Coming Fall 2013

HY 300, The Nineteenth Century City, 3:30-6 pm Wednesdays, University of Alabama

The Grove

Conch salad purchased from a street vendor.

My brother and I with a childhood Grove friend. I'm on the right.

I am in the process of grading papers for this course and wanted to share some more parting words along the way. On the day I taught a lesson on Arnold Hirsch's "second ghetto" thesis in the context of Miami, my hometown, my great aunt passed away. She was from the side of my family that is of Bahamian descent. She and I share this ancestral past with many African Americans in South Florida, a topic I discussed  in a recent blog entry. Last week, I traveled to Miami to attend her funeral, which was held at the beautifully pink Christ Episcopal Church in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. The church was opened in 1901 by Bahamian blacks. 

During the funeral, many memories of my childhood in Miami came. Some were prompted by my seeing in one stained glass window mention of St. Alban's, a preschool in the Grove that my brother and I attended before our parents relocated us to an unincorporated neighborhood known as Carol City (now Miami Gardens). After the service, while my brother and I were on a run to purchase extra food for the repast, we passed a street vendor selling conch salad from his rickety brown van. This is a dish easily found in Bahamian communities like the Grove and certainly in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.  

One of the highlights of my visit to Miami for my great aunt's funeral was spending time with relatives including one who, upon learning of my desire to share more about the history of Bahamians in Coconut Grove, alerted me to a documentary project in the works by Jeffrey Poitier, brother of the actor Sidney Poitier who was also a subject of a recent blog entry. Without my knowing it, this relative (who is, incidentally, related to me on both my mother's and father's side), dialed Jeffrey and handed the phone to me. In a lively conversation, I learned about his many projects, among them, a documentary on the late Birmingham Civil Rights leader Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth. He discussed his other experiences including teaching at the university level. We both affirmed the need to actively involve students in studying the past in ways that go beyond classroom instruction and learning (this blog is just one way I strive to do just that. The students' participation in an Afro Brazilian poster exhibition was another way). 

I was thrilled to speak with him and to learn about his documentary concerning the Grove. A trailer for "Voices,"  this 12-part, self-funded series for which he needs additional money before it can be completed, can be seen above. In this trailer, I saw the Rev. Rudolph Daniels, pastor of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church where my father's funeral was held last year. Founded in 1895, Macedonia is the oldest African American church in Miami. Many of my relatives are buried across the street from this church in Charlotte Jane Memorial Park cemetery. After seeing Rev. Daniels and hearing the lovely lilt of the Bahamian voice in this trailer, the memories really started coming. 

I "felt" my past including the first five years of my life, which were spent in a duplex on Jefferson Street off of Charles Terrace in a Grove  neighborhood generally referred to as "The Projects." Poitier's project also prompted many feelings, not all of them good. Many Coconut Grove African Americans are angered by the impact of gentrification in this community. In fact, while out on our drive, my brother and I experienced the effects of such gentrification first-hand. A bicyclist yelled angrily at us because he believed we were blocking his pathway even though our vehicle had nowhere to  go  owing to the thick traffic on the east side of what I still believe is one community.

 I believe this even though the now-predominantly black area in which I grew up is now called "West Grove." This saddens me. I knew of no such thing when my auntie sat on Peacock Park with white hippies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, or when we visited our paternal Bahamian relatives who still own a house in the Grove, or when our maternal grandmother sold conch salad or fruit and vegetables that we picked with our very own hands in Homestead in order to sell at the old Farmer's Market on Grand Avenue. Known as "Bahama Mama," my grandmother was a mainstay at the annual Goombay Festival though she was really from Mississippi. She and my grandfather were among the many African Americans who left the "South" in search of better lives during the postwar period. This desire is one way their brown and once-rural bodies became associated with the city. 

My grandma initially learned Bahamian recipes from my mother who married my father, a man with Bahamian blood though he also had Southern ancestry on his mother's side (my father's maternal relatives hail from Fitzgerald, Georgia. My sister and I visited with relatives on this side two days after my great aunt's funeral). I have always been proud of my island and Southern roots even as I joked with the students enrolled in this class  that Florida's place as a "Southern" state is always questionable as one YouTube clip makes clear. 

As I prepare to graduate next week and  return to my dissertation this summer with the goal of thinking deeply about how to make it into a book (while also finally relaxing), I will keep in the back of head and heart my love for Miami and especially the Grove. As I have earlier said on this blog, I truly hope to address my childhood home in an academic work in the years ahead. A Miami-born mentor who has a background in education has expressed a desire to work on this project, too. She was born and raised in the Liberty City section of Miami. 

As an undergraduate at the University of Miami in the 1980s, I was a work study student in her office.  For now, I am grateful that Jeffrey Poitier is among those who have laid a foundation for such an inquiry. Again, it was a pleasure keeping this blog, which has had 1900 pageviews from late November to date from the United States and places as diverse the Philippines, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada. It is a pleasure because I sense there is a great deal of interest not only in people of African descent, but people of African descent in city spaces.

Christ Episcopal Church in the Grove.

One of the many stained glass windows in this church.