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For another Miami historian, a handful of words changed the course of Dorothy Jenkins Fields’ life.
“’I guess those people haven’t thought enough of themselves to write their history,’” Fields recalled a downtown Miami librarian telling her in 1974 when her request for books about the history of Black South Floridians came up empty.
That ignited Fields’ fervor not just for documenting Black Miami history but preserving its landmarks. Since that encounter with the librarian, Fields founded The Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida Inc., a nonprofit that has been instrumental in saving the Lyric Theater, D.A. Dorsey House and the Ward Rooming House, all of which are integral threads of the Overtown tapestry.
Originally settled by Southern Black and Bahamian laborers, Overtown blossomed into a rich, entertainment district. Black musicians from Louis Armstrong to Ray Charles to Ella Fitzgerald dazzled crowds in the neighborhood, eventually earning it the nickname “Harlem of the South.”
Everything changed with the construction of Interstate 95. Under the guise of “urban renewal,” an entire community — and much of its history — was destroyed in the 1960s. The end of segregation also meant many sought shelter in new neighborhoods, taking their stories with them.
Others didn’t want to tell their stories. What was done to Black Miamians “kept some people from talking about their history,” said Patricia Jennings Braynon, chairwoman of the Black Archives. Braynon explained how Ku Klux Klan members once threw rattlesnakes on the porches of Black families to intimidate them during election season.
“I believe that these stories need to be told,” Fields said. “Sharing stories will help us as human beings to better understand each other and help us move forward.”
Here’s where some of those stories and others of triumph may be told:
ACE THEATER
Wometco, the Miami movie house chain, opened Coconut Grove’s Ace Theater at 3664 Grand Ave. in the 1930s to serve the Black community.
The Ace was one of only 113 segregated movie theaters where AfricanAmerican audiences could go to see a film in Florida from 1940 to 1953, according to Dade Heritage Trust. The Ace was the only entertainment facility to serve the Black community in Coconut Grove during the city’s segregation era, according to Miami’s Historic Preservation Board’s report on the theater’s designation as a historic site in 2016.
Black audiences from as far south as Key Largo came to see the latest screen adventures from Black actors like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge and Lincoln Perry. Later, Westerns starring John Wayne, movies featuring Elvis Presley, touring stage shows featuring James Brown and blackand-white reels of singer Fats Domino finding his thrill on “Blueberry Hill” screened or played at the Ace.
This, along with activities like graduations and proms.
Ace entertained its last audience when Wometco shuttered the theater in the 1970s. Grove businessman Harvey Wallace, husband to Dorothy Wallace and father to their daughter Denise and grandfather to her daughter Nichelle Haymore, bought the theater in
1979. He intended to convert the structure into a five-story Bahamian marketplace with retail on the ground floor, an auditorium for entertainment on the second floor, and apartments on the top floors, Fields wrote in a Herald column in 2021.
But the McDuffie riots in 1980, along with a nationwide recession, stymied funding and the Ace sat vacant.
The Wallaces were unbowed. After Harvey died in 1988, his wife and daughter, later joined by his granddaughter, determined to get the Ace back in play.
The process has been challenging.
On the plus side, Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board designated the Ace a historic site in 2014. In 2016, Dorothy and Denise Wallace’s efforts led to the theater’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2021, the National Park Service awarded a $398,199 grant to help bolster the Ace Theater Foundation, the Miami nonprofit run by Patricia Wooten. The restoration work has begun, including on the distinctive but weathered ACE marquee, Denise Wallace said.
But more needs to be done to bring the Ace up to code. Wallace said she will make her case on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at a hearing with the National Park Service and the city.
Wallace said once restoration work gets underway and is finished, the foundation would turn the Ace, “back into its original purpose as a multipurpose community facility,” she said.
But don’t look to the
Ace to become solely a movie theater, she said. The market for movie theaters is cratering postpandemic as viewing habits have shifted. Witness the announcement in January of the planned closing of the Regal South Beach multiplex.
Wallace said the foundation is considering a flexible floor plan that could allow for a “multipurpose community center” that could host small concerts, lectures, recitals, film screenings and other events.
The Ace “was open in a dark period of our nation’s history,” Denise Wallace said. “That’s a fact. We’re not going to gloss over that fact. We’re not going to diminish that fact. It was built as a Jim Crow movie theater. You can’t negate that.
“However, out of that history, what I found is that the Ace also served people and there were just so many wonderful lessons that the neighborhood kids learned. So those are stories and we have some of those stories recorded and those are the stories that [we] want to tell.”
BETHEL HOUSE
The Bethel House was built in 1937 by AfricanBahamian settlers who arrived in Dade County in the early 1900s. “The last standing pioneer era house in Perrine,” said Miami preservationist Helen Gage.
Gage led the effort to preserve the house after it was set for demolition in 1995, three years after Hurricane Andrew devastated the South MiamiDade area. But the storm didn’t destroy the hardy Bethel.
In 1996, Bethel House was designated as a historic site and, with assistance from Miami Habitat for Humanity and MiamiDade County, Bethel was relocated a few doors down from its original spot to its locale at 18201 SW 102nd Court in Perrine.
By 2006, the Bethel House was “fully restored and rehabilitated” with funding and assistance provided, in part, by the County’s Task Force on Urban Revitalization,
Gage said.
Bethel operates as an African-Bahamian museum.
“Our programming and events center on educating the youth and current community residents about the original AfricanBahamian settlers of Perrine and the history they paved,” Gage said. “This information is not typically passed down to the next generation, nor is it taught in our schools. Thus, it is up to the elders of the community and the Bethel House to educate younger generations.”
Among its programming: a touring Perrine Pioneer Exhibit that travels to schools, churches and community centers. Bethel hosts the planting of native Bahamian plants and Bahamian Independence Day celebrations.
Future plans for the Bethel House include the addition of a covered terrace to accommodate a larger audience and a “face-lift” in the summer.
“Funding and donations are always welcomed,” Gage said. “However, we would love to gain more traction and recognition from nearby communities to guarantee our longevity.”
When Bethel opened its refurbished doors in December 2006, Gage, a native of Key West, told the Herald: “A lot of the community didn’t understand. They just saw it as a little raggedy house. But I had faith. I told them, ‘If [Hurricane] Andrew didn’t blow it down, it was meant to stay.’ ”
From top left, clockwise, Dorothy Fields at the Dorsey House, home of Miami’s first Black millionaire; Charlayne Thompkins in the bedroom at the Hampton House where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had stayed; Kim Johnson, left, and Donald Burden at Georgette’s Tea Room; Helen Gage at the
Bethel House, now a Bahamian-American museum. Photos by Miami Herald photographer Carl Juste except for Hampton House photo, which was shot by Emily Michot.