Tag Archives: No Skin In The Game

The Ferguson Riots ► No Skin In The Game

November 26, 20141967 Detroit Riot, Ferguson, Michael Brown, No Skin In The Game, Officer Darren Wilson, Prosecutor Bob McCulloughHeadly Westerfield

Gordon Lightfoot’s autograph on a picture of my father’s
store taken in Detroit on THE “Black Day In July,” 1967.

A question I have been asked repeatedly since Monday night is “Did you think you’d be seeing riots so many years after the the ’60s?” My answer is both “yes” and “no.”

While I’m not an authority on riots, I did write The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit ► Part Five, an investigative look at Motown’s several Race Riots, beginning with the first in 1863. The other reasons I get asked such a question is because of my studying of Race Relations and writing about same in Coconut Grove, Florida.

I was 15 years old when Detroit exploded in riot. Back then I wasn’t as educated about the deep history of race relations in ‘Merka as I am now. I remember asking over and over again why people would burn down their own neighbourhood, a sentiment I’ve seen several times concerning Ferguson since Monday night.

Now, older and wiser, I understand that rage often has no direction. Rage follows no logic.

I have often said that if I were a Black man in this country, I’d be
an angry Black man. Long ago I recognized the playing field between the
races was not level. I recognized the playing field has never been level.
I recognize that the playing field is still not level. Sure, it’s more level than it’s ever been. BUT, IT’S NOT LEVEL. That’s the only point that really matters. Despite 238 years of living under “all men are created equal,” IT’S STILL NOT LEVEL! If it pisses me off as a privileged White man, imagine how Black folks feel to be living it.

Trying to understand the ’67 Detroit Riot was the impetus for studying race relations the rest of my life.

My father had skin in the game. His furniture store on 12th Street, now Rosa Parks Blvd., was looted from top to bottom. Not a single piece of furniture was left when he was allowed to return by the National Guard to pick up the pieces and start all over again in the same location. Was his store targeted because he was a White store owner in a Black neighbourhood? That’s certainly within the realm of possibility. It’s also possible that by the time the unrest traveled the 4 blocks from Clairmount to Blaine, nothing but rage mattered anymore.

In my look at the Detroit Riots I mention over and over again that riots and flames cannot erupt in a vacuum. Ferguson didn’t just happen. There’s a history there. The rage in Ferguson had a very long fuse. And, while I don’t condone the rioting, I can understand the sentiment.

I have no skin in the game. I don’t live in Ferguson. I’m not Black. For that matter, I don’t live in Coconut Grove either. However, I’m a historian and this history touches me deeply. For the past several years I have been telling people that I’m not really writing about Black History, I’m merely writing about the history they didn’t teach us in school, our shared history.

The more this history is relegated to the margins, the less we can understand incidents like Ferguson. Ferguson is best understood in context, not as an isolated incident. In my research of Ferguson during the last 100 days, I’ve learned it shares a lot of history with Detroit. While Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis and Detroit is a city, that’s about the only major difference. In both places:

Black folk were pushed into certain neighbourhoods due to discriminatory covenants in deeds;
The same redlining affected both communities;
The same Blockbusting tactics turned stable neighbourhoods from White to Black in a matter of a few years;
The same official federal housing policies kept the Black and White communities from integrating decades ago;
The same White Flight acerbated the divide;
The same inadequate school systems when compared to White neighbourhoods;
The lack of jobs and opportunity in the affected neighbourhoods;
The same systemic racism, which suppressed incomes in certain neighbourhoods, led to urban blight;
The same absentee landlords who cared little about upkeep;
The same “blame the victim” attitude from those who only see the symptoms and not the disease of systemic racism.

All of this leads to the ghettoization of people, which has led to a gulf so wide that those on the opposite poles no longer have a common language to speak to each other.

These articles go into far
more depth than I ever could:

The Ferguson Lie

Bob McCulloch’s pathetic prosecution of Darren Wilson

The Independent Grand Jury That Wasn’t
The Ferguson prosecutor’s bizarre, self-justifying
press conference revealed his own influence.

How Not to Use a Grand Jury

It’s Incredibly Rare For A Grand Jury
To Do What Ferguson’s Just Did

Why The Ferguson Grand Jury Didn’t Indict

Ferguson Grand Jury Evidence Reveals
Mistakes, Holes In Investigation

Documents Released in the Ferguson Case
The documents and evidence presented to the grand jury in Clayton,
Mo.,
that was deciding whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson
in the August
shooting of Michael Brown. The documents were
released by the St. Louis
County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch.

Ferguson Residents Speak Out: ‘I Just Started
Crying, Because There Is No Hope For Us’

How to Deal With Friends’ Racist Reactions to Ferguson

Ferguson Prosecutor Discovered With Connection
To Darren Wilson’s Defence Fundraiser

Officer Darren Wilson’s story is unbelievable. Literally.

A prominent legal expert eviscerates the
Darren Wilson prosecution, in 8 tweets

“Oh excuse me, isn’t that allowed?”

However, those who have their eyes open understand how the Grand Jury system was rigged in favour of Officer Darren Wilson. Those who held out a slight hope that the system would provide justice were sorely disappointed. Those who expected no better result understood that justice was something that only money, and privilege, can buy. Is it any wonder that people exploded in anger?

It’s easy to blame the rioters for the riot. It’s illegal to riot. Rioting breaks every social contract needed in order keep our streets safe from anarchy.

See? It’s just that easy.

I place far more blame for the riot on Prosecutor Bob McCulloch than anyone on the streets of Ferguson.

In a world where everyone agrees a ham sandwich can be indicted by a Grand Jury, McCullough failed to bring it home and get a trial for the killing of Michael Brown. He’s either incompetent or this was done deliberately and he’s been in the job to long to be considered incompetent. McCullough got what he wanted.

With the gaggle of international media present in Ferguson, McCullough could have given everybody a much shorter heads-up and then read his statement. Why did he choose to wait so long? It gave everyone many hours to gather. Furthermore, after announcing the time he would give his statement, McCullough inexplicably delayed it by another hour, when it would be that much darker.

Try and wrap your brain around this: During all the previous Ferguson protests police attempted to clear the streets as soon as it became dark. Now suddenly on Monday evening a crowd was encouraged to gather after dark.

Darkness also provides cover for other nefarious things. The KKK promised violence. So did Anonymous. In fact, those two groups promised violence on each other. Furthermore, there’s nothing to dismiss the possibility of agent provacateurs, as has happened during other protests in other locations. So many people wanted a riot — so many people predicted a riot — that it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Welcome to Ferguson. Here’s your rock.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t also proportion some of the blame on Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, who failed his citizens miserably. Long before there was even a hint of a verdict, Nixon decided to deploy the National Guard, in effect telling the neighbourhood that they couldn’t be trusted. Then, prior to being deployed and in answer to reporter’s questions, Nixon refused to say — or couldn’t say — who would be in charge of the National Guard.

Apparently nobody, as it turned out. While the vast majority of protestors were only there to express their First
Amendment Right to protest, shortly after McCullough made his announcement a very small contingent of protestors started smashing windows. Where were the police and National Guard as things started to go sideways? Why was there a police car just left parked where the protestors could attack it? There’s no way to prove this, but I feel it was left as a provocation, the same way a police car was just waiting for protestors to attack it in Toronto during the G20. It justified the crackdown that followed.

As it turned out, the National Guard was off protecting infrastructure. Were they fearing a terrorist attack? The St. Louis Police, or so it appears, were protecting their own asses. Why weren’t they protecting people and property? Oh, that’s right. It was only Black people and Black property. No biggie. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Consider this: Those who are constantly trying to make it seem that the Black community is scary and monolithic got what they needed in Ferguson. Was that accidental? We may never know.

The only people who didn’t get what they needed are the people who live in Ferguson and, trust me, we all have skin in that game. As no less a personage than Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins ► Chapter Two

May 25, 2014E.W.F. Stirrup House, institutional racism, No Skin In The Game, One Grove, Racism, The Color Line, The Colour Line, unpacking-coconut-grove, Wall, Wall of Shame, Where The Sidewalk Ends Racism BeginsHeadly Westerfield

Our next destination in Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins.

This path runs along another section of The Colour Line in
Coconut Grove. Note the fence. We’ll get back to that later.

Before beginning our second West Grove stroll, it’s worth reading the last Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins. Since it was published in December, additional info about the Coconut Grove Colour Line has been found. In Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America [published by Augsburg Fortress, 1991], Joseph R. Barndt writes:

A southern version of these traceable corporate decisions to create a Black ghetto exists in Miami Florida. Running through the entire area called Coconut Grove on the South End of Miami are the remains of an eight-foot stone wall, built to separate Black and white residential neighborhoods. Resolution 745, adopted at Miami City Planning Board meeting of July 21, 1941, reads as follows: “A resolution recommending that the establishment of a permanent diving line between white and colored occupancy in the area north of Grand Avenue and east of Douglas Road.” There are also later resolutions that describe the placement, size, access, roads, and responsibility for maintenance of the wall. The wall’s remains still stand, but few citizens of Coconut Grove remember its original purpose, or the decisions that created it.

Fewer remember the next Colour Line we will visit on our Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins walking tour, although it’s far less hidden. Rather than running along the backyards of a neighbourhood, it’s in plain sight. An entire block of houses stare out at it. Furthermore, it’s not just in plain sight, but maintained and fortified to this very day. Let’s go for a walk.

From where one sidewalk ends to where the next sidewalk ends.

We begin right where we left off the last time. While standing on Douglas Road at The Colour Line facing The Wall of Shame, turn left, and cross Douglas. This will put you on Franklin Avenue. Walk east along the southern edge of the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery, named after the wife and childhood sweetheart of E.W.F. Stirrup. This was once the only place in Miami where Black folk could be buried and, contrary to some references found on the internet, is not where Michael Jackson filmed Thriller. Past the cemetery is one modern 2-story home and then several single family homes in the Coconut Grove vernacular of being either modified Conch or Shotgun styles. Turn right at the little traffic circle at Plaza, the first street, and walk down to where the sidewalk ends. That’s where racism begins and Marler Avenue begins.

Marler Avenue is a funny little street in Coconut Grove, “little” being the operative word. It runs east-west for one short block, from Hibiscus Street to Plaza Street, with houses only along the north side. Every one of those houses looks out at a wall — overgrown with foliage and almost invisible in parts, unless you know where to look.

I first learned of Marler Avenue from an article called The Wall, which Kirk Nielsen wrote for Miami New Times way back in 1998:

One look at Marler Avenue clarifies [Marler resident David] White’s frustration: Not only are he and his neighbors fenced in at both ends of the block, but along the southern edge of the tiny street is a ten-foot fence. “This all used to be open,” White explains, standing in his driveway and pivoting 180 degrees as he points from one end of the street to the other. “We used to walk through there.” He gestures toward one section of fence with a coil of concertina barbed wire — the kind used in military operations: “Totally unnecessary,” White exclaims, shaking his head, his hands now tucked inside his back pockets.

Will Johnson, who returned home to the black Grove four years ago after eighteen years in the U.S. Army, is offended by the notion that white Grovites would put up barricades to protect themselves from their black neighbors. “The idea that a man would put that damn concertina wire on top of the fence there,” says Johnson, age 46, surveying the barrier with White. “The truth is it won’t make any difference at all. The guys know how to get over there and rob their ass anyway. It’s not a deterrent.”

White regards the barriers as vestiges of “segregation and white dominance. And I say, look, I pay taxes the same as anyone else. I don’t necessarily want to go into their community, but I do want to make sure that if I need to go over there for anything I have the accessibility. Now, if I’m going to go over to Plymouth Congregational, I gotta go all the way around” — he twirls slowly in a half-circle to indicate the circuitous route he would have to take — “instead of the way the streets were supposed to be.”

A map dated 1947-1949, before Marler Avenue was closed off on all sides.

That wall is the Marler Avenue Colour Line, but it also demarcates the end of the backyards of houses that front along Loquat, one block south. If you look closely at the map above, you will see a faint line running west from Marler, which would have extended the street all the way to Douglas Road, also known as 37th. In fact Marler was supposed to have gone through to Douglas, as this map from the late ’40s indicates. It also shows some other Marler mysteries. For instance both Plaza and Hibiscus were also supposed to link up to Loquat Avenue.

Back then Marler, Plaza, and Hibiscus were nothing more than a dirt roads that became mired in mud during the rainy season. However, a curious thing happened on what should have been the western end of Marler Avenue. The White homeowners on Loquat Avenue illegally extended their backyards into the right of way, closing off Marler. And, that’s how Marler Avenue lost access to Douglas Road. Quietly. Illegally. Racially.

Hibiscus Street never went through to Loquat as it should have either. Eventually that land was sold off and condos built. And, that’s how Hibiscus lost access to Loquat Avenue. Even more curious is the evolution of how Plaza Street lost access to Loquat.

Plaza Street begins its southward trek at the famed US-1. At Grand Avenue, once the thriving Black business district of Coconut Grove, it takes a slight jog. Today, it continues all the way down to Marler, where the sidewalk ends. According to that 1940s map, [above] Plaza Street was supposed to take another slight jog at Marler before continuing south past Loquat in South Grove, where at Poinciana Avenue, it would make a gentle left turn to connect to Main Highway. However, that was not to be.

When the lower section of Plaza, along with Marler and Hibiscus, were paved sometime in the ’70s, this dogleg, between Marler and Hibiscus remained dirt. It was little traveled by vehicles because it wasn’t well maintained and, quite frankly, South Grove had little reason to go north into West Grove, which was considered unsafe. West Grove, for the most part, traveled north to Grand Avenue to shop and be entertained. This little section of what should have been Plaza Street eventually became an overgrown footpath that crossed the Coconut Grove Colour Line from West Grove to South Grove, Black Grove to White Grove.

It remained a footpath until some time in the early ’90s when — without warning and city approval — a chain link fence was erected that closed off the bottom of Marler Avenue entirely. No one knows who paid to have it put up, but fingers were pointed at White residents in South Grove reacting to a perception of heightened crime, accusing the perps using this path.

The chain link fence didn’t stay up very long.

IRONY ALERT: Just like it was the complaints of White folk that got Old Smokey closed down, and
just like it was the White folk that finally got the western edge of the Wall of Shame taken down, it was the White folk of South Grove who were
responsible for getting the chain link fence taken down. A good many of the residents of West Grove worked for families in South Grove as gardeners, maids, handymen, and nannies. When the Plaza extension was closed off to foot traffic, these tradesfolk started complaining to their employers because, suddenly, they were forced to walk a lot farther to get to work. The fence came down.

There had been other leaks in The Wall of Shame. Along the south side of Marler that section of the wall had been porous. People remember using dirt paths to take shortcuts to Loquat and walk to Plymouth Congregational Church. But over the years one link after another was closed off until the Plaza foot path became the last surviving link between West Grove and South Grove along residential streets.

For the longest time it remained a dirt path. Eventually this rough footpath was improved by the City of Miami. Paving stones were added and the foliage would be cut back occasionally. However, it was poorly maintained over the years. That is, until quite recently.

In February this reporter first visited Marler Avenue to begin research on this post, and to scope out the lay of the land. Way back then the edges of the path were falling apart. Many pavers had been stolen. Sinkholes in several places made walking a baby stroller difficult. A second visit a few weeks later showed newer destruction. The post that would keep vehicles off the foot path had been flattened, probably by a vehicle. [A big rock at the south end of the path would have kept it from exiting on Loquat, however.] A third, more recent, visit held a much bigger surprise. A new, sturdier post had been installed to keep vehicles out and the path had been repaired. All the pavers were replaced and leveled, with the edges shored up. It wasn’t until I started taking videos to document the maintenance that I noticed something very disturbing.

BEFORE:

February 25, 2014: Crossing The Colour Line in Coconut Grove, from
Black Grove to White Grove, from Marler Avenue to Loquat Avenue

AFTER:

April 21, 2014: Note the brand new
addition to the fence along The Colour Line.

This is pretty much where maps say Marler Avenue should have met Douglas Road

As the path became more navigable, and the wild foliage cut back drastically, someone must have felt far more vulnerable. Why else would another 2 feet be added to the top of The Wall of Shame, The Colour Line of Coconut Grove? Furthermore, it was done in the cheesiest way possible, by just nailing new boards on top of the old ones.

No matter. It still makes a statement about keeping Black Grove separate from White Grove in 2014, 16 years after Black residents told Miami New Times how offended they are by a constant reminder of systemic racism. Despite the One Grove mural, the Black and White communities in The Grove are quite separate, and have been for decades.

As I said in the first entry in this series:

The Coconut Grove Wall of Shame™ is not unlike the wall in my home town of Detroit known alternatively as The 8 Mile Wall, The Wailing Wall, or the Birwood Wall. A search on the Googalizer for the 8 Mile Wall turns up references, history, as well as tons of images. However, one has to go digging to find any images or references to the Coconut Grove Wall, the history of which is being buried like much of the history of West Grove.

The Coconut Grove Wall of Shame is far longer that the 8 Mile Wall. The more I research Coconut Grove, the more I realize it is the story of Race Relations in this country writ large. However, West Grove is the exception that proves the rule. What has always put Coconut Grove into stark relief is the fact that, at one time, it had the highest percentage of Black home ownership than anywhere else in the country. Consequently it couldn’t be colonized; it had to be surrounded and walled in on all sides. Much of that wall still exists and the current invisible Colour Line can still be traced.

COMING SOON: Another walking tour along the Coconut Grove Colour Line.

Read: Happy Birthday Coconut Grove!!! Now Honour Your Past
More raw Marler Avenue videos in The Colour Line at YouTube

The Bicycle Shop The Latest In The Cultural Plunder of Coconut Grove

December 23, 2013Aries Development, Coconut Grove Playhouse, E.W.F. Stirrup, E.W.F. Stirrup House, Gino Falsetto, No Skin In The GameHeadly Westerfield

The Coconut Grove Playhouse before the hoarding was fixed

Recent news trickling out of Miami-Dade County has exposed more backroom machinations concerning the Coconut Grove Playhouse and — appearing for the very first time in any of the negotiations — The Bicycle Shop.

Before getting too deeply into the weeds, this news proves that once again the ultimate stakeholders — the citizens of Coconut Grove and taxpayers of Miami — were played for dupes. All decisions concerning the Playhouse’s future have already been set in stone, without any public input whatsoever. Furthermore, not all those decisions have been made public yet, such as the ultimate design.

There was a time I was ambivalent about the Coconut Grove Playhouse. I vaguely understood it to be mired in scandal and controversy. However, my cursory research showed that it was one of those things that served White Coconut Grove and I was researching the unique history of Black Coconut Grove. I was already committed to saving the historic, 120-year old E.W.F. Stirrup House; I didn’t have time for another Coconut Grove boondoggle.

My Trolleygate series proved why I need to follow all anonymous tips to see where they ultimately lead. It’s all interconnected in ways I could never have imagined when I started this research 5 years ago. The Stirrup House is catercorner to the rear of the Playhouse, just across the
street from the Charles Avenue historical marker. Oddly enough it’s been empty and undergoing Demolition by Neglect just about as long as the Playhouse has been shuttered. However, proximity and similar fates were not all that connected the two properties. I have since found two important links between Ebeneezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup and the Coconut Grove Playhouse that finally placed it on my radar screen.

The Charles Avenue historical marker with the E.W.F. Stirrup House

The first goes all the way back to the 1920s and, to understand it, a small history lesson is in order. At that time E.W.F. Stirrup was one of the unlikeliest Movers and Shakers of a nascent Coconut Grove tourist industry. Ebeneezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup was a Black man who, through hard work and a good business sense, became one of the Grove’s largest landowners and one of Florida’s first Black millionaires. His own house on Charles Avenue, which looked out over his holdings, was a 2-story showpiece, in a 1 story Conch house neighbourhood.

Together, with the other Movers & Shakers of the Grove, Stirrup must have anticipated reaping a financial windfall when, in the early 1920s, they commissioned The Bright Plan, the first urban renewal plan ever devised for Coconut Grove. Had the Bright Plan been implemented, Coconut Grove would have become the jewel of South Florida. A long boulevard with fountains down the middle would have led to an ornately appointed Coconut Grove City Hall, located approximately where Cocowalk is nowadays. All the designs of the buildings and fountains were based on a Mediterranean style. The Charles, Franklin, and Williams Avenue corridor would have become a golf course and the neighbourhood now known as West Grove would have been lost.

On the planning maps “Coloredtown,” would have been pushed to “the other side of the tracks,” just like in every other city in ‘Merka. That it didn’t happen is one of the things that makes Coconut Grove unique in this country. While Coconut Grove had its own Colour Line circling the traditional Black neighbourhood, it did not include railroad tracks.

Related: Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins

However, it was not to be. Before the Bright Plan could be implemented, the Florida land boom went bust. By 1925 the words “Florida real estate” had became a national joke, so much so that George S. Kaufman’s Broadway musical-comedy The Cocoanuts revolved around swampland, tourism, and Irving Berlin tunes. Starring the Marx Brothers, it was set in Cocoanut Grove [note the “a,” the original spelling before amalgamation] and was a huge hit. The 1929 movie of the same name, with the same Marx Brothers, further cemented the town’s reputation.

A page from The Bright Plan shows the grand boulevard from Biscayne
Bay to a Coconut Grove City Hall. The odd shape in the upper-left is
where Coloredtown would have moved had this plan been implemented.

After the Bright Plan fell apart (younger) Miami annexed (older) Coconut Grove, including all of West Grove, or Coloredtown, or Black Grove, or Kebo, the African name given by the original Bahamian residents.

And, that almost didn’t happen either. Some White folk — among them some of those same Movers and Shakers that didn’t get rewarded financially when the Bright Plan died — lobbied against including West Grove in the boundaries of the new Miami.

It was fairly common in this country, as towns expanded and new areas
annexed, to exclude any of the small Black enclaves that had developed here and
there. The mere presence of Black folk could depress property values (and still does, for that matter). Whenever possible annexation occurred around these small Black enclaves until they were eventually swallowed up by the city.

That’s because — no matter where you go and no matter the era — the Movers and Shakers are, essentially, the monied and propertied of a given area. What Movers and Shakers generally want is to acquire more money and property, in order to become bigger Movers and Shakers. The Coconut Grove Movers and Shakers were no different. It was thought not having a Black area would make the new Miami more attractive for development, rewarding those who held property in Coconut Grove.

When Miami decided to annex West Grove along with the rest of Coconut Grove, a smaller group of those Movers and Shakers were already building their own lily White city of Coral Gables, just next door to Coconut Grove. The ugly historical fact is that the creation of Coral Gables was White Flight; a reaction to the Kebo neighbourhood of Bahamians, who could not be dislodged because the land was Black-owned, all due to the hard work of E.W.F.
Stirrup.

A White city could more easily control the movements of Black folk and their presence in Coral Gables was severely restricted. Right into the ’70s (according to anecdotal reports from a 73-year old who has lived in the same house on Charles Avenue his entire life), one needed ‘papers’ to be Black in Coral Gables. This usually amounted to a letter from your employer. However, if you couldn’t produce one, you’d be arrested for vagrancy and everyone in West Grove knew it.

To this day Coral Gables is 98% White. That doesn’t happen by accident.

Statue of George Merrick,
founder of Coral Gables,
outside Coral Gables
City Hall

Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins *

December 6, 2013Ambalavaner Sivanandan, E.W.F. Stirrup House, No Skin In The Game, One Grove, Racism, The Color Line, The Colour Line, unpacking-coconut-grove, Wall, Wall of Shame, Where The Sidewalk Ends Racism BeginsHeadly Westerfield

Where the sidewalk ends. If you’re Black, you might want to stop right here.

Some day you simply must take a stroll southbound on the west side of South Douglas Road in Coconut Grove, Florida. Walk from Grand Avenue past Washington and Thomas Avenues and the Frances S. Tucker Elementary School.

On your left Thomas Avenue jogs and Charles Avenue [on which the E.W.F. Stirrup House anchors the other end of the street, near Main Highway] ends; although Charles has an odd little western dogleg that can’t be seen from SW 37th Ave, aka Douglas. Crossing Charles Terrace, a street that only runs two blocks west and not at all east, you can’t help note the serene, stark beauty of the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery on your left. While distracted you almost walk into a wooden fence as the sidewalk abruptly ends.

The wooden fence hides a cinder block wall that runs from this point west for two long blocks. The wall was built for one reason and one reason alone: to keep Black Coconut Grove out of White Coconut Grove. The sidewalk ends for one reason. Racism begins.

This wall represents the historic COLOUR LINE that divided the Black backyards on Charles Terrace from the White backyards along Kumquat Avenue. To heighten the sense of segregation, none of the streets along Charles Terrace were allowed to link to Kumquat Avenue or any of the White streets to the south or west.

The Coconut Grove Wall of Shame™ is not unlike the wall in my home town of Detroit known alternatively as The 8 Mile Wall, The Wailing Wall, or the Birwood Wall. A search on the Googalizer for the 8 Mile Wall turns up references, history, as well as tons of images. However, one has to go digging to find any images or references to the Coconut Grove Wall, the history of which is being buried like much of the history of West Grove.

A CAPSULE HISTORY OF THE 8 MILE WALL: Back in the ’40s the Wyoming-8 Mile neighbourhood was mostly farmland; while the city’s northern border was already established at 8 Mile, it hadn’t been developed yet. However, there was already a Black enclave in the area from earlier times. During The War Years Detroit was experiencing a war time boom and housing was desperately needed. Meanwhile, a developer wanted to build in the Wyoming-8 Mile area was having trouble getting Federal Housing Authority loans for the new tract due to the perceived undesirability of the adjacent Black. The developer struck a deal: It would build a 6-foot wall to separate the Whites from the Blacks. The Black folk could have their side of the wall and would be redlined out of the other side of the wall, and a lot of the rest of Detroit, for that matter.

Related: The Detroit Riots

Pic from Racial, Regional Divide Still Haunt Detroit’s
Progress, an excellent All Things Considered on NPR

The main reason you will find thousands of pictures of the 8 Mile Wall is because parts of it have been reclaimed and decorated with gayly painted scenes of iconic Black historic moments.

The 8 Mile Wall no longer divides Black from White; White Flight has seen to that. Both sides of that wall are now predominately Black in a city that is now almost entirely Black, except for all the new carpetbagging hipsters gentrifying huge swaths of Motown. But, that’s another story for another day.

The Coconut Grove Wall of Shame is of a slightly later vintage. The following comes from a much longer article — about the much longer COLOUR LINE that has West Coconut Grove hemmed in TO THIS VERY DAY. There are two distinct sides to The Wall, as Miami New Times writer Kirk Nielsen called it 15 years ago, when he asked and answered the musical question, “How can you tell where white Coconut Grove ends and black Coconut Grove begins? Just look for the barbed wire.”

In 1946 the Miami Housing Authority approved construction of a 25-acre tract of small single-family homes for low-income blacks on Charles Terrace, west of Douglas Road. By the time the houses were completed in 1949, workers had also erected a concrete block wall along the southern boundary of the new development. As reported by the Miami Herald (and cited by Marvin Dunn in his new book Black Miami in the Twentieth Century), the city planning board required the wall in order to provide “suitable protection” for the white neighborhood. A Florida Supreme Court ruling three years earlier had rendered illegal Dade County’s segregation of black residential districts. But that didn’t stop the city from putting the wall up.

Brown and weathered, the concrete block barrier still runs a quarter-mile, from Douglas Road west to the Carver Middle School parking lot. Six feet tall, higher in some places, it divides the leafy back yards of Kumquat Avenue on one side from the tree-starved lots of Charles Terrace on the other.

Lou-vern Fisher, who moved to Miami with her parents in 1936 from Georgia, bought one of the single-family homes next to the wall with her husband back in 1950. She still lives there, with a daughter, granddaughter, and grandson. “We enjoyin’ the wall,” says the jolly 73-year-old retired maid. “They put it here for a reason. And you know the reason. To keep us from going over there,” she wags a finger, letting off a loud gravelly ha-ha-ha.

Another section of the Coconut Grove Wall of Shame™ along Charles Terrace

However, get this: When the same wall became inconvenient for the White folk of Coconut Grove, a small section of it was torn down:

While Father Gibson’s petitioning [in the ’50s and ’60s] failed to inspire city commissioners to topple the wall, the fears of white parents proved far more effective. In 1970, the year Carver Middle School (then Junior High) was racially integrated, the western end of the wall was demolished, allowing a one-lane road to be paved from Kumquat Avenue to the school. White parents had demanded that southern access to drop their kids off because they considered the other route, down Grand Avenue in the black Grove, unsafe.

This isn’t unlike how (at around the same time, in fact) the polluting incinerator nicknamed Old Smoky was only closed when [White] Coral Gables — the town that racism built — started to complain, despite years of complaints from West Grove residents. As I like to tell my followers on Twitter and facebook, “History is complicated.” Racial history even more so. I will will be documenting the Coconut Grove Colour Line more fully as time goes on, but thanks for reading the first inn an ongoing series.

That doesn’t mean we can’t Rock Out while waiting for the next exciting episode. Listen to a speech by Ambalavaner Sivanandan set to music by Asian Dub Foundation.

Crank it up!!!

* With apologies to Shel Silverstein

A Century of Coconut Grove Racism ► Soilgate Is Trolleygate Writ Large

September 24, 20132013, Cancer Clusters, institutional racism, Marc D. Sarnoff, Marc Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park, No Skin In The Game, One Grove, Racism, Soilgate, systemic racism, Trolleygate, unpacking-coconut-grove, West GroveHeadly Westerfield

One of hundreds of thousands of Racist internet memes

Follow the bouncing ball: Trolleygate is modern day Racism, pure and simple. Furthermore, the Racism that allowed for Trolleygate is exactly the same Racism that thought West Grove was the perfect place for Old Smokey, an incinerator that belched carcinogenics into the air for 5 decades. Racism — which is a cancer on our body politic — may have led to actual cancer clusters in Coconut Grove. I’m here to prove that thesis.

Let’s start here: It’s been a truism since the founding of ‘Merka that People of Colour have always gotten the short end of the stick. There is no disputing that. But that’s a thing of the past, according to modern day Racists, because we now have a Black president. We are now living in a post-racial society. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! Right?

For an explanation on the pics used to illustrate this article, please read my essay Racist Memes and Blogging ► Unpacking the Writer

Not even close. While some Racism is less blatant than it has been in previous decades, one can find hundreds of thousands of Racist memes against President Obama, each more disgusting than the next. However, make no mistake: It’s still Racism. Racism doesn’t have degrees. Like being pregnant, a meme can’t be a little bit Racist. It’s either Racism, or it isn’t. The entire story of Coconut Grove depicts a Racism that continues to this very day, culminating in Trolleygate.

West Grove is a quiet residential neighbourhood that has remained predominantly Black since its founding in the late 1880s. It was settled by Bahamians who came up through Key West, at one time Florida’s largest city. The Black Bahamians who settled in Coconut Grove worked for The Peacock Inn and Commodore Ralph Monroe, among the earliest residents. As a nascent tourist trade flourished, more Black folk arrived to do all of the backbreaking work and menial labour that made it all happen.

That West Grove wasn’t razed is due almost entirely to the efforts of one man, Ebeneezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup. E.W.F. Stirrup was one of Florida’s first Black millionaires and, at one time, the largest landholder in Coconut Grove. On some of the land he owned he threw up more than 100 houses with his own hands. These he rented, sold, and bartered to other Bahamians. That’s why, at one time, Coconut Grove once had the highest percentage of Black home ownership in the entire country, making it unique.

Related: Read about my campaign to save the historic 120-year old E.W.F. Stirrup House

It’s for that reason and that reason alone that The Powers That Be were unable to dislodge the Black residents of Coconut Grove. Overtown, just up the road and the second Black neighbourhood in Miami, had I-95 rammed through the middle of what had been the Black Shopping and Entertainment district. However, Overtown was mostly renters with absentee landlords, who were happy to cash out on their investments. The same pattern took place in Paradise Valley, in my home town of Detroit, which was leveled for I-75. The same scenario played out all across the country.

It’s not as if the Powers That Be didn’t try to get rid of Black Grove. There were three separate attempts to get rid of the neighbourhood. In 1921 an urban renewal project called The Bright Plan, approved but never realized due to an economic downturn, would have created a golf course on everything west of Main Highway to Douglas and north to Grand Avenue. In 1925 City Fathers tried to get Miami to annex around what was called Coloredtown, instead of including it. Miami decided to annex it all instead, which led to the creation of Coral Gables, the city that Racism built. In the ’50s, long after the rest of the city had indoor plumbing, West Grove still used outhouses. Honey wagons were just a way of life long after every surrounding neighbourhood (read: White neighbourhoods) had an indoor toilet. In the ’50s. The city wanted to raze the entire blighted neighbourhood and start all over, but the high percentage of Black home ownership defeated the proposal. People, who in some cases were now the 2nd or 3rd generation in the same house, refused to sell. They knew better. Where could they go? They would be redlined out of any neighbourhood they wanted to buy into. It was better to stay put and bequeath their homes to their children and their children’s children.

Which is to explain why the neighbourhood has remained predominately Black. That and the fact that White folk tend not to move into Black neighbourhoods. I’ll now let Nick Madigan, writing in yesterday’s New York Times, pick up the story of Old Smokey:

MIAMI — When she was little, Elaine Taylor remembers rushing home whenever Old Smokey fired up. Clouds of ash from the towering trash incinerator would fill the air and settle on the ramshackle houses and the yards of the West Grove neighborhood.

Her mother, who took in laundry, would be whipping sheets and shirts off the clotheslines. Often, the soot would force Elaine and her mother to wash everything again, by hand.

Old Smokey was shut down in 1970, after 45 years of belching ash, but its legacy might be more ominous than mere memories of soiled laundry. Residents of the neighborhood, established by Bahamian immigrants in the 1880s, have become alarmed by recent revelations that soil samples there show contamination from carcinogens like arsenic and heavy metals, including lead, cadmium and barium.

Ash from the old incinerator is being blamed, and residents are asking why none of this came to light sooner.

Something that Madigan leaves out of his story — because it makes a simple story of soil pollution and subsequent coverup far too complicated — is that the coverup was only discovered due to Trolleygate, the story I’ve been following since January. The documents were discovered by the pro bono legal team researching Trolleygate while preparing its case against Miami, Coral Gables, and Astor Development. While that suit was thrown out of court for a lack of jurisdiction, the documents kicked loose during the research are still bearing fruit. Friday I wrote about an email from a City of Miami Zoning and Building Department official who said that Trolleygate did not conform to the Miami 21 Plan. Yet, after some undetermined jiggery-pokery, [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff managed to get the project approved anyway, despite the fact that it screws his owns constituents and rewards a developer in the next town over. But, that’s now a side issue to Soilgate, the discovery of toxic soil throughout Coconut Grove and greater Miami. [Coral Gables is now suing to get out of ever having to use the polluting diesel bus garage.]

The Racism that decided a Black neighbourhood was the perfect place for a polluting diesel bus garage — despite it not being zoned for it — can be seen as a parallel to the decision in the 1920s to build Old Smokey, the incinerator that polluted Miami. Miami needed an incinerator. Why not stick it as far away from the White folk as possible? Stick it in West Grove. Again from the New York Times:

Across the street from Old Smokey’s former site lies Esther Mae Armbrister Park and its playground. Down the block is George Washington Carver Elementary School, a once all-black institution that traces its history to 1899. Former students recall ash blowing in through the school’s open windows.

[University of Miami law] Professor [Anthony V.] Alfieri [of the Environmental Justice Project] said that the construction of Old Smokey “in the middle of a Jim Crow community” in 1925 exemplified the city’s pattern of neglecting the West Grove, an area that has never experienced the prosperity so evident in its neighboring communities. In a 1950 article in Ladies’ Home Journal, Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote that when the city installed a water and sewage system in Coconut Grove, its western neighbor was left out of the project, and for years residents continued to use wells and outhouses.

Old Smokey was shut down in 1970 after many years of neighbourhood protests and a successful legal battle initiated by the White folk of Coral Gables. Yet, 98% White Coral Gables learned nothing from that court battle. When it needed a place to build its polluting diesel bus garage, Astor Development chose West Grove. This is the neighbourhood that’s been given the short end of the stick since it was called Kebo by the original Bahamian settlers almost 130-years ago. Even if you attempted to argue, against all logic, that the developer was unaware it was a Black neighbourhood, the only reason the land was cheap was due to the last century of systemic Racism, that depressed every economic indicator you can name in West Grove, especially when compared to the rest of the 33133 Zip Code, now considered one of the most exclusive in the entire country.

The Supreme Irony: Air pollution — emanating from a fake diesel-powered trolley bus or a giant incinerator — doesn’t abide by the Colour Line, of course. There appears be less pollution the closer one gets to Old Smokey’s former site. As the expression says, “What goes up, must come down.” It seems a lot of Old Smokey’s toxins came down in the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park. Coincidentally, or not, that’s right across the street from where [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff lives. The New York Times again:

“Everything is testing to be residential standard,” Mr. Sarnoff said, referring to contaminant levels permitted under environmental regulations.

That may not be the final word. A cancer researcher at the University of Miami said that she and several colleagues discovered a cluster of pancreatic cancer cases in the West Grove several years ago.

“That’s the little region that lights up,” said the researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the issue. Although she found the discovery “puzzling,” she said she did not pursue it because of a lack of funds. But when she read a newspaper article this year about Old Smokey that said its ash had spewed arsenic and heavy metals into the neighborhood, she said “everything started making sense.”

The researcher noted that no correlation could be established between the cancer cluster and the old incinerator without more research.

Institutional Racism could be the answer as to why so many people in Coconut Grove are now being diagnosed with cancer. Yet, despite this ugly history of sticking the Black neighbourhood with what the White neighbourhood doesn’t want, [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff, the City of Miami, and Astor Development all still think it’s appropriate for them to have played a shell game in order to get Trolleygate approved.

That’s nothing but Modern Day Racism, pure and simple.

Enjoy some videos of the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park from September 13, 2013, as the soil testing was occurring.

BLOCKBUSTER!!! The Trolleygate Smoking Gun Surfaces

September 20, 2013City of Miami, Coral Gables, No Skin In The Game, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Trolley Folly, Trolleygate, West GroveHeadly Westerfield

Ready for his close-up: [Allegedly] corrupt Miami Commisioner Marc. D. Sarnoff
at the Trolleygate Dog and Pony Show posing for the Miami Herald.

A whistle-blower on Trolleygate could blow down the house of cards carefully erected by [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff. At least that’s what people who call Sarnoff the “Teflon” Commissioner are hoping.

I received a call from an anonymous tipster yesterday telling me of an email being circulated privately (but has since become public) that should have put a stop to the government operated vehicle maintenance facility*, aka Trolleygate, before the first bit of dirt had ever been turned on the project. The email, from Dakota Hendon in Miami’s Miami Building and Zoning Department, said, essentially, that the government operated vehicle maintenance facility being proposed for Douglas Avenue did not
conform to the Miami 21 Plan.

Who is Dakota Hendon? For one thing he helped write the book on the Miami 21 Plan [PDF], so he should know what’s allowed and not allowed. According to an online biography Hendon worked in the City of Miami Planning Department from August 2006 to September of 2010, when he moved to the City of Miami Building and Zoning Department. It was in this capacity he wrote to Francisco Garcia, the City of Miami Planning Director, warning that government operated vehicle maintenance facility being proposed was non-conforming. Yet, like all projects that [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff comes into contact with, no one really knows how this non-conforming project got approved, especially after the Zoning department tried to put the kibosh on it.

It just kind of happened. Just like how the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park and the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Traffic Circle just kind of happened, even though no one has ever taken responsibility for green-lighting those projects.

However, we now know who tried to stop Trollygate before it even started. On May 24, 2011, Dakota Hendon wrote to Francisco Garcia — City of Miami Planning Director — which included a helpful definition from the Miami 21 Plan:

Francisco,

We have a bit of a problem. The Coral Gables Trolley Station that I met with you and the applicant on a few weeks ago appears to not be an allowable use as we had originally anticipated. See the definition of Auto-related industrial below. I believe this is specifically an industrial use. At this point, they have already submitted for the Warrant and action needs to be taken to stop the application. Additionally, IDR was adamantly against the project in the specific location. 　Please call me to discuss at your convenience.　

Auto-Related Industrial Establishment: A facility conducting activities associated with the repair or maintenance of motor vehicles, trailers, and similar large mechanical equipment; paint and body work; major overhaul of engine or engine parts; vehicle impound or wrecking yard; outdoor vehicle sales, storage or repair; and government vehicle maintenance facilities. This includes auto related Uses not otherwise allowed within the commercial auto related establishment category.

The Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park and adjacent Traffic Circle

Speaking of the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park: This has not been a very good month for [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff and his doggie park. The residents are up in arms after toxic dirt was found polluting not only the dog park, but also that last sliver of land that Sarnoff decided to leave for the children, after carving out a full two-thirds of the park and turning it over to the dogs. Since the residents are also Marc D. Sarnoff’s neighbours, I imagine it’s made for some tense relations along Shipping Avenue.

IRONY ALERT: In what can only be the supreme irony in this entire story, the only reason it was discovered that the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park was polluted in the first place was due to the West Grove residents’ lawsuit against the government operated vehicle maintenance facility, which was thrown out of court last month. While expressing sympathy to the residents’ plight, Judge Ronald G. Dresnick ruled he did not have jurisdiction in the Trolleygate case.

However, part of the pro bono legal team that represented the West Grove neigbourhood was Zach Lipshultz, who is a graduate student at the University of Miami School of Law’s Center for Ethics and Public Service. As part of that case, he started documenting the apparent toxicity in several West Grove locations. Recently the City of Miami ordered them to be tested again and, just for good measure, included the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park, which had never been tested before.

As David Villano of Miami News Times notes, the Marc D. Sarnoff Memorial Dog Park is getting an immediate clean up after toxic dirt was discovered there, while the City of Miami has known about toxic soil at Armbrister Field and 3 other locations for years without taking any action whatsoever. I guess when you’re the commissioner, you just get toxic clean-ups, dog parks, and traffic circles, while the rest of the citizens of Miami can take a flying leap at a rolling donut.

But, I digress. [I’ll be writing more about the Coconut Grove’s tainted soil in an upcoming post. One Sarnoff Scandal™ at a time. Let’s just stick with Trolleygate.]

It’s all about these fake trolley buses from Coral Gables, the next town over

Coincidentally my anonymous tipster (who was the first person to ever tell me about Trolleygate and even coined the name) had contact with Dakota Hendon when he was still with the City of Miami’s Building and Zoning Department. I was told that Hendon was a helpful resource within the office, always friendly, and willing to explain and help navigate the red tape to obtain building permits. The next thing my anonymous tipster knows, Dakota Hendon is no longer
working for the City of Miami and the non-conforming government operated
vehicle maintenance facility was rushed the zoning process “faster than shit
through a goose,” to use one inelegant phrase thrown around.

Now that Dakota Hendon’s email is public, my anonymous tipster wonders whether this is why he no longer works for city and whether he was pushed, or did he quit. Here’s what’s known for certain: [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff shepherded this project from beginning to end, working the backrooms with Astor Development to offer a $250,000 ‘bribe’ to improve Armbrister Field, suspected for years of being polluted.

Another long-time Sarnoff critic [who also wishes to remain anonymous. In fact, it’s hard to find someone willing to go on the record about Sarnoff because people are afraid of his vindictiveness. Many have told me stories of how he punishes his perceived enemies, something I witnessed for myself at the Trollygate Dog And Pony Show.] says this is a tried and true Sarnoff tactic: To offer something to one part of the neighbourhood to get them onside, in order to run roughshod over the rest of the neighbours’ objections, and while the various factions are playing off against one another, Sarnoff will do something like push through a government operated vehicle maintenance facility.

No doubt last month Astor Development and [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff had hoped that Judge Dresnick had the last word on Trolleygate. While the residents were decided whether they should appeal, the City of Coral Gables decided to sue Astor Development over its own government operated vehicle maintenance facility.

I don’t know if depositions are taken in cases like this, but here are some questions I’d like to ask if given the chance:

I’d ask Dakota Hendon:

1). Why he’s no longer working for the City of Miami;
2). Why does the written record end at his email;
3). Did he follow up with Francisco Garcia;
4). Who approved this project;
5). What contact did he have with [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff over this project;
6). What contact did he have with Astor Development.

I’d ask Francisco Garcia:

1). Why does the written record end with the email from Hendon;
2). Did he follow up Hendon;
3). Who approved this project;
4). What contact did he have with [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff over this project;
5). What contact did he have with Astor Development.

Then I would ask some pointed questions of Astor Development:

1). How often did you meet with [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff on this project;
2). How many of those meetings were attended by community groups;
3). Who came up with the $250,000 bribe to Arbrister Field;
4). What assurances did you get from [alleged] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff that this building would go ahead as planned;
5). Whose idea was it to put shutters on the building to make it look more Bahamian;
6). What contact did you have with Francisco Garcia and/or Dakota Hendon.

Then, once I had the answers to those questions, I would call [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff to the witness stand and, UNDER OATH, based on the triangulation from all those questions above, see if he will admit to being a corrupt Commissioner. I say this because no one else can think of any other reason that [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff would go to bat for a developer from the next town over, to build a polluting bus garage for the next town over, that clearly contravenes the Miami 21 Plan, as evidenced by the city’s own Zoning and Planning Department official.

Who is getting what out of this project? Miami gets no tax revenue from this building and has been paying layers to defend it in court. It’s already a millstone around taxpayers’ necks. Meanwhile, the West Grove residents get all the pollution from this building, while the City of Coral Gables has denied them even the courtesy of a bus stop. Because: That might allow predominately Black West Grove to visit the lily White Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, the next town over, which is the purpose of these phony trolley buses in the first place. [Read more about Coral Gables in my series No Skin In The Game and see why I call it the city that racism built.]

Rampant speculation [in almost every conversation I have about Trolleygate] leads people to believe that somehow [allegedly] corrupt Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff made out like a bandit on this deal, because there is no other logical explanation for him selling out his own constituents the way he did in Trolleygate.

Read all my posts on Trolleygate here.
View all my videos on Trolleygate here.

* The reason I continue to use the awkward phrase “government operated vehicle maintenience facility is two-fold: 1) That’s what it is; 2). That exact phrase is one of the specifically prohibited uses along Douglas Road, according to the Miami 21 Plan.

Edited September 21, 2013: In my anger I used an expletive that I’ve excised. Also, a lawyer suggested I take out the word “bribe.” Instead I have surrounded it in ‘these quotes’ denoting the word is used colloquially and not legally.

Grove Harbor ► No Skin In The Game

August 30, 2013Coconut Grove Development, Coconut Grove Politics, E.W.F. Stirrup House, Grove Harbor, Grove Horror, No Skin In The Game, unpacking-coconut-groveHeadly Westerfield

When I think of seashore I don’t think of chrome and glass superstructures.

A faithful reader has written [privately] to ask that I get involved in the latest Coconut Grove controversy, Grove Harbor * [sic], or Grove Horror as some of the locals have taken to calling it. To that end, I spent about 2 hours reading up on the project, both pro & con, but mostly con because there seems to be more of that ‘out there’ on the innertubes.

I’m philosophically against any development on any waterfront anywhere
in the world: It blocks access to the waterfront, no matter how small the waterfront or the development. I
am reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright who loved to build on hills, but said
you should never build on top of a hill because you lose the hill.
Same thing in my opinion.

I tend to think of all Coconut Grove issues in relation to the E.W.F. Stirrup House. This proposed development is just a mile’s walk from the E.W.F. Stirrup House. At one time it might have been a gorgeous walk. Walk it these days and you’ll barely catch a glimpse of the majesty of Biscayne Bay, with Miami Beach in the distance, even though you’re walking parallel to it. Decades of bad decisions along the waterfront have led to what it is today, for better or worse.

What would Emperor Headly do?

The footprint of the proposed Grove Harbour development is roughly everything
on the right half of this vintage post card, but the historic buildings will remain

Let’s face it, that job is already filled by alleged corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff. However, if I were a benevolent Emperor of Coconut Grove, here’s what I’d do to correct previous dunderheaded mistakes along that section of South Bayshore Drive, after hanging banners that said “The Waterfront Belongs to Everybody.”

Raze every building on the east side of South Bayshore Drive from McFarlane through David T. Kennedy Park, except those few that have historic designation.
Declare the resultant green space, once landscaped, a People’s Park;
If the members made enough noise, I might be inclined to grandfather in establishments like the Coral Reef Yacht Club and the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, that serve a ‘community’ of members. However, I would maintain a public access to the waterfront for all;
I would be disinclined to grandfather in commercial enterprises such as Scotty’s, the Chart House, or any of the boat sales/rentals places or the charter boat companies. If any of those businesses wish to remain on prime Coconut Grove real estate, they will have to pay through the nose, on short leases, with all the money going into waterfront improvements;
Decree that from this day forward nothing larger than bike racks and public restrooms could be built on the east side of South Bayshore Drive until the end of time;
Remove every parking space from the east side of South Bayshore Drive, forcing people to walk over from the thousands of parking spaces just a few short blocks away in Coconut Grove Center;
Create level pedestrian crossings at every intersection along South Bayshore Drive, forcing drivers to yield to anyone within the crosswalk;
Add calming speed bumps and traffic circles to discourage drive-through traffic on South Bayshore Drive;
Set my mind on other ways to encourage pedestrians and make it harder for cars along South Bayshore Drive;
Rip out all the mangroves in Peacock Park, which were only planted in the ’80s;
Take back Peacock Park from the private lease given to St. Stephen’s Church (What the hell was Sarnoff thinking on that one?);
Turn the former NET office into something that actually serves the community.

An artist renderinging of Grove Harbor at night,
when the chrome and glass will really shine

That’s just 12 things I would do off the top of my head and, admittedly, I’ve done no research on these ideas. However, none of my suggestions would ever include building a chrome and glass thingamajig on the waterfront, give restaurants 80-year leases, and attach a huge parking garage. But, that’s just me because, in my opinion, the waterfront belongs to everybody.

Truth be told, this is a long-winded way of saying I really don’t care and I am hesitant to get involved in this battle. I have no skin in the game. I don’t live in Coconut Grove. I don’t own a boat, therefore I don’t need that kind of access to the water. Nor am I one of those rich folks on the west side of South Bayshore Drive, hoping a few deluxe restaurants and a glitzy glass and chrome dealie on their doorstep will improve their property values. It’s hard not to compare those values to the property values on Charles Avenue, just a mile away, where the E.W.F. Stirrup House is still undergoing Demolition by Neglect.

Despite the wish fulfillment expressed in the One Grove mural, Coconut Grove is one of the most racially and economically divided communities you’re ever going to see. This project is only 2.2 miles away from the Trolleygate garage, which is across from the One Grove mural, but it might as well be a million miles. The concerns of the folks on South Bayshore Drive are light years away from what affects the people of West Grove. One community is complaining about a huge development that MIGHT be placed on its doorstep, while the other is complaining of huge diesel bus maintenance facility ALREADY dropped on its doorstep, which a judge recently ruled they are powerless to stop. What’s wrong with this picture?

At the unveiling of the One Grove mural earlier this year

Truth be told, I really don’t know enough about *THIS* particular project to jump into it. There will apparently be a referendum, so the community will have its say. And, when I say “community” I really mean Miami as a whole, because Coconut Grove is only a fraction of Miami. And, the community will get whatever the community decides, unlike West Grove.

However, there are two big red flags on this project that should give everyone pause:

Just like Trolleygate and the Coconut Grove Playhouse, all the serious
negotiations and decisions have already happened in the back rooms
between the politicians and the developers.
Allegedly corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff is involved in Grove Harbor negotiations up to his hip-waders.

As near as I can tell the referendum will just be
the rubber stamp to what Coconut Grove assets allegedly corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff has already sold out to the developers. Unless the Coconut Grove community can muster
enough opposition to stop the project, it’s a fait accompli. Just like Trolleygate was for his other constituents. Rich or poor, Black or White, Marc Sarnoff doesn’t care who he sells out.

I’ll leave this windmill for the Coconut Grove Grapevine to tilt at.

* My fingers stutter whenever I am called upon to type a word that should have a “U” in it, like harbour and colour.

UPDATE: It turns out my fingers needn’t stutter. Grove Harbour is spelled exactly the way I would spell it.

No Skin In The Game ► Part Four

August 8, 2013Astor Trolley LLC, Beavercreek, Coral Gables, Dayton, institutional racism, No Skin In The Game, Ohio, Racism, systemic racism, Trolley Folly, Trolley Garage, Trolleygate, unpacking-coconut-groveHeadly Westerfield

The One Grove mural in Coconut Grove

On the same day I was posting about the upcoming court hearing for Trolleygate, a news article came across my transom that dovetails with that story nicely. Tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar:

A nearly all-White town refuses to install bus stops that would make it convenient for Black folk to get to their community. While this fight is between suburban Beavercreek and the nearby city of Dayton, Ohio, it could almost be coming from Coral Gables and Coconut Grove.

The brouhaha in Ohio began a few years back, when the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority decided to add three bus stops in Beavercreek. The Bevercreekians said, ‘No fucking way‘ and started enacting legislative barriers to any new bus stops in the community, which oddly enough, don’t apply to current bus stops, like heat, air conditioning, and a high-tech camera system. According to Think Progress:

Many in the area argue that their opposition boils down to a simple reason: race. According to the 2010 census, 9 in 10 Beavercreek residents are white, but 73 percent of those who ride the Dayton RTA buses are minorities. “I can’t see anything else but it being a racial thing,” Sam Gresham, state chair of Common Cause Ohio, a public interest advocacy group, told ThinkProgress. “They don’t want African Americans going on a consistent basis to Beavercreek.”

A civil rights group in the area, Leaders for Equality in Action in Dayton (LEAD), soon filed a discrimination lawsuit against Beavercreek under the Federal Highway Act. In June, the Federal Highway Administration ruled that Beavercreek’s actions were indeed discriminatory and ordered them to work with the Dayton Regional Transit Authority to get the bus stops approved without delay.

Beavercreek, though, isn’t particularly keen to do that. The city council voted most recently on Friday to put off consideration of the matter until later this month. They are weighing whether to appeal the federal ruling, or perhaps whether to just defy it altogether. Appealing the ruling could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to a Washington D.C. lawyer the council hired. However, non-compliance with the ruling could cost Beavercreek tens of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

Fake-trolly that won’t be stopping in Coconut Grove

Oddly enough, White Coral Gables has refused Black Coconut Grove a bus stop outside the polluting government vehicle maintenance facility that it has foisted upon their neighbourhood. When it appeared the bus maintenance facility was a fait accompli, some residents asked for a bus stop at the very least. They were turned down flat.

Keep in mind these are the FREE diesel buses to take shoppers up and down what Coral Gables likes to call Miracle Mile, the exclusive, high-end shopping district. Of course, it might affect the businesses bottom line and Coral Gables property values if too many Black folk were able to get Coral Gables conveniently. It’s better if they walk a half mile to one of the Coral Gables fake-Trolley stops than to give them a bus stop in their own community.

The more research I do into the history of Coral Gables, the more I see that its progress and development over the years is due to almost a century of systemic racism. I make that case in my previous chapters on Coral Gables:

No Skin In The Game ► Part One
No Skin In The Game ► Part Two
No Skin In The Game ► Part Three

Click here to read all my stories on Trolleygate.

Trolleygate Update ► The End Of The Line?

August 7, 2013Astor Trolley LLC, Coral Gables, Marc D. Sarnoff, No Skin In The Game, One Grove, Trolley Folly, Trolley Garage, Trolleygate, unpacking-coconut-grove, West GroveHeadly Westerfield

Artist rendering of the Coral Gables’ diesel bus garage designed in a Bahamian style

Circle the court date: August 16th.

At times it seems the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly. I posted An Introduction to Trolleygate just over 6 months ago. I followed up a few days later with The Trolleygate Dog And Pony Show, which documented the joke of a public information meeting conducted by (allegedly corrupt) Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff.

Ironically that was the very same day a lawsuit was launched by residents of Coconut Grove asking for an injunction to stop the neighbouring town of Coral Gables from building its polluting government vehicle maintenance facility in their residential neighbourhood. Ironic because it allowed Sarnoff to wriggle out of answering any of his VERY ANGRY constituents questions, since the issue was now in front of a judge. However, that didn’t stop him from presenting his Dog & Pony Show, during which I watched a masterful performance by (allegedly corrupt) Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff.

Diesel bus disguised to look like an old-timey, non-polluting, trolly bus

In late February I documented Coral Gable’s Modern Day Colonialism and Trolleygate and in March I spoke to plaintiff’s lawyer Ralf Brookes for An Update On Sarnoff’s Trolleygate aka Astor’s Trolley Folly. In fact, I’ve been the only journalist who has been covering this story on an ongoing basis. That may be why I was sent the notice of hearing for August 16, 2013, along with the pleadings from both sides in the dispute.

My source tells me this hearing should decide all matters and the judge will issue a ruling one way or another. Either Coconut Grove gets stuck with a polluting government vehicle maintenance facility, or Astor Trolly LLC will have to find another location for this building; a facility promised to Coral Gables so that Astor Development (another tentacle of the same company) can develop the site of the current government vehicle maintenance facility in order to make millions of dollars for itself and Coral Gables. [This paragraph was massaged slightly after being published for clarity.]

Neighbours opposed to the polluting diesel bus garage are calling for a protest on August 16th on the courthouse steps at 73 West Flagler Street for 9 a.m.with the hearing set to begin at 10.

It will be interesting to see how the court rules. I’ve been told off the record by several someones-in-the-know that this building will never be used as a bus garage. That would be welcome relief to the economically poor, minority neighbourhood trying to stop it, but it then begs the question:

What will happen to the building, which is almost finished?

THE DECISION IS IN! READ:
West Grove Residents Lose ► Polluting Bus Garage Will Go Ahead

Pictured below:

Unveiling the One Grove Mural on March 3, 2013. immediately across the street from the polluting Trolleygate garage:

Homeowners’ Associations Invented To Discriminate ► History Is Complicated

May 3, 2013Condo Association, Coral Gables, Detroit, Detroit Riot, History Is Complicated, HOA, No Skin In The Game, Racism, Today in History, Unpacking My Detroit, White Flight, White PrivilegeHeadly Westerfield

KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU BLACK &JEW!

Dateline May 3, 1948 – The Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants in real estate deeds — which specifically barred sales to Blacks, Jews, and other minorities — was illegal. Prior to that date the courts had ruled these discriminatory practices were simply matters between private contractors, and the courts had been there to enforce these restrictive covenants in deeds for decades.

Contractually enforced discrimination has long, proud history in ‘Merka, going back to the original Founding Fathers and their cruel compromise, counting Black folk as 3/5ths a person and leaving the “peculiar institution” of slavery intact. Hell, a whole war was fought over it.

When the country was built on such a crass foundation, is it any wonder that whole generations of people came to feel privileged? So privileged, in fact, that people thought nothing of putting down that privilege in their real estate deals. The idea really started to take off in the 1920s, when planned communities like Coral Gables became the suburban norm as people started moving out of congested cities. What we now call White Flight can traced to these earliest migrations; it wasn’t just congestion that some people wanted to escape. Blacks and Jews were other ills of cities that people wanted to move away from. The best way to assure yourself that you won’t have to live among THEM is to put restrictive covenants in property deeds, which specifically spelled out to whom you could sell your own property. Therefore, you would be assured that you would only be living among your own kind by moving into planned communities with exclusionary covenants. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

Example of a restrictive Florida deed:

6. At no time shall the land included in said tract
or any part theorof, or any building located thereon,
be occupied by any negro or person, of negro extraction.
This prohibition, however, is not intended to include the
occupancy of a negro domestic servant or other person
while employed in or about the premises by the owner or
occupant of any land in said tract.

In the 1920s and 1930s, covenants that restricted the sale or occupation of real property on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or social class were common in the United States, where the primary intent was to keep “white” neighbourhoods “white”. Such covenants were employed by many real estate developers to “protect” entire subdivisions. The purpose of an exclusionary covenant was to prohibit a buyer of property from reselling, leasing or transferring the property to members of a given race, ethnic origin and/or religion as specified in the title deed. Some covenants, such as those tied to properties in Forest Hills Gardens, New York, also sought to exclude working class people however this type of social segregation was more commonly achieved through the use of high property prices, minimum cost requirements and application reference checks. In practice, exclusionary covenants were most typically concerned with keeping out African-Americans, however restrictions against Asian-Americans, Jews and Catholics were not uncommon. For example, the Lake Shore Club District in Pennsylvania, sought to exclude various minorities including Negro, Mongolian, Hungarian, Mexican, Greek and various European immigrants.[18] Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and Los Angeles.

History

Racial covenants emerged during the mid-nineteenth century and started to gain prominence from the 1890s onwards. However it was not until the 1920s that they adopted widespread national significance, a situation that continued until the 1940s. Some commentators have attributed the popularity of exclusionary covenants at this time as a response to the urbanisation of black Americans following World War I, and the fear of “black invasion” into white neighbourhoods, which they felt would result in depressed property prices, increased nuisance (crime) and social instability.

The Shelley House,
4600 Labadie,
St. Louis, Missouri

In 1945 Louis Kraemer sued to prevent the Shelley family from occupying the house they purchased in St. Louis. The Shelleys were Black and there had been a restrictive covenant on the land since 1911, which the family had been unaware of when they made their purchase. Kraemer knew, however, and sued. He was counting on the courts to uphold the contract and keep the Black Shelley family out of the neighbourhood.

The Missouri Supreme Court obliged, ruling as courts had been doing for
decades, that the deed was a private agreement, attached to the land.
Because it was estate law, as opposed to personal, the contract could be
enforced by a third party such as Louis Kraemer, who wanted to keep his
lily White neighbourhood lily White. Shelley appealed the Missouri
decision.

The Orsel and Minnie McGhee House

By 1948 The Supreme Court was ready to decide Shelley v. Kraemer, which came with a companion case along the same lines. McGhee v. Sipes was a case that had bubbled up from Detroit, where the McGhees had purchased property that came with restrictive covenant. By then Detroit had already gone through several racial spasms, such as the Ossian Sweet trial in the 1920s and the 1943 Riot.

Then Orsel and Minnie McGhee purchased the house at 4626 Seebaldt in Detroit, in which they had been living as tenants for a decade. A neighbourhood group decided to sue to uphold the restrictive covenant in the deed and Sipes became the plaintiff in that case. It too was decided in favour of the discriminatory covenant. It was also appealed. When it came up to the Supreme Court it was rolled in with Shelley v. Kelley. Lawyers for the defendants, including Thurgood Marshall for the McGhees, argued their positions under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

I’m a sucker for historical markers.
Courtesy of Detroit: The History and Future of the Motor City

The Supreme Court didn’t QUITE rule the restrictive covenant was illegal under the 14th Amendment. The court ruled that contracts between private parties can still have restrictive covenants, which the parties can choose to abide by, or not, depending. However, the Supreme Court ALSO ruled that parties in dispute over restrictive covenants could no longer expect judicial review of these contracts because for a court to uphold the contract it would necessarily violate the Equal Protection Act of the Constitution.

And, let’s be clear: The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelley v. Kraemer didn’t end discrimination in housing. It just took new and different forms. Redlining was one way of restricting a neighbourhood. Condo and Homeowners Association Boards have their own ways of restricting who gets in.

As an aside: The Condo Association my parents moved into, and which I now reside to help take care of him, is predominantly White, while the surrounding associations (all a part of a much larger condo complex with several association boards) are far more mixed in the number of Blacks and Latino residents. That doesn’t happen by accident.

Just as Coral Gables being 98% White is no accident.

Additional Reading at Not Now Silly:

The Detroit Riots: Unpacking My Detroit ► Part Five

The 1943 Riot ► Unpacking My Detroit ► Part 5.1
No Skin In The Game ► Part One
No Skin In The Game ► Part Two
No Skin In The Game ► Part Three
You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby – NYT Decides To Capitalize Negro
Montgomery Bus Boycott ► Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be
Happy Birthday Coconut Grove!!! Now Honour Your Past
An Introduction to Trolleygate
The Bible, Subliminal Satan, and Racism
Bulldozing Cultural History

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