was because he was white.
But once they pinned me to the wall
I think it just lead to a worse situation for them.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about it.
Yes I think that the people in my community
caused the people to hit me,
I don't really blame them, I don't blame
the people that hit me either.
I just think that the police is the real cause
of the accident because of what they did
to Mr. McDuffie.
I guess the black people, because of
past history of police doing them wrong,
this was their way of retaliating against them.
Unfortunately we do it in our own neighbourhood
instead of peaceful protest.
(THELMA)I would tell that this is one of
the best places in the world to live.
You come here and you want to be-
I come here and I say "Hi" "How are you?"
"good afternoon, how you doing?"
to everybody out there.
And just be- you know, everybody out there
we've all got children.
And somebody's just waiting for someone to say
good morning to them or good afternoon or hi
or how's it going? Or how are you today?
I think if we could just get along
and live in communities, and speak to people
everyone would understand that non of us
are so powerful that we can't relate.
And I don't care how much money they've got out there
it's not going to do you any good if you don't
help somebody else with it.
And so I want all the athletes to know
that I want them to get it together
into communities and help in communities
especially in black communities where the help is needed.
Everybody wants to do something on Miami Beach
or they want to do something on Bellhop
or they want to do something where other people
are doing it already in areas like Coconut Grove
and Overtown and Liberty City
where all those blacks with all that money,
all those athletes that come to this town,
they talk about South Beach
they don't even know they live in Miami.
they think they live on Miami Beach
and you hear them talk about coming to
South Beach, they coming to Miami.
So Miami is the place they ought to help see change.
Study the origins.
Study the origins of the black community in Miami.
Why were they living where they lived,
why were they confined to certain jobs,
why were they disempowered,
how have they fought that,
how have things changed?
I'd study the origins then compare today with that.
For example little things like we've had a black police chief.
We didn't have a black policeman until 1944
and he had limited powers.
We've had a black school superintendent.
Black communities didn't even have a high school
until 1927.
So there's been a lot of improvement.
But I think in order to appreciate the changes,
both good and bad, you need to know that happened
in the beginning.
So I'd say study its origins to understand
what it was like then and what has changed today.
I think that I wish the thing I wish
people realized the most with blacks in Miami
is that were there from the beginning
of Miami's incorporation and we play
a fundamental role in the development of the city.
Through labour, through building of communities,
through fighting for change.
There was discrimination here and through fighting
for change from the early periods of time
from the 1900s all the way through the 1960s.
I think in 10 to 20 years the black population of Miami
will be and ethnic mix of primarily Caribbean blacks
and African Americans.
I think we will have far more blacks in Miami who are
descendant from people who came from the Islands,
from other parts of the hemisphere and not from the
North American continent.
It is inevitable.
It's not bad, it's the nature of change we can expect
given the geography of where we are.
This is going to happen.
Today, unless a black person opens their mouth,
you don't really know who you're dealing with.
But certainly 20 years form now it will be very difficult
to pick out an African, Haitian or Jamaican-
well, the Jamaicans stand out a little bit.
But all the others you can recognize immediately.
I should stop joking about the Jamaicans.
I think blacks in Miami today
are in the best position they've ever been in.
I think that this era when the hispanics
made them 3rd class citizens is somewhat passing
that if anyone is threatened today
it may be the Anglos! But not really,
I'm just joking about that.
I think that today, a lot of people
really respect people for who they are.
If you're a jerk you're a jerk, you know?
You're a jerk 1st
then maybe the colour of you comes 2nd.
Well I think that we need to become more powerful
in the positions that we have.
We have some black people in strategic positions
but they're not using those positions
to benefit the black people.
It's almost as if they're afraid that if they do something
if they turn around, they'll be gone.
And this has not been my experience.
My experience has been that you stand up
for what you believe is right.
And so as far as helping the black community
I don't see people who are in positions
doing that.
They got the position,
but what's going on?
How are they helping the people who are
in need of help?
How are they helping the institutions,
how are they helping to push the black institutions
that are struggling? Where are they?
I think we've come a mighty long way.
I think that we've made some in-roads,
I think that we've made a lot of progress.
But I also think we've got a whole long way to go.
I'm not happy with everything that's happening
but I am happy to see that things are changing
and that people are begining to see the importance
more and more of why it is that we have to be out there
and be a part of what's going on.
And having people understand that we need
to do more volunteer stuff
and that we don't always need to be paid
for what we do, cause there's not that much
money out there to just give away
so we gotta work for it.
And I say to young blacks all the time
don't wait for them to give it to you,
they're not giving it to you.
You gotta work for it if you want out of this life.
But I think a new day is arriving
and has arrived.
And I see it in the tours I do,
the talks I give, especially like the chamber
of commerce leadership in Miami,
I see so many fantastic young African Americans.
I think a new day is arriving.
I think the problem is that we have to
take care of yesterday.
What are you going to do with Overtown?
What are you going to do with Liberty City?
But I see so many sharp young people.
I think Marvin will tell you the same thing,
but he taught at FYU and he saw a lot
of young people coming up,
I just see a new day already here.
But what are we going to do with yesterday?
See that's the problem.
the struggle is not over, the struggle is still here
because you have now a different culture
becoming the majority
and everybody else is becoming the minority.
Therefore you've got this struggle.