The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami

Civil Rights and America's Tourist Paradise, 1896–1968

Chanelle Nyree Rose

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780807157671
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Offering new insights into Florida's position within the cultural legacy of the South, The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami explores the long fight for civil rights in one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Chanelle N. Rose examines how the sustained tourism and rapid demographic changes that characterized Miami for much of the twentieth century undermined constructions of blackness and whiteness that remained more firmly entrenched in other parts of the South. The convergence of cultural practices in Miami from the American South and North, the Caribbean, and Latin America created a border community that never fit comfortably within the paradigm of the Deep South experience. As white civic elites scrambled to secure the city's burgeoning reputation as the "Gateway to the Americas, " an influx of Spanish-speaking migrants and tourists had a transformative effect on conventional notions of blackness. Business owners and city boosters resisted arbitrary racial distinctions and even permitted dark-skinned Latinos access to public accommodations that were otherwise off limits to nonwhites in the South. At the same time, civil-rights activists waged a fierce battle against the antiblack discrimination and violence that lay beneath the public image of Miami as a place relatively tolerant of racial diversity. In its exploration of regional distinctions, transnational forces, and the effect of both on the civil rights battle, The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami complicates the black/white binary and offers a new way of understanding the complexity of racial traditions and white supremacy in southern metropolises like Miami.

I

THE RACIAL POLITICS OF BOOSTERISM, BLACK PROTEST, AND JIM CROW TOURISM

1

African American Boosters, Bahamian Transnationals, and Garveyites

I filled out an alien card every year. I didn’t take out no citizenship. I kept thinking I’m not going to stay here because of the way white people treat you.

—Albert Gibson, member of the Miami UNIA, 1975

Bahamian-born Albert Gibson left Eleuthera Island with less than a sixth-grade education to work clearing Everglades muck land for fifteen cents an hour before moving to Coconut Grove in 1910. To earn a living he used an ax and a machete to clear the land in the grove and other parts of Dade County’s untapped frontier, established circa 1836. Gibson soon developed a reputation as a hard worker among white settlers, but he also stood out for his refusal to allow them to openly disrespect him. In a 1975 interview, ninety-three-year old Gibson recalled that he would often tell white folks, “Don’t you call me a nigger because I’ll lose respect for you. Call me Gibson. My name is Albert Austin Gibson.” Even though he would spend the rest of his life living in Coconut Grove, Gibson refused to relinquish his British citizenship in a Jim Crow city that denied blacks equal rights.¹

Although South Florida’s unparalleled climate and fertile land attracted a group of wealthy white northern industrialists and civic boosters who sought ways to secure a docile black labor force, many Bahamian blacks established a culture of resistance that rejected subjugation by openly defying white supremacy. As in other parts of the urban South, Marcus Garvey’s UNIA attracted many blacks to South Florida; but Bahamian-born blacks like Gibson, especially working-class men and women, comprised the majority of local Garveyites who embraced the race-first philosophy of this Black Nationalist leader alongside his call for economic empowerment. Notwithstanding the profound impact of Garveyism and the importance of the parent body in New York, economic factors played an equally important role in the decision-making of Garveyites in Miami. At the same time, however, some Bahamian-born blacks established a transnational identity that vacillated between “island nationalism” and Pan-Africanism; in effect, some maintained an apolitical transient status as British subjects while others refused American citizenship and viewed seeking protection against racial discrimination from the British Crown as a more viable option than appealing to local white authorities. To be sure, intraracial ethnic tensions rooted in cultural differences often exacerbated ideological divisions, and members of the white business community often pitted “aliens” against “respectable American negroes,” but both marginalized groups did at times form a united front against racial repression. Nonetheless, thwarting the radical elements of an ethnically diverse black population while maintaining a modicum of civility with a more conservative African American leadership became an integral part of the white power structure’s efforts to uphold white supremacy.²

Image, Race, and Labor in Early Miami

Bahamian migration to the southern region of Florida began in the mid-nineteenth century after the collapse of the Bahamian economy, particularly the pineapple industry. Fishing, sponging, and turtleing expeditions lured Bahamian settlers to the Florida Keys, and by the 1870s and 1880s they had established a vibrant community in Key West.³ Early black settlers to South Florida resided in the older historic neighborhoods or towns outside the original city boundaries: Cocoanut Grove (its original spelling), south of downtown Miami and Lemon City, two miles north of the Miami River. The earliest Bahamian black community in South Florida was established in Coconut Grove, an area settled in 1868 by black and white homesteaders from Great Britain and the Caribbean. And the majority of the Bahamian immigrants residing in the area had left Key West to work at the Peacock Inn, established in the 1880s and named after its white owner, Charles Peacock. After working at the inn, Bahamian-born Mariah Brown earned enough money to build one of the first black homes on Evangelist Street, inspired by similar architectural style homes in the Bahamas and Key West.⁴ Coconut Grove became one the most influential communities in Dade County, which had attracted successful businessman like yacht designer Ralph Munroe, who had invited the Peacock family from the North to visit the community during the winter. During its early development, blacks and whites worked together, but racial lines separating both groups slowly emerged in the early twentieth century. “Colored Town,” later named the Black or West Grove, became a geographical boundary that separated whites from blacks who established Bahamian-style “shotgun” houses along Evangelist Street, later changed to Charles Street. Black Bahamians had established a small settlement in an area known as Kebo and constructed the Odd Fellows Hall, which served as the main gathering place for social activities in the area. In contrast to the Black Grove, African American freedmen from South Carolina established Lemon City, the second well-established community in Dade County designated as a relocation site by the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Since Miami’s inception, race, ethnicity, and class played a critical role in the developing spatial order of the city (and its neighboring communities in Dade County), which kept people of African descent, along with working-class whites, geographically isolated from wealthier native-born whites who often lived closer to Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. A number of white northerners came to South Florida for farming, fishing, or boating, but vigorous promotion of Miami as a tourist haven facilitated its rapid growth as an emerging metropolis after the spirited efforts of pioneer and Cleveland native Julia DeForest Sturtevant Tuttle convinced Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Railroad from Palm Beach to Miami in the late 1880s. According to folklore, after sending his lieutenants to confirm Tuttle’s claim that the worst freeze in Florida history (December 1894 to February 1895) had not destroyed the citrus crops in Dade County, Flagler agreed to her requests, which included an extension of the railroad south of Palm Beach and the construction of a grand hotel in the area.⁵ Flagler became the premier spokesperson for this fledgling new city that had only a few hundred people at the time of its incorporation in 1896. And the Flag­ler administration purchased a tract of land on the west side of the railroad tracks, which housed the early southern blacks who came as laborers to work on the F.E.C. (Florida East Coast) railroad; they included skilled workmen, carpenters, plasterers, and mortar-mixers who cleared land to pave the way for future construction projects like the Royal Palm Hotel.⁶

The extension of Flagler’s railroad from Miami to the Florida Keys dramatically increased the number of Bahamian blacks who came between 1910 and 1920 to work in the burgeoning construction industry and service jobs available in the emerging tourist city; but Flagler’s decision to acquire a hotel in Nassau, the Royal Victoria, and establish a steamship service between Miami and Nassau during the early 1900s also facilitated the transportation of Bahamians to the city. The influx of Bahamian-born blacks during this period has been characterized as the “Miami Craze.”⁷ In 1910, West Indians constituted 30 percent of Miami’s black population. The following decade, blacks comprised approximately 30 percent of Miami’s population (29,000), and Caribbean immigrants constituted 52 percent (4,815) of the city’s black residents (9,270).⁸ At that time, New York was the only city with a larger West Indian immigrant population than Miami.⁹

Miami has never fit comfortably into America’s historical and popular memory of a typical southern city. And in many ways, its proximity to the Caribbean, warm climate, and reputation as a tropical tourist paradise have contributed to this prevailing image. In contrast to North Florida, Miami shared more similarities with Orlando, Daytona Beach, and other increasingly popular tourist destinations in the state. Unlike cities in the northern region, which share a border with deeply southern states like Georgia and Alabama, Miami is located much closer to the Bahamas and Cuba. As a result, the city’s gross demand for labor attracted a large number of British West Indian immigrants and American-born blacks from northern Florida and neighboring states. Commenting on Miami’s appeal to native-born and Caribbean blacks, a black real estate developer observed how the city’s “natural resources and nearly perfect year ’round weather encouraged many of the black railroad workers to remain after the construction of the Florida East Coast system was completed.” In addition, he surmised that blacks from the “Bahamas islands and the West Indies were also enticed to relocate here because of the weather and potential for economic gain.”¹⁰ These black laborers and their families were confined to Miami’s northwest sector of the tracks, which became known as “Colored Town.”¹¹ As one of the oldest neighborhoods located within the city’s original boundaries and adjacent to downtown Miami, it is bordered on the north by Northwest Twenty-first Street, on the south by Northwest Sixth Street, and on the east by Northwest First Avenue. Most of the city’s saloons and brothels were concentrated in this area, and it became increasingly more congested as Jim Crow lines hardened. Nonetheless, Colored Town quickly developed as a thriving commercial district for blacks who owned and operated businesses in the early 1900s. Despite the existence of small bustling black communities in Lemon City, Coconut Grove, and other parts of South Florida, most black Miamians lived in Colored Town, the northwest section of Miami later named the “Central Negro District.”¹²

South Florida served as a gateway and perceived ideal destination for people of African descent from the Caribbean and southern United States. According to the Nassau Tribune, by 1911 the City of Miami had become, “to the Bahamians seeking a livelihood, what Mecca is to the religious Moslem world.”¹³ Bahamian newcomers like John Wright envisioned Miami as a poor man’s paradise and “a young Magic City where money could be ‘shaken from trees.’”¹⁴ At age nineteen, Wright joined over 3,200 other Bahamians migrating to Miami in search of this idealized place. Even prominent British colonial administrators expressed their concerns about the large exodus of Bahamian laborers. Cash became a powerful incentive that drew Bahamian blacks to Miami because the Bahamian truck system primarily used barter as a form of pay.¹⁵ Young single men like Wright dominated the early flow of immigrants who worked as farm laborers and fruit pickers in South Florida’s rich agricultural sector. These poor and unskilled seasonal laborers seeking financial gain periodically returned to the Bahamas at the end of the harvest. They seemingly followed the pattern of many immigrants who planned to establish a successful life in their native land after acquiring sufficient means in America.

As Miami’s tourist industry began to flourish, an increasing number of Bahamian women migrated to work in domestic services as laundresses, nursemaids, cooks, and cleaners while men worked as hack men at the railroad station, hotel porters, tailors, farmers, and blacksmiths. Foreign and native-born black laborers provided the backbone of a burgeoning tourist-based economy which facilitated the emergence of a white establishment that viewed blacks primarily as laborers, entertainers, or exotic showpieces that would cater to the city’s Anglo northern winter tourists.

The City of Miami’s location on the northern bank of the Miami River adjoining Biscayne Bay created a subtropical climate that made it a magnet for white wealthy industrialists from the Midwest and Northeast who envisioned this strip of land as an opportunity to capitalize on its exceptional weather, agricultural fields, and real estate. Although Flagler’s investment of almost half a million dollars in the construction of a railroad, streets, municipal water system, and the five-story Royal Palm Hotel (located along the Miami River’s north bank) served as the primary impetus for economic growth, the city also received government funds to build a port across Biscayne Bay.¹⁶ Flagler Street or Twelfth Street became the main commercial district, but the Royal Palm, opening its doors in 1897, served as the main tourist attraction that enticed commercial travelers and land speculators during its early years. From its earliest days, Miami was emerging as a tourist mecca, competing with other southern metropolises to attract business, trade, and commerce. City boosters claimed that its geographical location and exceptional climate, along with the increasing migration of people from the American South, North, and Midwest, as well as the Caribbean and Latin America, made it “distinctly individual and unique” compared to other southern metropolises.

Unlike New South industrial cities such as Birmingham, Atlanta, and Charleston that boasted industrial growth, Miami promoters like Flagler primarily lauded the city’s exceptional climate, tourist attractions, real estate ventures, and rich agricultural fields.¹⁷ As early as 1904, white boosters made comparisons between the climate in south Dade County and Caribbean islands like Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico to educate readers about “the great range of temperature that is found on the east coast of Florida,” especially for those individuals interested in “looking for a place to grow citrus and tropical fruits and at the same time to engage in growing vegetables for the northern markets.”¹⁸ And during the same year, the official directory of the city and nearby towns described the city as the “more fashionable and artificially beautiful Palm Beach, and it has a clientele every winter of well-known men and women who resort there in December and remain until April.”¹⁹

By the second decade of the twentieth century, Miami had surpassed St. Augustine as the leading tourist destination because of its exponential growth, unparalleled climate, and real estate boom.²⁰ Two decades before the extension of Flagler’s railroad, northeastern Florida was the most frequented destination of northern tourists, primarily wealthy Yankees seeking an escape from harsh winters. Some of the most popular accommodations included the old Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Jacksonville’s “Fifth Avenue Hotel of Florida,” and the Clarendon House in Green Cove Springs, dubbed the “Saratoga of the South,” which served as a major health benefit for northerners suffering from various diseases.²¹ But as promotional travel pieces and civic boosters began touting Miami’s major attractions, the southern region of the state began to draw more northerners than any other part of the country. One of many local souvenir booklets from the early 1920s characterized the city as “a popular winter resort, where more than 200,000 visitors come annually to escape the rigors of ice and snow.”²² John Sewell, superintendent of the construction team at the Royal Palm Hotel, pioneered civic booster efforts to advertise the city as a tourist haven and coined the phrase, “It is always June in Miami.”²³ He later enticed his brother, Everest (“Ev”) to rel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• Introduction
• Part I. The Racial Politics of Boosterism, Black Protest, and Jim Crow Tourism
• Part II. Post–World War II Protest, Northern Migration, and the Illusion of Moderation
• Part III. Civil Rights Liberalism and Black Power in America’s Burgeoning Tri-Ethnic City
• Epilogue
• NOTES
• INDEX
• Illustrations