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00:00and what you don't know about Miami is
00:28that back in the 1640s black pirates came here most of them came from the
00:33Bahamas Andros Island was a hotbed for pirates about a third of the crew
00:38members of pirate ships were black in fact piracy was the first equal
00:42opportunity for employment that blacks had in the new world and many brothers
00:46took advantage of that if you go to Disney World and you go through the
00:50Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit you don't see blacks among the pirates but
00:54they were there that are very very stable presence in the industry they were
00:58free they shared equally in the spoils that the ships took and in fact some of
01:04them emerged as captains of their own ships the most noted pirate black pirate
01:09that we know of who came to South Florida was black Caesar he operated around
01:13Biscayne Bay back in the 1640s in fact there is a place on the map today in the
01:20Florida Keys shown as Caesar's Creek that was one of his headquarters in the South
01:25Florida area a notorious pirate who eventually was pressed by the British
01:30there was no US government at that time the US didn't exist at that time pressed
01:35by the British government went around to the west coast of Florida hooked up with
01:39blackbeard and the two of them were notorious during their reign of piracy
01:43until finally the British caught them both and they were executed well black
01:48Caesar would be either mythological or real or somewhere in between that hanging
01:52out around South Biscayne Bay there's black Caesars Creek he might have been a
01:56fugitive slave from Virginia there were two of them but the main one was the one
02:01who operated back in the 1640s the one that came after about 100 years later was
02:05just a copycat of no consequence the next movement of blacks into what became Miami
02:16would have been Bahamians who came in just doing the fishing season during the
02:20turtling season because tens of thousands of turtles would haul up on these
02:24beaches lay their eggs and these Bahamians would come over harvest the eggs
02:29slaughter some of the turtles take them back to Nassau and make their living that
02:34way so that was going on many many years before the first English-speaking white
02:38people ever came to South Florida and those Bahamian fishermen who would be
02:43here sometimes for weeks if not months at the time would encounter black escape
02:47slaves coming down mainly from Georgia and these people were trying to make it
02:51to the Bahamas to freedom so the first ferrying of black escaped slaves we know
02:56of from Georgia primarily to the Bahamas to freedom happened with these Bahamian
03:01fishermen encountering these people right here on these shores well the Bahamas
03:05was so very close to South Florida and particularly during the brief British
03:11period in the late 1700s a lot of the Bahamians came to Florida a lot of them
03:17were wreckers because of the great Florida reef there were no lighthouses at
03:21the time and the first community really was Key West and that was like the
03:26wrecking capital of the world and they ended up many of them ended up settling in the
03:31Florida Keys and some even in the Miami area and these Bahamians coming in from
03:35the Bahamas into Key West began migrating up the Florida Keys primarily picking
03:41pineapples which was a major crop during that time that brought many Bahamians
03:46here many of them stayed so that by the time coconut grove emerged in the 1880s
03:52there was a steady flow of Bahamians already in the Florida Keys and coming in
03:57from from Key West as these Bahamians and African Americans black settlers who
04:02were coming down from Georgia encountered each other in coconut grove in
04:07Overtown there was always a little bit of friction because the Bahamians had
04:12kind of an attitude they would tell you quickly we're not ex-slaves we are
04:18subjects of the British crown and expected white people treat them that way as
04:23well so a lot of the early friction in Miami was between African Americans and
04:28Bahamians but particularly between white people and Bahamians because Bahamians
04:34simply behave differently they came from a different culture and they were not as
04:38passive or as accepting of some of the discrimination that was so apparent when
04:43they came into into Florida yeah the Bahamas abolished slavery in the 1830s and so
04:50the the black Bahamians had were long the time they got here had long not been
04:54slaves and they they were educated because the English one of the things the
04:59English tend to do everywhere I think is a colonial power they educated people
05:03better than most there was some snobbery and I think it still exists I find it
05:09today and talking to different people that the Bahamians just have a very like the
05:17old old Americans the DAR types or something they were here first and they
05:21feel like they've made a tremendous contribution and they have the Bahamians
05:26built this guy they provided the labor force for the sky they built many of the
05:31early buildings in Miami Bahamians built the of the day County Courthouse
05:36primarily Bahamians and other blacks too but they were a part of the workforce all
05:40along African Americans and Bahamians both because you got the railroad coming in
05:44with Flagler right and it's early African Americans coming down to help
05:48build the railroad like they did with the rest of the country right and they're
05:51coming in and there's a tourism industry here there's an agricultural labor see
05:55there's a need for domestic labor and so they're coming in they're working for
05:58white families in the homes they're also building the streets the buildings and
06:02huge estates like this guy and they're also working the land but they were
06:07particularly important in terms of teaching whites how to use coral rock to
06:12construct buildings and we still have some homes some structures today that
06:16reflect this early influence on architecture by the Bahamians but if
06:21you've ever tried to dig in our wonderful soil quote soil and to think
06:27that all they had was a grub hoe and to plant in Coral Gables which was all
06:32pineland they had to grub up the palmettos and grub up the rock and that's why
06:36they built a lot of buildings out of coral rock as they call it in the early
06:451800s blacks began coming down from Georgia and the other slave states into
06:51Florida to join up with the Seminole Indians who were themselves trying to
06:56escape being removed from Florida to be out of the way of white settlement of the
07:02South and these blacks who were not blood related to the Seminole's they joined
07:07them in terms of a mutual survival strategy whereas the black Seminole's
07:12basically fought with the Seminole's were interpreters for the Seminole's and in
07:17fact there was similar marriage between the Seminole's and these these blacks who
07:22joined them well one of the main reasons for the so-called Seminole Wars which are
07:26kind of forgotten wars in American history to many people unless you're Floridian was
07:30the fact that many of the slaves were fleeing into into then Spanish Florida at
07:34first and the United States wasn't very happy about that and so they really
07:40started fighting the Seminole's because they had provided sanctuary to a lot of
07:45the African slaves and it's very important to point out that the black
07:49Seminole's were not necessarily dependent upon the Seminole's sometimes the
07:54Seminole's were dependent upon the blacks so it was a very symbiotic
07:58relationship in which both groups benefited I think that one of the unique
08:07things about Miami is that if you look at African American history there's this
08:11big period of time that they call the Great Northern migration which happened
08:15after Reconstruction in the South so after the Civil War Reconstruction was an
08:19attempt to make the rehabilitate the South and make it more friendly towards
08:23blacks make it more friendly in general towards northern sort of ideals of
08:28democracy and things like that it didn't work it crashed right so you saw a lot of
08:33black people leaving the South they went to New York they went to Chicago they went to
08:37major cities they left all these agricultural communities where they had
08:40been based in the South before and so that period of scholarship that period of
08:45history in African American scholarship is called the Great Northern migration but
08:50what people don't often recognize is that there was a great southern migration
08:53to Miami was booming in the 1880s in the 1890s because of the fact that it just
09:00been founded so there were jobs here the railroad had arrived there was
09:03opportunity here so you saw African Americans not just going to the north
09:07going to New York but they were also African Americans from Alabama and Georgia
09:11they were coming down to Miami to find work now especially around 1880s into the
09:17early 1890s there were blacks primarily Bahamians who were now settled well in
09:22Coconut Grove who worked on these waters they were fishermen they were crabbers
09:27they were turtlers they were tour guides they were hunting guides so as white
09:32people started coming into South Florida for tourism purposes they were aided and
09:38supported often by blacks who knew these waters who knew the best fishing spots who
09:42knew the best hunting areas and they made a living many of them doing
09:47exactly that all of the blacks were not maids and gardeners and and and and and
09:52agricultural workers many of them participated handily in the tourism trade
09:57we're standing on Charles Avenue in front of the home of EWF stirrer the
10:01richest black man in Coconut Grove Charles Avenue was the original Avenue along
10:06which most of the homes for blacks were built it used to be known as the
10:10evangelist Street because all of the churches were on this street so this was the
10:14beginning community of Coconut Grove for the black community that is on this
10:18street mr. stirrup was probably the first black really really wealthy person in
10:24in Miami-Dade County he acquired a great deal of property he owned land from Monroe
10:29County to Fort Pierce and when he died he left a very very sizable estate he was
10:34one of the people who could be relied upon to help young men when they got into
10:38trouble he was the one who when movies came out would get in his horse and buggy and
10:42go up to the white folks hotel the Royal Palm Hotel get the movies bring them
10:47back down to the Oddfellas Hall which was the social center of Coconut Grove and
10:51that's how black people got to enjoy movies this is a very important street it may
10:55be the most historically significant street in Miami-Dade County in terms of
10:58black history is concerned
11:031894 this event took place which became known as the Great Freeze it was
11:09horrendous people that never really seen anything like it in their lifetimes
11:12everything froze Florida was basically under ice they say it even snowed in
11:18North Miami was now North Miami and as a result of that freeze Henry Flagler was
11:25convinced to bring his Florida East Coast Railroad on down from West Palm Beach Palm
11:30Beach on down to the Miami River so the Great Freeze was the defining moment for the
11:35birth of Miami and it brought as many blacks if not more blacks than whites in the
11:39South Florida because their labor was needed on this land that was below the
11:44freeze line well the Big Freeze was an act of God and that act of God led to the
11:48establishment of the city of Miami and the arrival of thousands of blacks into
11:52this community so yes it was later to a natural event when John Sewell came down
11:56in March of 1896 he brought as he put it in his memoirs about 13 or 14
12:00African Americans who had been working with him in West Palm Beach and see West Palm Beach
12:04was a staging ground for the elaborate Palm Beach across the lake and so the really
12:08gritty work was done by people living West Palm Beach both in West Palm Beach work but
12:12also they were building this great resort called Palm Beach and Sewell brought down as
12:17he later called it his black artilleries refer to these voters and all but these were trustworthy
12:22workers because Flagler had told him it's time now to build this great hotel that I've
12:28told Miss Tuttle I'm going to build plus I want it because I'm going to promote that
12:31as a tourist spot and so he brought them down they leveled the Indian burial mound in March
12:36of 1896 right on the edge of Biscayne Bay then today it's about three blocks in and they began
12:41to lay the foundation for the hotel so these were these were workers that Sewell knew from earlier jobs
12:47the railroad was everything people can't appreciate that now but before the before there was I-95 before
12:54there was a turnpike before there was air travel there were trains everything moved on the railroad so
13:01railroad magnets had a lot of power a lot of money a lot of influence and the railroad also provided
13:07jobs a lot of black people worked on the railroad one of the best jobs you could have in Miami was
13:11to be a Pullman carporter working the railroad from Miami to Jacksonville back and forth you wore a suit
13:18you had a clean job you got tips it was wonderful that was one of the highest status jobs in black Miami in
13:26the early years suddenly with the railroad converging on Miami and the right-of-way the railroad was laid
13:32from West Palm Beach down to the north back the Miami River people come because they can get jobs
13:37working with the railroad and get jobs building I get jobs as entrepreneurs whatever the case might
13:42be so suddenly there's hundreds of people in Miami by the spring summer of 1896 and the flag
13:47organization said this is going to be unwieldy what we need to do is get this place incorporated and so
13:51they announced in late June they're going to have a pre-incorporation meeting which they did
13:54they incorporate in July 28 1896 and about over a third of the voters were African Americans they
14:00had been workers primarily for Flagler under the guidance of John Sewell a white man and as he
14:06said he marks his black artillery to the polls they registered in the vote and they marched into the
14:10polls to vote for incorporation as it turned out it was by acclamation anyway well when the city of
14:20Miami was established in 1896 about 160 or so odd black men out of a total of 340 or so men all
14:29together participated in the actual incorporation meeting for the city of Miami had the blacks not
14:34been there and women didn't have the vote at that time but had those black men not been there the city
14:39of Miami could not have been established at that time because the state required a minimum number of
14:44voters for a place to become a city and there simply were not enough white men present in 1896 to make
14:49that happen so they ordered all the Flagler workers in to the meeting and they were told to vote for the
14:55city to become established and they did and then you know I I didn't know that that wasn't taught in
15:01Miami history I discovered it much later uh in talking to Dorothy Fields we started reading all this
15:07and then I had seen their names see in the Sewell book and then I said wait a minute here's name
15:13is here on the incorporation list there's actually a list and the first one happens to be black it's
15:19not alphabetical this was the list blacks were kind of political pawns as some people say we are today but
15:26essentially they were used by the railroad by the Flagler structure to really uh move whatever political
15:32agenda the railroad had what's unheard of is that we've got a very important American city that was
15:38incorporated so late 1896 and it had such a sizable percentage of incorporators who are African
15:45Americans that part was unheard of Overtown used to be called colored town and it was born when the
15:51city was founded 1896 uh exclusively for blacks as the Flagler railroad came south a lot of towns sprung up
16:01West Palm Beach Palm Beach Fort Lauderdale all of these little towns sprung up as the railroad came
16:06through and in each case the black community was established in the northwest quadrant of each of
16:12those towns so if you go to West Palm Beach blacks were in the northwest quadrant Fort Lauderdale blacks
16:17live in the northwest quadrant Miami we live in the northwest quadrant so unless you think blacks had a
16:22chromosome that made us gravitate towards the northwest corners of communities there'd have been a
16:26plan and the plan was for the railroad but planned by the railroad was to have blacks isolated separated
16:32from the rest of the community but close enough to get to work so that was the plan for the
16:37establishment of these black communities in the northwest quadrant when Overtown was established it
16:43was a highly segregated community you couldn't leave Overtown if you were a black person after dark
16:48for example or you run the risk of being arrested there was a concerted effort by the powers that be to
16:54keep blacks restricted to color town particularly after dark color town the the races by law had to
17:01live apart and so soon as Miami incorporated in 1896 color town is established up until then they
17:08settled they lived in tents or makeshift places around white people but now that you've institutionalized
17:13the city by incorporating you need to do something about this and so the northwest quadrant of the city
17:20was set aside as an african-american community called color town which is not an unusual name many
17:25segregated black communities in south are called color town this area has had several names originally
17:30color town in Overtown the central negro business district all of these names attended to to Overtown but
17:38the reason i understand that this area is called Overtown and a lot of controversy about that is that if you
17:44lived in coconut grove south of here and you wanted to visit someone black here in Miami you
17:50had to go over downtown to get here thus the term Overtown stuck for this area
18:00i tend to think that earlier period was a great period now i understand speaking as a guy born later
18:05and a guy who's a caucasian the deprivation that many people experience there the outdoor privies
18:11no library for a while no high school till 1927 but i i really think it was a community that
18:18really took care of its own needs and so for me the golden age even though there are these problems
18:24you know with sanitation and ku klux klan thuggish white policemen i think it was a pretty good age
18:32by and large the community was forced to be self-sufficient and was self-sufficient oh i loved it
18:38it was great it was great it was like a family everybody knew each other uh everybody cared for
18:45each other uh if you didn't have some flour if you didn't have some sugar or whatever you didn't
18:52have you went to your neighbor and you could borrow it and then your neighbor looked out for you if
18:59anybody saw us doing anything wrong you know they would tell you they would tell my grandmother or tell
19:06my aunt if you were to ask me where the richest people in dade county live i would have to say
19:12fisher island behind me probably the greatest concentration of wealth in dade county but at
19:19one time that island now named after carl fisher the founder of miami beach was owned by a black man
19:26his name was d.a dorsey d.a dorsey purchased that island for the express purpose of allowing of having a
19:34place where black people could actually get into salt water so fisher island owned by d.a dorsey up
19:41until the great depression of 1930s was the only place where blacks could come not just from dade county
19:48but from other parts of the country to swim and to enjoy the benefits of beautiful biscayne bay when
19:55the depression hit mr dorsey needed cash like everybody else and it was during that time that he sold the
20:01property to carl fisher who was the developer of miami beach and that's why this is now called fisher
20:07island we are standing in front of the lyric theater the lyric was the social center of overtown during
20:15its heyday this building was erected around 1917 on black man jeter walker and everything that happened
20:22that was of social importance happened in this building its importance of the community culturally and
20:28historically is unsurpassed it's the most historic building still standing in overtown today well
20:34during overtown's boom the lyric was the place to be you would want to be here to see the latest movies
20:40to be entertained by the biggest entertainers of the time this was a major place to be during the
20:46heyday because of the attraction of this place to so many uh performers a lot of the night clubs in
20:52overtown the big clubs attracted many white patrons they would come to overtown not so much for the
20:57movies for some of the more black oriented events here but to the night clubs a lot of these folks
21:03found their best entertainment in overtown but even then even in the black night clubs in overtown they
21:10were segregated the whites had one section the blacks had the other section in their own neighborhood
21:15that was segregation black miami color town was uh the harlem of the south people called it that the
21:22harlem of the south anything you could get in harlem on linux avenue you could get here on third on
21:27second avenue or third avenue right here in overtown overtown experienced so many problems with law
21:32enforcement both illegal law enforcement meaning the police and extra legal the police this is a deep
21:38south community in many ways all the way through the 60s and the police were just they were thuggish
21:46my dissertation was on criminal justice and you know there were stories where they would look at
21:50statistics for a month of arrest and i think one month there were like 38 arrests 37 were african americans
21:56yet they only comprised 25 percent of the population stuff like that and then there was the extra legal
22:00problem the clan entered miami as far as we know in 1921 for the first time and they would kidnap two
22:05ministers one in coconut grove one in overtown in 21 tarred and feathered both pushed them out of
22:11speeding cars attempted to force them to go back to the bahamas and the reverend higgs in coconut grove did
22:17go back there were never any charges never any arrests nor any prosecution of those cases and it was the
22:23clan and the clan would march through overtown uh as late as 1939 there was a spring municipal election
22:30and there was a man named sam solomon who'd organized a lot of new voters in overtown and he was going to
22:35take them to the polls the next day and the clan didn't march they drove through overtown uh early may
22:41of 39 and they had a sort of a makeshift noose and they had a black man hanging from it you know this
22:48and attempted to vote but the next day solomon marched those people north on um second avenue
22:55which splits in the first place and then from first place up to northwest 14th street and over
23:00to the fire station which is now being restored it's over miami avenue and 14th street and they voted
23:05so the clan was a force for decades not just the early mid-20s but they remained here the clan was
23:12i don't know how robust it was but it appeared periodically and by by then its targets are
23:17catholics jews not just black catholics jews filipinos married to say a caucasian woman i mean they went
23:24after everybody who didn't fit their narrow definition of 100 white american protestant
23:33in 1926 there was no weather bureau people had no way of knowing what was coming
23:37from out there this thing came in uh late at night swept across miami went right over downtown miami
23:47the eye passed over downtown miami and when it did people thought the storm was over a lot of folks
23:53who just knew arrivals here they went running out onto the ocean front to see the damage the hamish knew
23:59better they knew the other side of the storm was coming so you had all these people who were killed
24:04mainly because they exposed themselves to the rushing water coming in on the other side of the hurricane
24:11so it was a great event it destroyed the city of miami for the most part but had an even worse effect
24:16on colored town what we now call overtown the buildings there were shanties for the most part
24:21they were vulnerable to the to the storm uh many more folks were left uh homeless and overtown than in
24:28other parts of the of the community so it had a great effect on the city of miami because after that
24:33they put buildings up uh with bricks and concrete rather than uh wood but overtown was uh color
24:40town was severely damaged by the storm then the city in the county and possibly others went to color
24:47town and got the black men to come and help clean up for free to remove bodies to clear the streets
24:53and you didn't get to choose not to do it if they came and told you that you were on a work crew to
24:57clean up after the hurricane you had to go well this was a common practice if that was a natural
25:02disaster not just in miami the modus operandi would be to go to the black community and get black men
25:09to come in and clean it up so this happened in most of the major events that i can think of that
25:15required that kind of labor blacks were required to do it the same things that we experienced during
25:19hurricane andrew in 1992 people experienced that in 1926 but there was no federal government to come
25:26rushing in to help so people had many many weeks of isolated survival trying to exist under these
25:34horrendous circumstances but i reiterate that some of the folks here some of the blacks knew that this
25:39was going to happen i interviewed a lady in coconut grove who was alive when it happened and she said
25:45that that night that she woke up her husband because everything outside was yellow all the elements had
25:53changed color and she had never seen anything like that before so we know that this was a phenomenon
25:58that was associated with that hurricane
26:05i came here when i was a boy of 11 or 12 we came we this this was the only place a black person could get
26:11into salt water virginia key beach this is our beach uh literally we know that there was a sewage treatment
26:18plant right around the bend here but we loved it we came out here they would have the state would have
26:25uh state troopers parked on the bridge to keep us from going to crannon park which was the white
26:30beach we were not allowed to go there uh but this was just fine as as we saw it at that time uh the uh
26:37the beach was made available to us after the navy stopped using it to train black sailors to swim during
26:43the second world war that's how blacks first got onto virginia key beach it was a military
26:47uh training site for the navy because the white people here would not allow black sailors to be
26:53trained to swim at clinton park the white beach blacks could not go anywhere in miami-dade county to a beach
27:04and a group of blacks got together and went to hallover beach and um judge thomas
27:14went out there with them he didn't go in the water but people like mrs madel brainan who was active in
27:21the pta and some of the pta people you know they went out there and they went in the water
27:28and when it was reported they they expected to be arrested and uh judge thomas had money to bail them out
27:36out but uh when the sheriff went out there he just said well we'll talk about this and so some of the
27:48leaders he got some of the leaders together to decide how to resolve the problem there were the the naacp
27:56and other groups uh had a had a weighed in at hallover beach in north miami which is a county-owned beach as a
28:05way of showing the county that if you don't allow us to have virginia key beach we will come to this
28:09beach and that scared the county commission and for that reason they voted to establish this beach
28:14for blacks within weeks of that demonstration and that was before the civil rights movement started
28:19the the demonstration that led to the opening of virginia key beach was probably the only civil
28:24rights effort that touched almost all the black folks because you could argue that some blacks got
28:29the benefits of the civil rights movement because they got education they went to colleges and
28:33what have you but everybody could come to virginia key beach so that that one effort issued in a
28:40freedom for all blacks regardless of educational status so it was a very very significant change in
28:45the late 1950s uh the interstate system was expanding in this country this is i-95 behind me
28:52i-95 was put in um to go directly through over town it divided over town into east and west
29:00so that after this expressway was built people couldn't have easy access to other parts of
29:05overtown and people had to move overtown went from some 40 000 people down to about 12 or 15 000 people
29:12in less than a decade this over pass behind me is just one of the evidences of how the interstate was
29:19built to ride over the community so that if you didn't really want to see black people all you had to
29:23do was not look down it only comes down when you get up to uh liberty city so the expressway didn't kill
29:29over town but it added to the decline very very significantly other things added to it as well
29:35but the interstate system was a major factor in the decline well you know what uh it was called urban
29:42renewal and it did it didn't even it meant black removal i think because
29:49my parents were offered money for for their house and i'm sure that it wasn't the value the initial
30:02thing apparently was or one of the early thoughts was to put it over the florida east coast railway
30:07right of way but then they decided to move it west and it came right through a lot of overtown
30:13overtown's population in 1960 was 34 000 plus people and today it's about 9 500. the expressway is
30:20probably the major villain there the i-95 helped to tear up the community the urban renewal you know did the
30:29same thing and um i think that if we had the insight uh back then that we have today that we should have
30:48stood up for our community you know we should have fought for our community because now it's gonna the
30:57way it's going we're not going to be able to stay there because it's being taken over by developers
31:09federal castro came to power in 1960 beginning of the year and that changed everything in miami
31:17it changed life for whites in miami it changed life for blacks in miami and it provided a phenomenon
31:25that the country had never seen before the influx of tens of thousands of people in a very very
31:30short period of time almost all of them settling in the same place that was the impact of the cuban
31:37migration the first migration into miami another one followed in 1980 when the marielas came in
31:44yet another uh large group of blacks of i'm sorry of cubans coming in and this time with many blacks among
31:51them the first wave of cubans who came in were basically privileged cubans who were trying to
31:56get away from castro they had education they had businesses many of them were doctors teachers so
32:01they sort of fitted into south florida seamlessly particularly since the government the federal
32:06government provided a lot of help for them to make this transition as a way of poking castro in the eye
32:12those who came later in 1980 during the mariello boat lift uh were more impoverished uh cubans many of them
32:20black a significant number of them had mental problems uh law enforcement problems uh and they
32:27just overwhelmed south florida uh in their numbers and in the suddenness of that immigration but for
32:33the black community it became very difficult because just when people were starting to hire blacks they
32:40they hired all these cubans instead and so i remember dorothy field say we went from second class to
32:46third class citizens overnight and i think that's very well said when they came they got privileges
32:52that that american black colors didn't have uh you know our government was able to give them things that
32:58we didn't get so naturally there was this jealousy there of all these people coming to town and then
33:04able to get jobs and most colored felt that they were taking the jobs uh from colored people my late husband
33:12who wasn't my husband at the time but was president of the miami branch naacp was saying
33:19that they were not taking your jobs we didn't want those jobs that blacks had gotten to a point that
33:24they don't want no longer wanted to be waiters and and doing all the things on miami beach and so
33:29these people came and they were willing to do that and and you had to give them credit for what they
33:33did because they a lot of people who came were already professionals a lot of doctors a lot of nurses a lot
33:40of lawyers that all came and they didn't mind doing almost anything to make a living until they could
33:46get to where they wanted to go and it was because of this diversion of whatever it is division of
33:52americans and hey bahamians that for some reason we've always been like the crabs in the bass barrel
33:59that we just didn't want to see one another get ahead whereas the cubans the hispanics who came here
34:04different attitude all together about what they were going to do and they stuck together and were able to get
34:09some things and just like the jews and when the jews came and they were segregated on miami beach
34:15they didn't do anything but go ahead and buy up the beach you know they just said you know we got we
34:20put our monies together and we'll take over the beach so yeah there was no dogs and no jews allows
34:26and no colors allowed and signs were all over the place on miami beach and the jewish people came
34:32and found monies to buy miami beach trust me they did what they had to do we just haven't been able to do it
34:39as a people well haitians started coming in in significant numbers in the 1970s surprisingly
34:47they began arriving no help from the government the only support they got was from the catholic church
34:53north of dame church in rural haiti helped them they were left on their own even those of us who
34:58were african-americans didn't do nearly as much as we should have to help them but they they came in
35:05looking for work looking for freedom just like the cubans from duvalier and others after duvalier
35:10but they were treated shabbily by our government during the 50s you start to see a trickle a trickle
35:15you know there's always a trickle before there are these mass migrations of other caribbean groups
35:19coming in in particular you start to see haitians coming in and working in the travel and tourist
35:23ministry because at the time haiti is a major travel destination and so they're coming to promote
35:29that some people from the diplomatic corps are living here and then there's a huge um a number
35:33of laborers coming in to work in the garment industry which is very huge in miami during
35:37the 50s as well so you saw haitian seamstresses coming in into work during that period but at that
35:41time it was just a trickle you don't see it start to see mass migrations of haitians moving in until the
35:461970s well i have never heard of the u.s government locking out swedes norwegians germans any white folks
35:54want to come here they more or less have an open access into this country the browner people become
36:00the darker people become the less welcome they are in america that was true when cash flow came to power
36:06it's true today so what you see in the 1970s is that boatloads of haitians because of the
36:12political turmoil in haiti and also the need for increased economic opportunities start coming to
36:16miami they're assuming that they're going to be treated maybe the same way the cubans are being treated
36:22and so there's going to be more opportunity for them to stay here that's not the case of course
36:27after they land here and there are i mean these are thousands and thousands of people
36:31kind of freaks the city of miami out they're dealing with also the influx of a huge amount
36:36of cubans at the same time so these policies developed which are known as wet foot dry foot
36:41so the wet foot dry foot policy means that if you um if you are caught on sea you get returned
36:47automatically to your country so but if you're caught on land then you get processed here so if
36:53you if your boat lands on miami in my on miami's shores and you get out then you get to go through
36:58the due process of figuring out whether you can get political asylum here whether you can stay you're
37:01not turned around white right away but that policy gets in place because mainly because of the
37:06haitian migration in particular it is only applied to the haitians unfortunately the lowest
37:12stereotyped group among blacks are the haitians we are treating the haitians in a way in the same
37:23way that southern white folks treated us we expect them to do the worst jobs expect them to be submissive
37:30and passive we we disdain their culture their habits their religion i don't see that much difference
37:40in the way african americans treat patients today and the way that southern whites treated us the
37:46influx of the jamaicans was not nearly as impactful as the haitians mainly because the jamaicans who
37:50came were a more educated class many of them were already towards business many of them settled in
37:56north dade and dade county so they didn't just move into overtown or into liberty city they moved into
38:03the more upscale black communities so there was not this kind of a problem with the jamaicans coming in
38:08i did a study of which of the black ethnic groups were doing best in terms of income education etc and
38:15jamaicans came out far ahead of african americans haitians uh cuban blacks uh because of what they
38:22brought into the country a work ethnic a business uh acumen uh no emotional baggage with slavery a
38:29willingness to take chances to set up businesses in the white community so we got to give the caribbean
38:34blacks in general and the jamaicans in particular credit for having ventured out beyond the normal
38:39boundaries that we african americans set for ourselves we have a lot of growth to do just as
38:45black people to come together for mutual goals i have not seen that happening uh happened yet my
38:52experience has been the thing that brings people together is crisis if you have somebody uh shooting
38:57water hoses and putting police dogs on black folks and you show that on television a lot of people
39:02to move to action if you have dead bodies washing up on the shore of biscayne bay uh of haitian bodies
39:08it moves uh people to action if you have some sort of incredible act of atrocity against people
39:13it brings us together even natural events bring us together so those are the kinds of things that
39:20happen or have to happen before you see real movement emotionally bringing people of whatever race
39:26together that and winning the super bowl or the miami heat winning the championship that'll bring us
39:32together quick when people think to miami today think of miami today they should think latin they
39:38should think hispanic that's what we are if you want to get away from hispanics if you live in miami
39:43you need to move to idaho they are here they're not leaving we need to live together they're not taking over
39:51if they did it couldn't be worse than it was when the white folks were in charge it couldn't be any worse
39:55in detroit when black folks took over i am not moved by this fear that the cubans are taking over
40:07miami interestingly enough was an early civil rights town which is interesting which means that
40:13you had some pretty progressive activities here against communism as early as the late 1940s
40:21and in the 50s you had civil rights activities for example attempt to desegregate city park swimming pools
40:29and you had not only african americans but you had jews working with them which was really interesting
40:33really great and you had lunch counter uh sit-ins in 1959 leading to the desegregation of the
40:40mccroys lunch counter in 59 a year before greensboro north carolina and it was a combination of african-american
40:46leaders like dr john brown but also some jewish people uh jewish women some jewish men mainly
40:51jewish women and of course a lot of black ministers involved in that martin luther king was a visitor
40:56here on way more than one occasion uh with civil rights stuff so i see miami is quite progressive in
41:03terms of the civil rights movements one of the reasons why people don't recognize miami is having
41:07that civil rights movement is because miami is this tourism town has always been a tourism town since the
41:12beginning of its period of time and so it's very concerned the leaders are very concerned about its
41:16public image so they don't want television picking up news of blacks protesting and bringing up issues
41:23of racial discrimination that it's going to cut your tourism down right people aren't going to want
41:27to come they're going to have a bad image of miami so what's different about miami from other places
41:31that that is at the point in time when blacks are protesting when they would bring up a point like
41:36that that lunch counters needed to be desegregated or beaches needed to be segregated you'd see all of
41:40these backroom meetings where white leaders are reading with black leaders and they're talking
41:43about what they can do to get things um um changed and done together so they're working on a more
41:49cooperative level than you see at other in other states because they're whites are very concerned
41:55about making sure tourism doesn't die and it's to the advantage of blacks here so i think things get
41:59done faster or at least a little um a little more cooperative than you see in other cities
42:04there were a number of riots in miami history including a very significant one in 1968 but the
42:16darkest day in miami history started here in 1979 at this spot where althor mcduffie a young black
42:24insurance man was set upon by at least a half dozen white miami-dade police officers and beaten to death
42:32that was the spark for the great riot of 1980. mcduffie was speeding coming up northeast miami avenue
42:40and here at northeast 38th street came to a halt there were several police officers chasing him
42:46and once he stopped they sat upon him handcuffed him hands behind his back and with mcduffie on the
42:53ground started to beat him one of the officers a man named alex marrero took his flashlight one of
43:01these long flashlights police officers carry straddle mcduffie's body as he's prone on the ground face
43:09down with his head against the curb and struck the back of his head and that split mcduffie's skull
43:16it took him another day or two to die but alex marrero one of those officers on the scene struck the
43:22killing blow well they did several things to try to cover up what they had done one of the things
43:27that they did was to get some of the police cars to roll up onto the motorcycle to try to pretend or
43:33submit the idea that mcduffie lost control of the motorcycle slipped over and died when his head hit
43:40the pavement unfortunately the medical examiner wondered why and they took their flashlights and
43:47their nightsticks and they broke the glass on the gas tank of the motorcycle on both sides big mistake
43:54because the medical examiner wanted to know if the motorcycle fell on one side why was the why were the
43:59gauges on the gas tank on both sides busted and that began the official investigation into this murder
44:08the trial of these officers was moved to tampa because of concern about tensions in the community
44:13and these men getting a fair trial on may 17th 1980 this all-white all-male jury in tampa that heard
44:22this case came back with not guilty verdicts for all of the officers involved and that sparked this riot
44:30blacks in miami-dade county did not riot because mcduffie was beaten to death by police officers the
44:35beating death of mcduffie and the riot itself was several months apart the riot happened because the people
44:41who did it who committed that murder got away with it in a court of law and blacks were simply outraged
44:47arthur mcduffie was a young insurance man a former corporal in the united states marine corps father of
44:54at least two children no police record um and he left a very very um large family of mcduffie's in
45:03living in dade county today family members of arthur mcduffie did eventually receive a settlement from
45:08the county for his murder but the scar on the community never never never left i think the
45:14riots hurt the city terribly and what really complicated them was the fact that um you had
45:19the whole mario issue and you had the cocaine cowboy thing so you had all these kind of countervailing
45:24problems a girlfriend of mine at that time said that's got to be the worst city in america to
45:27live in she came from nebraska and then some friends of mine in tallahassee said how could you
45:31ever go back to that place after mcduffie was killed and the trial happened that saturday
45:37i got a telephone call from an associated press reporter asking me if i knew of trouble up on
45:4362nd street in liberty city i was at home still reeling from this verdict i couldn't believe as
45:49most of dade county couldn't believe that these people were innocent they had been found innocent
45:55i came up to 62nd street to the liberty square housing project that afternoon and the riot was in
46:03full force by the time i got here hundreds of young men mostly men on the streets pouring out of the
46:11housing project and they're set upon a carload of three white people the cult brothers and a young
46:20girl who was in the car with them they were stoned the car was attacked the car hit a wall a little
46:27girl was standing there she was eight years old her name was shamika perry and the impact of the
46:32vehicle severed her leg and that really set off the riot in a big way well that day i was outside playing
46:40baseball with my friends and i saw my aunt and my sister going to the store so instead of me running
46:47to second base because i was standing on first base and i could see them instead of me going to a second
46:52base i ran the other way to tell my aunt and my sister to bring me something from the store
46:58and i saw people on the street but i didn't know what a riot was and the riots i guess they was just
47:04started people was on the street but it was no violence going on at the time and that's the last
47:10thing i remember of that day the police had a difficult time responding to this they had blocked off
47:16northwest 7th avenue and northwest 17th avenue to prevent white people from coming into liberty city
47:23but somehow another a car flipped through with the cult brothers driving at these two white boys
47:27and this girl and they got caught in this melee and the amount of anger the amount of
47:35absolute rage was incredible i saw a group of 20 maybe 30 young black men around these two boys
47:46they were on the ground and they were using a miami herald newspaper box that you get the street
47:52newspapers in to crash down on this boy's head repeatedly and then there were hundreds of
47:58people watching including me it was as horrible as any lynch mob in mississippi because it was purely
48:05motivated by rage and race i called the police department to tell them that there were people being
48:13killed on 62nd street they told me they weren't ready to come up yet it was late that night before they
48:20finally got an armored vehicle to come up into liberty city and get these boys who were now almost dead
48:26and this young girl rescued from this riot i know one named michael cope that's the one that survived
48:33and i forgot the girlfriend name she was in the car and then the other coat brother i don't remember his
48:38first name but i know they killed him i think initially when they threw the rock it was because he was white
48:44but once they pinned me to the wall i think it just led to a worse situation for them i have a lot of mixed
48:54feelings about it yes i think the people in my community caused the people to hit me i don't really
49:03blame them i don't blame the people that hit me either i just think the police it's the real cost
49:11of the accident because of what they did to mr mcduffie and i guess the black people because of past
49:19history of police doing them wrong that was they were retaliating against them unfortunately we do it
49:28in our own neighborhoods versus i guess peaceful protests or whatever the case may be
49:33i would tell them this is one of the best places in the world to live uh if you come here and you
49:44want to be you know i say hi and good morning good afternoon and how y'all doing to everybody out there
49:49and just be you know that everybody is they're all we're all god's children and somebody's just waiting
49:55for somebody to say good morning to them or good afternoon or hi or how's it going or how you doing
50:01today and i think if we could just get along uh and live in communities where you could just speak
50:06to people and have people understand that none of us are so powerful or that we can't relate
50:13and 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
50:18help somebody else with it and so i'd like for all the athletes to know that i want them to get it
50:24together and go into into communities and help in communities and especially in black communities
50:30where the help is needed you know everybody want to do something on mama beach or they want to do
50:34something on bow harbor or they want to do something where other people are doing it already
50:39in areas like coconut grove and overtown and liberty city where all those blacks with all that money
50:46all the athletes who come to this town they talk about south beach they don't even know they live in
50:50miami they don't even know they live in miami they think they live on miami beach and then you hear
50:56them talk about i'm going to south beach uh they come into miami and so miami is the place they ought
51:02to want to help see change study its origins study the origins of the black community in miami why are
51:10they why were they living where they lived or why were they confined to certain jobs why were they
51:15disempowered how have they fought that how have things changed i'd study the origin then compare today
51:24with that for example little things like we've had a black police chief oh my god we didn't have
51:29a black policeman until 1944 and he had limited powers or you've had a black school superintendent
51:34afterwards they didn't even have a high school until 1927 so there's been a lot of improvement
51:38but i think in order to appreciate the changes both good and bad you need to know what happened
51:42in the beginning so i'd say study its origins to understand what was it like then how it's changed
51:48today i wish um i think that i think the thing i wish people would realize most about blacks in miami
51:54is that they we were there from the beginning of miami's incorporation and that we played a
51:59fundamental role in the development of the city through labor through building of communities
52:06through fighting for change there was discrimination here and making fighting for change from the early
52:11period of times from the early 1900s all the way through the 1960s
52:14i think in 10 to 20 years the black population of miami will be an ethnic mix of primarily caribbean
52:29blacks and african americans i think we'll have far more blacks in miami in 20 years who are descendant
52:37from people who came from the islands or from other parts of of the hemisphere and not from the north
52:44american continent it is inevitable it's not necessarily bad it's just the nature of change
52:49that we can expect given the geography of where we are this is going to happen even today unless the
52:55black person opens his mouth or her mouth you don't really know who you're dealing with uh but certainly
53:01in 20 years from now it would be very difficult to pick out an african american or a haitian or jamaican
53:07well the jamaicans always stand out a little bit but all the others will be able to recognize immediately
53:11i should stop joking about the jamaicans um i think blacks in miami today are the best position
53:16they've ever been i i think that this era when the hispanics made them third class citizen i think
53:22that is somewhat passing uh if anyone is threatened today it may be the anglos uh but but not really i'm
53:29just joking about that um i think that there are a lot of of today people people really respect people
53:36for who they are uh if you're a jerk you're a jerk you know you're a jerk first and then maybe the color
53:43of you or your ethnicity second well i think that we we need to become more powerful
53:55in the positions that we have we have some black people in some strategic positions but they're not
54:03using those positions to uh to benefit the black people it's almost as if they're afraid that if
54:13they turn around or if they do something they'll be gone and uh and you know this has not been my
54:20experience my experience is that you stand up for what you believe to be right and so
54:28as far as helping the black community i don't see people who are in positions doing that
54:41they got the position but what's going on how are they helping the people who are in need of help
54:50how are they helping the institutions how are they helping to push the black institutions that are
54:57struggling where are they i think we've come a mighty long way i think that we've made some inroads i
55:03think we've made some progress but i also think we've got a whole long way to go i'm not happy with
55:09with everything that's happening but i'm happy to see that things are changing and that people are
55:14beginning to see the importance more and more of why it is that we have to be out there and be a part of
55:21of what's going on and having people understand that that they need to do more volunteer stuff
55:26and not always have to be paid for everything that we do uh because there's not that much money out
55:31there to just give away and so we've got to work for it and i say to young blacks all the time don't
55:36wait for somebody to give it to you they're not giving it to you you got to work for what it is that
55:40you want out of this life but i think a whole new day is is arriving and has arrived and i and i see it in
55:46the tours i do the talks i give especially like the chamber of commerce of leadership in miami
55:51i see so many fantastic young african americans i think a new day is arriving the problem is we
55:56got to take care of yesterday and that would be what are you going to do with overtown and what are
56:00you going to do with liberty city but i i see with so many sharp young people i see and i think
56:05marvin will tell you the same thing because he taught at fiu and he saw a lot of this coming up
56:09i just see a whole new day already here but what are we going to do with yesterday see that's the problem
56:15the struggle is not over the struggle is still here because you you you you you have now a different
56:22culture uh becoming the majority and everybody else is becoming the minority and therefore you got this
56:33the majority and therefore you got this struggle