Tag Archives: Where The Sidewalk Ends Racism Begins

Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins ► Chapter Three

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CLICK to enlarge: Red lines represent streets
never built, despite being on original planning maps.

I’ve written about Marler Avenue previously (Read Part Two of Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins). However, a (not so) quick history lesson here will better help you follow today’s bouncing ball:

Marler Avenue is a street in Coconut Grove just one block long, that connects to no streets, other than Hibiscus and Plaza, the two that feed it on either end. But, Marler was never supposed to just one block long. On the earliest planning maps of Coconut Grove, Marler is shown to have 3 other access points. Plaza Street, after a slight dogleg at Marler, was supposed to have extended south past Loquat Avenue. Likewise Hibiscus was supposed to continue past Marler and connect to Hibiscus in South Grove.

When and where the land grab was codified.
The Miami News – May 11, 1984

Most egregious, however, is Marler itself. It should have continued westward to connect to 37th, aka Douglas Road. However, the Loquatians (as those on Loquat call themselves), who lived along that stretch backing up onto Marler west of Plaza, just extended their backyards into the right of way, closing off direct access to Douglas. When, years later, the City of Miami figured out these White homeowners illegally squatted on city land, it chose to ‘grandfather’ the illegal land seizure, tax the larger parcels, and allow the building of a gated community — St. Hugh Oak — on the west end. However, no one seems to have considered what practical effect this might have.

The removal of these three lines on the street grid had an intended effect. It closed off Black Grove from White Grove. That this hemming in of Marler Avenue was Racism in Action is not even in dispute. It’s just a small part of the history of Race Relations (or lack thereof) in Coconut Grove that I’ve discovered since I began my research on E.W.F. Stirrup.

CLICK to enlarge: A 1947 planning map show
the three streets that were, eventually, never built.

I was alerted to Marler Avenue in an article in the Miami New Times called The Wall and have been fascinated by it ever since. I visit Marler as often as I do the E.W.F. Stirrup House, whenever I am in Coconut Grove. I have become such a fixture that neighbours invite me onto their porches for tea. I’ve been told of their struggles keeping children on the straight and narrow. Conversely, others have railed against cops at the new(ish) Miami police substation in Coconut Grove, because they treat all the kids alike, the good ones as well as the bad. Pastor Edmond Stringer, of Sweetfield Baptist Church on the corner of Marler and Plaza, proudly gave me a tour of his simple place of worship, telling me about the few pastors who preceded him and showing me their pictures.

The point I’m trying to make is I am no longer a stranger on Marler Avenue. The folks along the street approach me, freely sharing information, whereas they are, more often than not, wary of White folk who come ’round asking questions about race relations in Coconut Grove.

When Google Maps stands at the corner of Marler Avenue and Plaza Street
looking east, it can see THE WALL on the right, with the Sweetfield Baptist
Church on the far left. This is how THE WALL looked until this week.

One of the more interesting aspects of this short street, once you get over the whole racial angle that hemmed it in on all sides, is Marler Avenue only has one side to the street. Every house on Marler faces The Wall, which is set back about 4 feet from the curb. On the other side of this wall are the backyards of the houses on Loquat. In the most literal sense White Coconut Grove turned its back on Black Coconut Grove decades ago and never the twain shall meet.

And this is how it has been for the residents on Marler Avenue almost as long as anyone can remember. Until this week!!!

Not only did they bump out the wall, but stole one of
the trees. I wonder why they didn’t just take them all.

On Saturday I cruised along Marler Avenue and saw a work crew with a small CAT bulldozer with a pneumatic drill on the end. Wondering what was going on, I pulled over. When the work crew started up the drill, one of the White family came out to see what was going on as well. We talked for a minute or two. I told him it appeared as if they were moving the fence to abut the the curb, Mr. White assured me that would never happen, as that would be illegal.

Guess what I found when I went back yesterday, dear readers? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.

For reasons that are, as yet, unexplained. A property owner decided to bump out a portion of their backyard 4 feet. Originally there was a never-used gate there. However, because there is a tree there, it would have been useless to pull a car in and out. The gate section was moved east a few fence posts, which would allow for a car to go in and out. That part of ‘fixing’ the fence makes perfect sense. What makes no sense whatsoever (as yet) is this bump out.

Here’s a Google Maps image from March 2014. Note the new
garage [above left] that is not in this picture. I wonder if they
got a building permit for that structure.

How is this any different to the land grab made decades ago along the western extension of Marler Avenue? That was eventually forgiven, codified and part of it turned into a gated community.

As soon as I saw this bump out I went to talk to Mr. White. No one was home, so left a note and scooted over to Loquat to see which house owner decided he was entitled to more land than they purchased.

However, I need to stress this: the word “scooted” is a misnomer. Even though I was only a few dozen or so feet away from this house, the only way I could get to it is drive west on Marler, north on Plaza, west on Franklin, out to Douglas Avenue, make a left, drive one block south to Loquat — past the gated community of St Hugh Oaks — make another left and drive along Loquat, a number of houses past what once might have been the southern leg of Plaza Street. When I got there I realized I could have walked it easier through the Plaza Path. [See Part Two of Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins for a full explanation of the Plaza Path.]

While taking a picture of the house (really a duplex, two low-slung units side by side) I got a call from a different Mr. White, who lives with his brother. Having got my note, he saw the bumped out portion of the wall I referenced and called right away. Even though he was only a few dozen or so feet away from me,  I had to totally reverse the trip described above. Because it was afternoon rush hour, and Douglas is such a thoroughfare and hard to turn onto, I told him I’d be by in 3 minutes. Had I not been illegally parked on Loquat I would have walked.

Mr. White had not noticed the change in the wall until he read my note and looked across the street. He assured me he would tell his brother about my latest visit. After that we talked generally about Coconut Grove history, the systemic racism, the E.W.F. Stirrup House and the Not Now Silly Newsroom. Or, rather, I did. However, for me the biggest thrill of meeting the White Brothers over the last few days is that, vicariously, I knew their father.

That article I mentioned way up there, The Wall, in Miami New Times; the article that led me to care about Marler Avenue, begins:

When David White was a boy back in the 1930s, he and his family used to walk the three blocks from their one-story house in the Bahamian section of Coconut Grove to Plymouth Congregational Church in the white neighborhood, just through the trees to the south. The Whites’ house was on the middle of the block on Marler Avenue, which shared a tree line with that wealthier white area. From their front yard the Whites would meander a half-block to the end of Marler Avenue, then turn right onto a footpath that led to Hibiscus Street, which was then a dirt road. Two blocks more would bring them to Plymouth. For decades the majestic coral stone church was the only racially integrated house of worship in Dade County; it still towers over Main Highway.

In those days residents of the Bahamian Grove, now known as the black Grove, routinely walked to and from the white neighborhood — the adults to work, the children to play. White’s parents, who moved to Coconut Grove from the Bahamian island of Eleuthera in 1901, were no exception. His father worked as a gardener and his mother as a maid. As a young man David also worked as a gardener and made the same brief commute, on foot, as his father.

White and his wife Tessie still live on Marler Avenue, in a house next to the one he was born in. But nowadays he would have to climb a ten-foot chainlink fenced topped with strands of barbed wire to take that first right onto Hibiscus Street into the predominantly white section. Not too easy for a 66-year-old retired public school administrator who is moving kind of slow these days.

At the very least, it seems I made some new friends on Marler Avenue and at least one enemy on Loquat.

Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins ► Chapter Two

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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.

Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins *

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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