Overtown Community
American and Caribbean Blacks came to Miami in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and contributed significantly to the city’s growth and its eventual incorporation. Despite their important role, Jim Crow legislation and widespread racism segregated Blacks into the neighborhood now known as Overtown (then known as Colored Town).
Undaunted by these unequal conditions, the African-American residents of Overtown built a vibrant, tight-knit, family oriented community. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and the early part of the 1950s, Overtown thrived, serving as a cultural and entertainment center for the city. Nightclubs and hotels, such as the Flamingo Lounge, the Rockland Palace, the Mary Elizabeth Hotel, and the St. John Hotel drew national talent, both black and white, to the city, transforming the neighborhood into what many called the “Southern Harlem.” Overtown also produced important Civil Rights leaders, such as John E. Culmer and Edward T. Graham.
In 1956 city officials decide to build the Miami Expressway right through the heart of Overtown. Despite community objections, the new route was accepted by the road department and supported by various downtown Miami officials and groups like the Chamber of Commerce. An earlier plan, less destructive to the Overtown Community, was specifically ruled out in order to provide “ample room for the future expansion of the central business district in a westerly direction.”
The construction of I-95 and I-35 ripped through the center of Overtown, wiping out massive amounts of housing as well as Overtown’s main business district – the business and cultural heart of Black Miami. Because of this, the population dropped from about 40,000 to about 10,000. Today, parking lots for the Miami Arena stretch along 2nd Avenue where the Rockland Palace and the Cotton Club once stood.
Outraged by the legacy of such insensitive policies, as well as by repeated incidents of police brutality and general neglect, residents of Overtown have asserted themselves both politically and publicly, a fact most dramatically evidenced during the Republican National Convention riots of 1968, and the 1982 McDuffie Riots. Although never fully recovered from the devastating effects of the public’s general insensitivity to their community’s needs, many Overtown residents retain a strong community spirit and a sense of their own important history.
Print Resources
- Marvin Dunn, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997) This incredibly important book has proven invaluable for fleshing out the Overtown timeline and for contextualizing the various interviews that appear on this website.
Interviews
A Librarian