Biscayne Bay “Wade-ins”

Incorporated in 1896 Miami’s population of several hundred grew steadily over the subsequent decades to nearly 30,000 people in 1920, approximately 31 percent of whom were African American; by 1930 the population had soared to more than 110,000. During this time of growth, the city’s beaches were developed in earnest, but because of the “separate but equal” doctrine established by the landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, African Americans were denied entry to all the city’s oceanfront beaches.

History

In the 1920s African Americans began to visit Virginia Key, an isolated, undeveloped and relatively uninhabited barrier island located approximately one mile southwest of the tip of Miami Beach. The island, accessible only by boat, attracted church groups, who gathered for sunrise services and ocean baptisms, as well as bathers who would swim at Bears Cut (also known as Beers Cut), a narrow body of water at the southern edge of the key.

In 1938 the city adopted a plan to establish a seaport on Virginia Key and in 1940 County Commissioner Charles Crandon secured 808 acres of Key Biscayne, located immediately south of Virginia Key, for a “whites-only” public park, named in his honor. Crandon advocated for a causeway to connect the mainland and two islands, which was begun in 1941 and completed in 1947.

During World War II the Navy trained African American seamen at Virginia Key Beach and in 1945 Crandon announced plans to establish a “half mile negro bathing beach” on the island adjacent to a proposed airport-seaport project. Authorities argued over the location of the new airport and plans to develop a segregated African American beach languished for months. Ultimately, it was a collective act of civil disobedience, organized by attorney Lawson E. Thomas and others, that turned the promise of an officially recognized and designated African American beach into a reality.

On May 9, 1945, one day after VE Day (Victory in Europe Day), six African American men and women, clad in bathing suits, defiantly waded into the Atlantic Ocean at the “whites-only” Baker’s Haulover Beach (now Haulover Park) northeast of downtown Miami. The goal was to challenge racial segregation at public beaches. Thomas waited on the shore (with $500 for possible bail money), anticipating that the police would arrest and jail the protestors, thus creating public controversy. When the police arrived the protestors (including Otis Mundy, May Dell Braynon, Annie Coleman) were ordered out of the water but were not arrested. Sheriff D.C. Coleman contacted Commissioner Crandon who asked Thomas to meet the next morning to “work something out.” As professor, historian, and activist Gregory W. Bush notes, “In a city that depended on upon tourism for its economic livelihood, the white power structure needed to avoid ugly racial confrontations.”

As a direct result of the “wade-in” Virginia Key Beach was dedicated approximately three months later, on August 1, as a “colored only” park. The creation of Virgina Key Beach was a symbolic victory for Miami’s African American community and, immediately became a popular destination. Nonetheless, Miami’s beaches remained segregated for another fourteen years.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the city’s African American leaders strove to integrate public facilities and again looked to the city’s public beaches. In November 1959, Rev. Theodore Gibson and other members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called for the county to “open all tax supported county facilities to all citizens,” according to a contemporaneous Miami Times report. County Attorney Darrey Davis recommended County Manager O.W. Campbell not to comply, but suggested “an impartial board be named to gather facts as the first step toward setting up a program to integrate county parks, beaches, and hospitals.”

One member of Gibson’s group that met with Campbell was attorney G. E. Graves. When Campbell rebuffed the group’s request, Graves pointed out that since County Attorney Davis had already “admitted there is no law to ban Negroes from county tax supported parks,” they would begin to use previously segregated parks. In late November 1959, Rev. Gibson and a group of African American women and men went to the segregated beach at Crandon Park. As with the event at Haulover Beach fourteen years earlier, the gathering was peaceful. The Miami Times reported that “[c]urious whites gathered to watch the group as a horde of TV cameramen and reports took pictures and interviewed leaders of the group. A Metro patrol made its usual tour,” but otherwise took no action. This effectively marked the desegregation of the county’s facilities.