Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Goff, Brendan
Area of Concentration
History
Abstract
This thesis examines the West Coconut Grove community, one of Miami’s first permanent settlements by black Bahamian people. This thesis analyzes the vibrant community throughout the twentieth century and examines how action and inaction have affected the areas black residents. Chapter one argues that systematic violence, redlining, zoning, and segregation walls worked to keep Bahamian-born and American-born black residents in what white people perceived as their place, in a servile position and hidden in their black neighborhood. Chapter two looks at the long history of vibrancy in West Grove’s business community, which has suffered over the past few decades from the city of Miami’s participation in discriminatory lending practices and the general neglect of West Grove’s central business district on Grand Avenue. Finally, chapter three argues that desegregation of Miami-Dade schools was not successful in Coconut Grove. Instead, the desegregation process stripped West Grove’s black children of their community school, resegregated schools through gerrymandering attendance zones and the creation of magnet schools, and revealed the decades of neglect black children experienced in the West Grove. In conclusion, what ultimately made Miami’s West Grove neighborhood so unique was the long-term experience of Jim Crow forms of racial oppression alongside a strong and competing sense of Caribbean history and identity.
Recommended Citation
McElroy, Lindsay, "INSTITUTIONAL INJUSTICE IN WEST COCONUT GROVE: DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MIAMI’S FIRST BAHAMIAN COMMUNITY THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY" (2020). Theses & ETDs. 5971.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5971