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And the days of "White" and "Colored" signs, and the days when Blacks were treated quite poorly in Miami, and were subjected to the laws of Jim Crow. Not a good time for me as a Black man.
You don't have to be Black for segregation not to represent a good time! I am pale-skinned and female. Human rights violations harm all of us. Lynchings, segregation, and oppression are unhealthy for any human to witness, much less be a part of.
I'm not sure that this is really what the OP meant when posting, but I felt the need to point it out because too many people like to romanticize the past and forget its problems. Our country has never been a peaceful utopia, not at any time since its inception as a nation. When I see that film, I feel uneasy, not relaxed and happy, because like many short films of its era it was a lot of carefully staged propaganda that purposely cuts out a large segment of Miami's population in filming, only shows the wealthy side, and ignores all the violence and hatred that were a part of life in Miami at that time. It was both beautiful, and awful. So when we say things like "the good old days," we need to acknowledge that there was a lot of awful that the filmmakers were very careful not to include. It's not because it didn't exist, it's because nobody wants to move to a place full of violence and cruelty and tension, nor visit it as a vacation spot, so they left that out of the film. And naturally, they wanted to encourage wealthy white-only tourists and new residents with the film to increase that power-base in the area, hence the "Leave It To Beaver"-type vibe with no footage of people in communities like Overtown. (No disrespect to The Beave, of course, but it didn't project a very balanced or real view of the nation as a show, either - it, like this video, was filmed as White Escapism, which was of course very popular at the time and for a long time afterward.)
We have to take our looks back on history with a grain of salt, and consider the sources of our information. The OP didn't include any explanation with the video of what exactly made 1955 Miami better, so I think the note that it was a time of segregation and before the Cuban population influx is a fair one. At the time, the natural environment was likely in a lot better shape. But the human environment was not. I would strongly disagree that urban over-run, which is a voluntary experience on the part of incoming residents, is worse than institutional oppression over the entire population, which was involuntary. Both affect every single resident in Miami, but only one involves choice. Today if one does not like the grittiness of the urban reality, one has every freedom to move to a less-developed area. But if you did not want to participate in segregation and oppression of human beings, no matter what tone your skin was, you were forced to in 1955 Miami. I choose 2014 Miami, with hopefully increasing efforts to turn back the environmental damage done to the area, and to erase the strong de facto segregation of local neighborhoods which is still in existence.
Note the mention of Miami's Jim Crow laws, which included a curfew that made it illegal for Black residents to be out anywhere in the city after dark, and also made it illegal for them to live anywhere outside of Overtown, a tiny area far from the beaches, the hotels, or any of the perks of living in Miami circa 1955. Remember too that there was no air conditioning, so living by the beach was pretty important for sufficient breeze for medical patients and anyone who wanted to sleep. Note also the intentional destruction of a once booming cultural center by the building of I-95 directly through and over Overtown with no exits to it, decimating the local economy and forcefully evicting hundreds of residents with almost no compensation for the destruction of their homes, and no choice in the matter. Your house was in their way, they bulldozed it, no matter how many decades you lived there, no matter how long it had been in your family and paid off.
Here is a quote about the curfew from a published article called
“Colored, Caribbean, and Condemned: Miami’s Overtown District and the Cultural Expense of Progress, 1940-1970,” by N.D.B. Connolly - you can find the whole paper on the internet:
"Far more common and extensive in South Florida were the racial curfews that city governments in Miami, Miami Beach, or nearby Hollywood used to force Negro workers back into Colored communities, usually after 6, 8, or 10 pm, depending on the city. Under these curfews, South Florida’s white spaces, by and large, functioned as “sundown towns,” no blacks allowed after sun-down (Loewen 2005). As in the 1910s and ‘20s, white vigilantes and police during the 1950s routinely enforced blacks’ nighttime restrictions. If caught on the “wrong” side of the color line after the designated hour and without permission, black South Floridians could expect any combination of arrest, harassment, police questioning or violence.
“It was made it known to us in no uncertain terms,” recalled Joe Wheeler, “you shouldn’t...be
caught in the City of Hollywood after dark...That’s the way it was...we knew this.”
Black Miamians knew this of their city as well. Peggy McKinney recalled that, as an eighteen-year old black laundress who worked on Miami Beach, she had to always carry a special workers identification card in case the police caught her outside of the Central Negro District after 10 pm. “If you was stopped by the police, you had to show this card, that you were coming from work or whatever.” "
I don't think of living in a police state as "good times." But this is a good chance to remember the not-too-distant history of Miami, for ALL its residents.
If you're going to make a propoganda video of Miami today, wouldn't it all be done the same way? Showing the good and not the bad that obviously still exists in different ways than in 1955. Some things are better now, true, but many things aren't. I like the Miami that didn't have almost every square inch of green developed over and with a much smaller population which in turn meant MUCH better driving conditions. I'm so sick to death of almost every single time I get in the car even if it's just to go to the grocery seeing reckless and dangerous behavior on the roads.
Some of us can't just up and leave Miami just because we don't like it. If only it was a simple as that.
You don't have to be Black for segregation not to represent a good time! I am pale-skinned and female. Human rights violations harm all of us. Lynchings, segregation, and oppression are unhealthy for any human to witness, much less be a part of.
I'm not sure that this is really what the OP meant when posting, but I felt the need to point it out because too many people like to romanticize the past and forget its problems. Our country has never been a peaceful utopia, not at any time since its inception as a nation. When I see that film, I feel uneasy, not relaxed and happy, because like many short films of its era it was a lot of carefully staged propaganda that purposely cuts out a large segment of Miami's population in filming, only shows the wealthy side, and ignores all the violence and hatred that were a part of life in Miami at that time. It was both beautiful, and awful. So when we say things like "the good old days," we need to acknowledge that there was a lot of awful that the filmmakers were very careful not to include. It's not because it didn't exist, it's because nobody wants to move to a place full of violence and cruelty and tension, nor visit it as a vacation spot, so they left that out of the film. And naturally, they wanted to encourage wealthy white-only tourists and new residents with the film to increase that power-base in the area, hence the "Leave It To Beaver"-type vibe with no footage of people in communities like Overtown. (No disrespect to The Beave, of course, but it didn't project a very balanced or real view of the nation as a show, either - it, like this video, was filmed as White Escapism, which was of course very popular at the time and for a long time afterward.)
We have to take our looks back on history with a grain of salt, and consider the sources of our information. The OP didn't include any explanation with the video of what exactly made 1955 Miami better, so I think the note that it was a time of segregation and before the Cuban population influx is a fair one. At the time, the natural environment was likely in a lot better shape. But the human environment was not. I would strongly disagree that urban over-run, which is a voluntary experience on the part of incoming residents, is worse than institutional oppression over the entire population, which was involuntary. Both affect every single resident in Miami, but only one involves choice. Today if one does not like the grittiness of the urban reality, one has every freedom to move to a less-developed area. But if you did not want to participate in segregation and oppression of human beings, no matter what tone your skin was, you were forced to in 1955 Miami. I choose 2014 Miami, with hopefully increasing efforts to turn back the environmental damage done to the area, and to erase the strong de facto segregation of local neighborhoods which is still in existence.
I understand Dr. King's definition of injustice, and the idea if one of us isn't free, then none of us are. I get that. I was merely talking about this from my personal perspective.
Defacto segregation might exist, and it isn't good. However, there are no laws that say "you can't buy a house here".
That is the thing about videos during that time. The whole point was to show things from an idyllic side. No one is mentioning in those videos that Blacks weren't allowed in alot of places. It wasn't intended for Blacks to watch.
I like today's Miami much better.
Last edited by green_mariner; 05-26-2014 at 07:49 PM..
Note the mention of Miami's Jim Crow laws, which included a curfew that made it illegal for Black residents to be out anywhere in the city after dark, and also made it illegal for them to live anywhere outside of Overtown, a tiny area far from the beaches, the hotels, or any of the perks of living in Miami circa 1955. Remember too that there was no air conditioning, so living by the beach was pretty important for sufficient breeze for medical patients and anyone who wanted to sleep. Note also the intentional destruction of a once booming cultural center by the building of I-95 directly through and over Overtown with no exits to it, decimating the local economy and forcefully evicting hundreds of residents with almost no compensation for the destruction of their homes, and no choice in the matter. Your house was in their way, they bulldozed it, no matter how many decades you lived there, no matter how long it had been in your family and paid off.
Here is a quote about the curfew from a published article called
“Colored, Caribbean, and Condemned: Miami’s Overtown District and the Cultural Expense of Progress, 1940-1970,” by N.D.B. Connolly - you can find the whole paper on the internet:
"Far more common and extensive in South Florida were the racial curfews that city governments in Miami, Miami Beach, or nearby Hollywood used to force Negro workers back into Colored communities, usually after 6, 8, or 10 pm, depending on the city. Under these curfews, South Florida’s white spaces, by and large, functioned as “sundown towns,” no blacks allowed after sun-down (Loewen 2005). As in the 1910s and ‘20s, white vigilantes and police during the 1950s routinely enforced blacks’ nighttime restrictions. If caught on the “wrong” side of the color line after the designated hour and without permission, black South Floridians could expect any combination of arrest, harassment, police questioning or violence.
“It was made it known to us in no uncertain terms,” recalled Joe Wheeler, “you shouldn’t...be
caught in the City of Hollywood after dark...That’s the way it was...we knew this.”
Black Miamians knew this of their city as well. Peggy McKinney recalled that, as an eighteen-year old black laundress who worked on Miami Beach, she had to always carry a special workers identification card in case the police caught her outside of the Central Negro District after 10 pm. “If you was stopped by the police, you had to show this card, that you were coming from work or whatever.” "
I don't think of living in a police state as "good times." But this is a good chance to remember the not-too-distant history of Miami, for ALL its residents.
What you mention about Miami could be basically anywhere in the South and in other portions of the nation(although the South had the Jim Crow laws). It was a time and place of not knowing what could happen to you. That was the Miami of the 1950s for Blacks, and it wasn't just Miami that was this way. Birmingham was this way, cities all over the South were like this. Northern cities weren't that much better.
I think we are all pretty much agreeing here, right?
Segregation, no good.
Miami in 1955, better green space but worse for people.
Today in Miami, not so perfect, could definitely be better. Definitely not great for the poor (and I would say worse than other major cities for poverty because of the poor public transportation).
Propaganda and tourism ads = pretty much the same thing.
I think it's interesting to see the two videos side by side though, personally. Both are of the same place, and the same time period, with footage from that time. You would never even know they are the same city at all! Both show sides of Miami that offered a lot culturally and visually to people at the time. But of course, one is not in the end as happy a picture as the other. I don't think it's "the good old days." But that doesn't mean it isn't a time worth learning about in Miami history. And the culture of the city is almost unrecognizable in either video compared to today, since it is lacking in much of what would later become a majority Latin American/Caribbean population - particularly of course both Cuban and Haitian. That is a lot of change for just 60 years! There are of course many people in Miami who have lived there through this whole time, and their heads must be spinning! (I know mine would be...)
I think we are all pretty much agreeing here, right?
Segregation, no good.
Miami in 1955, better green space but worse for people.
Today in Miami, not so perfect, could definitely be better. Definitely not great for the poor (and I would say worse than other major cities for poverty because of the poor public transportation).
Propaganda and tourism ads = pretty much the same thing.
I think it's interesting to see the two videos side by side though, personally. Both are of the same place, and the same time period, with footage from that time. You would never even know they are the same city at all! Both show sides of Miami that offered a lot culturally and visually to people at the time. But of course, one is not in the end as happy a picture as the other. I don't think it's "the good old days." But that doesn't mean it isn't a time worth learning about in Miami history. And the culture of the city is almost unrecognizable in either video compared to today, since it is lacking in much of what would later become a majority Latin American/Caribbean population - particularly of course both Cuban and Haitian. That is a lot of change for just 60 years! There are of course many people in Miami who have lived there through this whole time, and their heads must be spinning! (I know mine would be...)
Miami has room for improvement, but I have the good feeling knowing that if I went to Miami today as a tourist, I would enjoy it. Being poor is rough all over.
From what the title said, it is supposedly an educational film. Seems a bit like one, but not too much.
Miami is a city of contrast. Always has been. The video of Overtown and the video in the first post highlights that.
One thing about Miami is that it is a young city. Very young. It wasn't incorporated until 1896. It has gone through major changes between then and now, and even between 1955 and now. Alot of what is considered the old Miami culture from 1955 is in the suburban areas.
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