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.
This past Monday, the students met for the final time this semester. The lesson before them: observing the ways in which Arnold Hirsch's "second ghetto" thesis poses tensions with the University of Miami football team's success in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1983, Hirsch explored the ways in which the postwar migration of African Americans and segregationist practices led to the creation of "second ghettoes" in Chicago. His thesis could be applied to other communities including Miami. As Raymond Mohl wrote in his study of postwar Miami, African Americans residing in this city were often encouraged to move to other communities by realtors and policy makers. These "new" communities to which blacks moved were often initially inhabited by white residents. When whites fled, these communities became "second ghettoes." The topic resonated with me personally as I grew up in Miami and never considered the four bedroom house in Carol City (now Miami Gardens) to which my parents moved in 1972 from Coconut Grove as a ghetto home (It was very different from the Kingsway two-bedroom duplex we started out in in "The Projects" of Coconut Grove, now called West Grove. I guess "ghetto" does not always mean slums, or the built environment, as much as it means segregation). During my preliminary exams, I read Mohl's work and learned that, indeed, my neighborhood was a planned community for African Americans who originally lived in other portions of then-Dade County. The community in which I lived was filled with residents who moved from Liberty City, another neighborhood created especially for African Americans including those who lived in crowded conditions in Coconut Grove and Overtown. Some of their forced removal had to do with the building of I-95, which displaced at least 10,000 African Americans residing in Overtown alone. So how does this narrative relate to the University of Miami football team? Well, some of the team's players had roots in these very neighborhoods, which some observers believed was reflected in their behavior on and off the field. In the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the team's success during the mid-1980s to early 1990s, the students in this class learned how the team, despite their difficult beginnings and ongoing trials, some self-inflicted, still brought pride to the city of Miami, which had suffered negative publicity following civil disturbances in the city in the early 1980s. I attended this University during the late 1980s and saw the success up close. The team's legendary achievements began under the leadership of Howard Schnellenberger in the 1980s and continued under the guidance of other coaches including Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. Part - though not all - of the team's spectacular performance, which led to four national championships between 1983 and 1991, had to do with the ways in which some of the African American football players bonded in particular with Johnson, a white man from a working class background in South Texas. This dynamic ultimately shows again the complexities of America's racial history. Here are excerpts from the students' in-class short reflections on the ways in which race and class help tell the story of the football team's success and how the second ghetto thesis, ironically, can be seen in that success. Kalynn: "In Miami, [many] African Americans were displaced from their homes because of the development of interstates."
Christin: "[Many] realtors knew the [pay-off in capitalizing] on black [migration] and used it to their benefit.
Alexis: "The [football] players were reflecting life in the city in which they [once] played [Optimist] football for their parents and neighbors."
Roosevelt: "[The] football players were taught how to play football ...at a young age...The big high school games would be played at the Orange Bowl."
Raven: "The community that created their hard lives has resonance with the life that [Coach Jimmy Johnson] lived."
Shanece: "[Many of] the football players came from 'second ghetto' [communities]. Coach Johnson also grew up in a [working class] household."
Lauria: [Some of] Johnson's players were from 'second ghettoes' (ie. they were or their [ancestors] were often displaced by the building of [certain communities specifically for African Americans]. [These communities] had a lot of influence on these [young men].
Aaron: "[Coach] Johnson had a special bond with his players...Although they were of different races, Johnson and his players were able to create their own sense of community."
Shariyah: "A lot of the unfairness [surrounding the players] had to do with the conservativeness of the [United States], [but] a white man ...was like a father figure to the minorities on the team." On another note, some of the students were able to see the fruits of their work on an Afro Brazilian poster exhibition. Some even attended talks by Afro Brazilian scholar Amilcar Pereira. See photos from that exhibit, which they helped curate, in this course's next blog posting.
Today, Dr. Franky Abbott shared the dynamics of "return migration to Atlanta with the students in this class. This topic was one of her key research interests when she was a doctoral student at Emory University. Using Census data, she studied the migratory patterns of African Americans as well as people of African and West Indian descent into Atlanta since 1990. Interestingly, she is cautious about finding parallels between this trend and the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North from 1910 to 1970. As mentioned in the last blog posting, some of the Atlanta black migrants in more recent years were actually Northern born individuals, among them New Yorkers, who migrated to Atlanta in search of a better and more affordable quality of life. I could well relate to her lecture as I know several people who lived in New York and New Jersey, but have relocated to Atlanta in the last ten years. In fact, as a student at the University of Miami more than twenty years ago, I had a classmate from Boston who greatly desired to move to Atlanta upon graduation. For her and others, this city appeared as a "black Mecca." Abbott also pointed out that some migrants are Southern born individuals who felt a "call" to return home. This portion of her lecture made me think of the motion picture, "Down in the Delta," which concerns an African American Chicago-based woman (Alfre Woodward) who travels to Mississippi to reconnect with her familial past. She meets her cousin (Wesley Snipes), an Atlanta lawyer who represents the educated black elite represented in Abbott's study though one who migrates to Atlanta not from the North, but from Mississippi. "Called home" where he questions his seeming success, he forms a bond with his cousin of more modest means. She, too, is changed by their meeting and establishes a sense of purpose and regains her confidence as an unmarried mother of two. After Abbott's lecture, the students briefly discussed their final paper topics, which will all - with the exception of one that focuses on storefront churches in the context of African American northward migration during the twentieth century and another that draws attention to the ways in which skin complexion played a role in the success of African American Civil Rights leaders - juxtapose the idea of African American life in cities in conversation with a primary source. The sources the students selected include hip hop music, visual imagery of University of Alabama football fans, the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA basketball franchise, three televisions shows ("Scandal," "Good Times" and "The Cosby Show"), and two films ("The Five Heartbeats" and "The Princess and the Frog"). Next week, they will use Raymond Mohl's research on Miami to explore race relations and Arnold Hirsch's thesis on the "making of second ghettoes" (this thesis was the subject of an earlier blog entry). This lesson will involve their watching a clip of The U," an ESPN 30 for 30 production focusing on the University of Miami football team. At stake will be making connections between race relations in Miami across time and the ways in which race and urban life inform the experiences of African American UM football players during their winning years in the 1980s and 1990s. I look forward to
our next and final class meeting for the semester. This was my first
stand-alone course. It has truly been a pleasure and, indeed, a privilege learning more about
urban black life in America while teaching this subject to an
outstanding group.
