VIRGINIA KEY BEACH AT 80: REMEMBERING THE HEROIC ACTION EIGHT DECADES AGO THIS WEEK THAT MADE THE PARK HAPPEN
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie
Friday, May 9, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of an extraordinary 1945 protest demonstration in Miami, Florida, that ultimately brought to fruition one of the most significant, beloved, and fondly remembered recreational landmarks of the U.S. South during the challenging era of Jim Crow Segregation, fully a decade before the Civil Rights movement would make civil disobedience its major nonviolent strategy to effectuate social change.
‘Many Were Called; Few Were Chosen’
World War II, which ended in 1945, was a conflict never to be forgotten, mostly for the 50-60 million(!) human lives lost, mostly of civilians far from American soil, and for the rise of the “military industrial complex” which profited enormously from the destruction, but it is also remembered bitterly for the discrimination faced by African Americans in the military, both in conflict zones and at home, where they were routinely treated with less respect and freedom than European enemy prisoners of War in the South (who could even frolic on segregated Miami Beach according to one report), and by Black and other disadvantaged communities throughout the nation that bore much of the heaviest brunt of the economic hardships associated with the war effort, such as food rationing.
It was as those hard times were finally winding down in the spring of 1945, with surviving soldiers and sailors soon to return home, and against the historical backdrop of African Americans having served in every U.S. conflict, always with the expectation of coming back to a better, more just nation than the one they had left, that Miami’s Black community proved to be no exception to the nationwide wartime “Double V Campaign,” for Victory against fascism abroad and Victory against racism and discrimination at home, and to action to demand greater equality.
It could have appeared somewhat frivolous to the outside world that amidst all the pressing needs and issues facing Miami’s Black community, the leaders who gathered at the home of prominent dentist and activist Dr. Ira P. Davis in Overtown, nicknamed “The Little White House” as the place where strategic meetings were held, would choose to demand a suitable bathing beach for the Colored population that had been so vital to the founding and building of Miami and Dade County as their priority, but the importance and high-stakes risks of that decision would soon become apparent.
With Miami’s world-renowned beaches as its most famous tourism asset, the organizers’ tactic would be civil disobedience: breaking an unjust law and accepting the punishment if necessary, to bring the cause to the public attention of the public, and accordingly they alerted the County sheriff that Negro bathers would “wade in the water” on the morning of May 9 at the site of present-day Haulover Beach (then under construction to be for White Only), and would dare to be arrested, with protest leader famed local attorney (and future first Black judge in the South since reconstruction) Lawson E. Thomas on shore holding a bag of cash for their bail, should that happen.
Although many who learned of the plan were inspired by the prospect of taking such bold action, intending and promising to participate, when the chosen morning came, only a few intrepid souls actually ventured to the site, including three women, May Dell Braynon, Annie Coleman, and Mary Hayes Sweeting, who joined Otis Mundy, John Hill and others, while yet other individuals like Judge Henderson, who manned the “brain center” of the protest from the Longshoremen’s Hall in Overtown, and Mary Hill also figured prominently.
Why so many didn’t show up while so few did speaks volumes about the reality of the times and underscores the remarkable courage of those who were so willing to face whatever consequences their action might bring for the greater good of social change.
While a decade later, after 1955 to be arrested in the Civil Rights movement could be considered a badge of bravery and honor, in 1945 the mere fact of having ANY arrest on a person’s record could seriously threaten the rest of one’s life and livelihood, so it was fortunate that the defiant bathers escaped that fate (as did the County from the embarrassment that would have come to its image as a tourist destination), with then-County Commissioner Charles Crandon, instructing the Sheriff to “have Lawson come down and we will work out something,” which would be the official opening of Virginia Key Beach on August 1, as a County Park “for the exclusive use of Negroes.”
(Notably, the protest was not to demand integration of beaches, but to establish a “separate but equal” Colored beach, in keeping with the laws and customs of the Jim Crow era; the demand for desegregation of all Dade County beaches would come in 1959 with a similar wade-in at Crandon Park in 1959, which succeeded, well ahead of the rest of the South.)
An even deeper sense of what those brave protesters risked 80 years ago, however, came to light during the effort to save the historic park site from developers’ bulldozers in 1999, when Attorney Thomas’s late widow and education advocate, Mrs. Eugenia B. Thomas spontaneously shared her memory at a gathering of how “When Lawson left that morning to go out there and the door clicked shut behind him, [she] was prepared to never see him alive again”: It was also quite possible that the nonviolent waders might not have encountered a sheriff who was hesitant to make arrests, but instead might have met with police violence or even the likes of Ku Klux Klan thugs whose actions would have gone unpunished. (Such cases of “Southern justice” were not unusual.)
The Question for Today
The newly opened beach (at a site that had long been used informally by the Black population for recreation and spiritual gatherings such as baptisms) gained almost instant popularity and would become of the finest, most scenic, and best equipped Colored parks in the South, even visited by national celebrities, a reflection of both the effectiveness of the protest and of the mutual respect that existed between the thriving Black community and the downtown political leadership.
Yet it is remarkable that more than a third of what would be expected to be this celebratory 80th anniversary year has gone by with practically no public recognition: no banners, no signs, no souvenir keepsakes, no events to build up to the August 1 actual “birthday,” in sharp contrast to previous milestone years, especially to honor the heroism which established the park and made Miami a better place, all of which raises a disturbing question: Is such courageous heroism and success to be forgotten by our present citizenry, and to be unknown by our younger and future generations, as if it never happened?
To some observers, the question raises even more concerns and challenges in today’s political climate than those faced in 1945, as two toxic forces combine to derail the community’s innovative vision of the entirety of Historic Virginia Key Beach Park being transformed into an indoor/outdoor, historical/environmental, educational/recreational museum experience: virulent resurgent racism attempting to erase non-colonizers’ history (including timeless Indigenous heritage), and local politicians’ machinations attempting to seize the coveted land and funding for other purposes.
Regardless of the deafening official silence surrounding the beloved park’s very rich history, May 9, 2025, will be remembered on this landmark 80th anniversary as boldly as actions of those brave souls who have given this date its proud place in the history of the indomitable human claim to freedom, equality, and justice.
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie was the founding vice-chair and later chair of the City of Miami Virginia Key Beach Park Trust.