Tequesta/2020 The Journal of HistoryMiami Museum Number LXXX (80) The Journal of HistoryMiami Museum Number LXXX (80) 2020 On the cover: Reverend Theodore Gibson and Elizabeth Virrick, 1969. Father Gibson was Dade County’s foremost Civil Rights leader, an out- spoken critic of the city of Miami’s failure at code enforcement, and the uncontrolled activities of white slumlords. Inspired by father Gibson, Elizabeth Virrick became a passionate, highly effective urban reformer. HASF, Miami News Collection 1989-011-0821. 3 Tequesta, The Journal of HistoryMiami Museum Editor Paul S. George, Ph.D. Managing Editor Vanessa Cambrelen Number LXXX (80) 2020 Contents Trustees . ........................................................................................4 Editor’s Essay ................................................................................5 Miami In 1876, Arva Moore Parks ............................................10 The Miami-Havana Connection: The First Seventy-Five Years, Francis J. Sicius .........................................78 Elizabeth Virrick and the “Concrete Monsters”: Housing Reform in Postwar Miami, Raymond A. Mohl ....................................................................124 The Holders of the Dry Tortugas, James A. Kushlan .....................................................................164 Arva Moore Parks, 1939-2020, Historian, Paul S. George .......................................................................... 202 Memberships and Donations .................................................. 205 About Tequesta ........................................................................ 206 © Copyright 2020 by the Historical Association of Southern Florida 4 Tequesta LXXX HistoryMiami Museum Historical Association of Southern Florida, Inc. Founded 1940—Incorporated 1941 Officers John Shubin, Chairman Michael Gold, Vice Chairman Brian Barroso, Secretary Ronald E. Frazier, Treasurer Etan Mark, At Large Representative Michael Carricarte, Sr., At Large Representative Michael Weiser, Immediate Past Chairman Trustees Alejandro A. Dominguez Ben Mollere Michael Fay Carlo A. Rodriguez Avra Jain Manuel J. Rodriguez Barry E. Johnson Elissa Vanaver Elizabeth P. Johnson Candido Viyella © Copyright 2020 by the Historical Association of Southern Florida ISSN 0363-3705 Tequesta is published annually by HistoryMiami. Communications should be addressed to the Editor of Tequesta, HistoryMiami, 101 West Flagler Street, Miami, Florida 33130; 305-375-1492 or info@ historymiami.org. HistoryMiami does not assume responsibility for statements of facts or opinions made by contributors. Sign language interpreters and materials in accessible format are available upon request. Please call 305-375-1628 or email [email protected]. 5 Editor’s Essay HistoryMiami Museum is eighty years of age and its signature journal, Tequesta, The Journal of HistoryMiami Museum, is right behind, with its first edition appearing in 1941. It would be difficult to study and understand the rich history of Miami and nearby areas without a deep familiarity with Tequesta, since the journal has covered a dizzying array of topics, both popular and arcane, that speak to this history. From the beginning, Tequesta has showcased the works of many of Greater Miami’s most important early authors and leading fig- ures. The lead article in volume one was Coral Gables’ creator, George Merrick’s, “Pre-Flagler Influences on the Lower Florida East Coast.” That number of Tequesta contained an astounding nine articles on a wide array of topics. The fourth edition of Te- questa (1944) featured an article by Marjory Stoneman Douglas just three years before the appearance of her seminal work, The Everglades, River of Grass. Thus, the tone was set early for the importance and excellence of Tequesta articles. I have had the good fortune to serve as editor of Tequesta for more than twenty-five years. Before then, the journal was a prime research tool for my dissertation research and, later, for articles, columns, and books. In recent months, I reviewed each edition of Tequesta in a quest for representative articles for this retro- spective edition of the journal. It is no surprise that attempting to select three essays from a treasure trove has been difficult since scores of articles were worthy of appearing in this issue. We decid- ed on three superb essays representing distinctly different topics. Arva Moore Parks was a young historian with great promise when she authored, in the run up to the nation’s Bicentennial, “Miami In 1876.” The article was a sweeping study of the tiny settlement along the Miami River, as well as the hinterland around it with its scattered communities. Parks consulted seemingly every source available, including federal and state documents, national and Florida newspapers and magazines, minutes of the county com- 6 Tequesta LXXX mission, and local diaries and letters. Arva’s efforts marked the first time that a local historian or writer employed federal docu- ments to the degree that she did. Parks would proceed from there to author additional articles and books as she cemented her rep- utation as a serious historian, filmmaker, editor, and publisher. I have authored a remembrance of Arva and her many contribu- tions to the history of the Magic City in this edition of Tequesta. A native of Philadelphia, Francis “Frank” Sicius was a young hip- pie when I met him in an urban American history class at Florida State University in 1970. With flowing hair reaching to his shoul- ders and colorful, frayed garb in need of re-stitching in many places, the shoeless Sicius looked anything but what he was, a su- perb student with a strong bent toward history. Frank went on to complete his doctorate in history at Loyola University in Chicago. Soon after, he took a position in the History Department at St. Thomas University in today’s Miami Gardens, and commenced a successful career as a teacher and scholar. Sadly, he passed away in 2018. Professor Sicius took a special interest in the immigrant story of this community. “The Miami-Havana Connection: The First Seventy-Five Years,” which appeared in the 1998 number of Te- questa, was a manifestation of this interest. Here Sicius studied the Cuban presence in the Magic City from the city’s beginnings through the mid-1990s. He explained the Cuban immigration sto- ry in terms of the volatility of the island’s politics as well as the international issues and events that impacted the unfolding of this historic, transformational migration to Miami. Most importantly, Sicius provided the historical context, through his explanation of Cuban immigration in the first six decades of the twentieth cen- tury, to what would come following the Castros’ takeover of Cuba in 1959. The late Raymond Mohl was a prolific contributor to Tequesta. Each of Ray’s articles represents a model of scholarship, the prod- uct of prodigious research into primary source material and broad contextual background for the subject under study. Mohl also 7 went where no one else had been in terms of the fraught topics he embraced. Ray’s articles included an examination of the impact of I-95 on Overtown, the work of the county’s Community Relations Board, interracial activism and the civil rights movement in post- war Miami, and Black Bahamian immigrants in early 20th cen- tury Miami. Professor Mohl’s essay on “Elizabeth Virrick and the ‘Concrete Monsters’: Housing Reform in Postwar Miami,” which is part of this volume, appeared in the 2001 issue of Tequesta. It represents a stunning study of a crusader’s tireless efforts to im- prove conditions, first, in the Black Bahamian enclave of Coconut Grove and later in other parts of Miami. These efforts, which began in the early post-World War II years and continued for four decades, were catalyzed by the passion and oratory of Father Theodore Gibson, the spiritual leader of the Grove’s Christ Episcopal Church. They came in a period of great transition in urban America, amid a flurry of federal housing programs targeted at cities, the construction of I-95 through the center of the City of Miami, and a rising suburbia drawing many new residents from older, inner city neighborhoods with the con- comitant changes in their racial composition. After early success- es that brought running water, flush toilets, septic tanks, and new parks and playgrounds to the Black Grove, the tireless, tenacious Virrick took her reform campaign citywide, battling entrenched slum lords, the overcrowded “concrete monsters,” her reference to multiple apartment units that were rapidly replacing single fam- ily homes, and expressway planners and builders whose projects decimated historic neighborhoods like Overtown. The final article in this issue of Tequesta is a contemporary piece, emanating from the pen of James Kushlan, a renowned ornithologist, writer, and environmentalist, who has contributed to recent issues of the journal. Dr. Kushlan’s Tequesta articles have included “John James Audubon in South Florida,” and “A History of Southern Biscayne Bay and its National Park,” both incisive studies of these topics. In “The Holders of the Dry Tortu- gas,” Kushlan examines the Holder family, denizens of Fort Jef- ferson on Garden Key, sitting more than sixty miles west of Key 8 Tequesta LXXX West, during and immediately after the Civil War. Dr. Joseph B. Holder arrived on the island in 1859, with his wife and son, to serve as physician to the U.S. Army Engineers, who were over- seeing construction of Fort Jefferson.