miami: another postwar case study

I attended the UM when we won our 2nd  championship.

Mohl builds on Arnold Hirsch's study.

I am looking forward to next week's class and not because it is the last class of the semester. I will really miss the students, some of whom are graduating seniors. I am also looking forward to talking to them about black urban culture as it relates to Miami, my hometown. As mentioned earlier on this blog, my next research project involves an exploration of race and space in Miami across time.  At some point along the way, I will be attentive to the impact of the University of Miami's football program on race relations in South Florida. Whenever I say as much, many people mention ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary on the University of Miami, which certainly addresses this issue in passing. 

Miami in 1919, Perry Castaneda Collection, UT-Austin

The students will not only see this outstanding documentary next week, but will also read an excerpt from University of Alabama at Birmingham's Raymond Mohl and Mark Rose's study on interstate highway politics in South Florida. They will also read a Mohl essay on how Arnold Hirsch's second ghetto thesis relates to postwar housing patterns in Miami (Teresa Van Dyke, a librarian in Special Collections at Florida Atlantic University and one of Mohl's MA students, has also used Miami as a site to explore the second ghetto thesis).

As also earlier mentioned, my family's own migratory patterns in Miami-Dade County certainly demonstrate the belief by Mohl and others that the movement and relocation of African Americans from segregated housing, or "ghettoes," to other areas that eventually became segregated, or "second ghettoes," was a result of many factors including racial hostility via public policy and realtor practice. 

What new things can we learn about the postwar housing experiences of African Americans in urban areas? How can our new understandings of the ways in which "blackness" is understood differently in a county like Miami where people often come from Latin and Caribbean communities push our thinking on this issue? 

The map pictured here depicts Miami before the Second World War, shortly after some of my paternal ancestors relocated to Miami from the Bahamas. Other ancestors would arrive from Georgia and after the war, from Mississippi. 

Just seeing the words "Atlantic Ocean" on the map makes me long for the smell of salt in the air. My family originally lived in the Coconut Grove section of Miami before relocating to then-Carol City, which is in the "second ghetto" about which Mohl writes (neither are pictured on the map). To us, it was wonderful step up as this neighborhood was mostly middle class and filled with three and four bedroom houses. Carol City is now in the City of Miami Gardens. You can always tell how long someone has lived in South Florida. If they call Miami-Dade simply "Dade County" or Carol City simply "Carol City," they have been there for a while.