In 1887 they were ordered to sit in separate railroad cars and in 1909 separate jails.In 1885, the state constitution formally separated blacks and whites,.Though they helped build Miami from a swampland into a metropolis, they remained largely invisible and politically marginalized. Public parks had been off limits to blacks since the 1890s, which meant that they could only convene in the streets, and conduct their business in bars, barber shops, and homes. Rewind a bitīefore this, blacks had access to little or no public space in Miami - let alone access to the water, which had been increasingly privatized during the building boom of the 1920s. Just like that, of the county’s 28 or so public beaches, blacks living in Miami finally had one they could call their own. A month later, county commissioner Charles Crandon met with several African American leaders and decided to designate an island further south, Virginia Key Beach, a “colored beach.” And the rogue swimmers followed, a bit of an anticlimactic ending.īut it started something. “The city that depended on tourism needed to avoid ugly public racial squabbles,” wrote Gregory Bush in his recent book “White Sand Black Beach,” a chronology of the civil rights, public spaces, and Miami’s Virginia Key. Arresting a couple of black swimmers on a white beach might be fine just in the South, but the county didn’t want vacationing northerners and Europeans to start turning their heads. Miami was making the big bucks off of tourism. When the county’s sheriff finally showed, it was clear he wasn’t about to cause a scene. And it’s what would begin the process of equalizing access to Miami’s greatest gem: the water.

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