Tribute to participants in research on "Black" Miami

I love the ocean and my childhood experiences beside it.

I finally had a moment to upload a slideshow of images from the July 18, 2015 tribute to participants in my study on "black" migration to and through South Florida. Thanks to my mentor Opal Comfort, my brother Duane Andrews, and my cousin Carolyn Roberts, for sharing their images.

These photos and this blog serve as a way to document my journey toward having a more complete understanding on how  people of African descent across time move through space in South Florida. Historians Arnold Hirsch and Raymond Mohl have provided cues that more work needs to be done on the anomalies of African American urban dwellers in the American "South." How much does South Florida adhere to and divert from established patterns in the Midwest and North? I am slowly learning. The next step is secondary source reading (the pile of books and papers is getting taller) and Census work. I have already signed up for online courses addressing how to better understand Census data.

 I see the Freedom Tower in Miami with new eyes.

It is my hope that allowing the participants in my research - which has an ethnographic component, something new for me as I tend to investigate the experiences of people who lived in the years surrounding the Civil War -  see how they help historians learn has been a good move. As I told many of them, this project will be ongoing and like the last one may take several years. As the eldest participant is 97-years-old, I don't know how many of them will be here to witness the outcome.

Why not share some of my early findings with them now? And so I am. Onward.

PS Hearty thanks to Craig Remington, Cartographer at the University of Alabama for his brilliant work in creating a map that is helping me. Remington is a former resident of Miami-Dade County. In fact, he recalls when missiles sat in a field in then-North Dade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He and his childhood friends used to play in that field. American High, my former high school, now sits on that land. Small world. We both have roots in then-Carol City, now Miami Gardens.

And thanks to Lauren Klinefelter and all of the staff at the Hollywood Beach Marriott. We did it!