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Last year The Miami Herald published a very interesting article regarding one of the most beautiful beaches in Miami: Virginia Key Beach. This place was once the only ‘colored only beach’ back in segregation time.
According to a report by News Journal Wire Services, “when beaches closer to historically Black residential neighborhoods desegregated, Virginia Key Beach gradually declined both in use and upkeep.” It goes on to say that in 1982, “the County transferred the former colored-only park to the City of Miami with a deed restriction that it only be used as a park and that the City continue the level of services and maintenance.”
Citing high costs of maintaining it, the City closed the Park before it would reopen two decades later with the help of local grassroots activists who protested plans that might have led to it becoming a commercial development. A trust, appointed by City Hall, would restore the land, ripping out blankets of invasive plants and replacing them with native ones, making the park an environmental historical area and an “open green space for a multi-cultural society.”
