“With its scant four-tenths of a mile of actual shoreline, the (Virginia Key Beach) Park was the only bathing beach in the county legally available to African Americans at that time. In spite of these restrictive limitations, however, Virginia Key Beach Park was a cherished “Paradise” and a vibrant recreational locale which united all neighborhoods and social classes as a center of Black life.”
Virginia Key Park Civil Rights Task Force, December 2000
One of the most cherished aspects of Virginia Key was the availability of bathing cabanas and overnight cottages.
Former Miami-Dade County Parks Director A.D. Barnes recalls in his History of the Dade County Park System how the honeymoon cottages came to be there:
“The Dade County Port Authority had just purchased a piece of land in Virginia Gardens to enlarge Miami Airport. There were several houses on the property and the Port Authority agreed to transfer any of the buildings the Park Department needed...One, a rather substantial and not too unattractive single family house was selected for the cabana area at Crandon. Another substantial three living unit building was selected for Virginia Beach...It was refurbished with one unit set aside as living quarters for the Virginia Beach Maintenance Foreman...the other two units were furnished with beds and items common to efficiency apartments and rented out....”
Though long gone, the so-called “honeymoon cottages” live on in the memories of those lucky enough to have spent time there. And they are part of impetus behind the idea of considering the entire historic Virginia Key Beach Park a Civil Rights Museum:
Artist and writer Dinizula Gene Tinnie spoke of this in the landmark essay, “Politicized Memories in the Struggle for Miami’s Virginia Key Beach,” by University of Miami Professor and Historian Dr. Gregory Bush, in To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History, (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).
“One of the strategies that we have to have is looking at our sacred sites, places that have been consecrated by, labored by, the struggle. There are too many people with too many fond memories, too many people who have been baptized out there; had their honeymoon’s out there, had their first love affair out there. I said that was a place that brought together an entire black community. It was the only place we could go.”
Read excerpts from To Love the Wind and the Rain, including "Politicized Memories in the Struggle for Miami's Virginia Key Beach," at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-rAXz2l92mkC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
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On Facebook: Friends of Virginia Key
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