Annual Black History tour educates Miami locals, tourists

In an effort to educate the public on Miami’s history, Miami-Dade Transit provided a Black History tour to South Florida locals and tourists last week. The annual tour was a salute to Black History Month and pays tribute to the generations of black migrants who struggled with adversity while settling in Miami.

The free tour, which started 17 years ago in 1994, travels through significant neighborhoods enriched with black culture, such as Coconut Grove, where the Bahamians created the first black settlement in the 1890s, and Overtown, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Miami. The event has remained popular throughout the years and has become an educational tool for the community.

Miami-Dade Transit provided bus travel for the three-and-a-half hour tour that left from the Stephen P. Clark Center in Downtown Miami on Saturday, Feb. 26. Many of the attendees were tourists, many of which whom were not aware of Miami’s ties with black culture.

“I never knew that there was any black history in Miami,” said London Coe, a tourist from Ohio who came to Miami for its well-known South Beach Food & Wine Festival. “Miami is usually Latin, so it’s exciting to find cultural relevance, especially in new places.”

Coe visits once a year for the festival, but heard about the Black History tour among her travels. Although she isn’t new to the Miami area, she didn’t know that Miami had any history to offer.

It is common for out-of-towners to visualize Miami as “paradise” with palm trees, beautiful beaches and the rich and famous. However, Miami is not just rich with tropical scenery—it is a region also rich in diverse cultural history filled with stories of people with diverse ethnicities.

Overtown, according to tour narrator Romel McIntyre, began as a place for black workers of the Henry Flagler Railroad to live during the time of segregation. It then began to develop into a thriving community with schools, churches and businesses.

The tour is narrated by Metrobus operators and highlights landmarks in the communities, including Charles Avenue in Coconut Grove; the Lyric Theatre in Overtown; Georgette’s Tea Room in Brownsville; Liberty Square Project in Liberty City, along with the homes of black pioneers, such as E.W.F. Stirrup and Mariah Brown, as well as other historical sites.

Some residents appreciated the tour’s use of bringing awareness to Miami’s black culture. Others, like Chris Loubeau, a local Haitian-American history teacher, used the tour to remind themselves of the real Miami they live in.

“When I’m in Miami I forget I’m in the South, I forget that there was segregation, because living in the city is very cosmopolitan, it’s very Latin. It’s nice to remember the true history of Miami,” Loubeau said.

During the tour, McIntyre described the background of the sites visited, as well as the accomplishments of the original settlers of these communities, and the challenges they endured during the era of segregation.

As the tour concluded and the buses returned to the Stephen P. Clark Center, attendees agreed that the tour helped inform them of the black community in Miami.

Coe explained that the tour created a cultural connection to the Miami locals.

“This tour brought out a different experience for me,” she said. “When you gather together in a public place, like we did, and experience these places that we went to, it makes you feel like you’re part of the city.”