Students Exposed to City’s Cultural History
By Ana Ribeiro, The Miami Herald
Apr. 16–As Marquis Norton stepped out of a tour bus, he noticed a familiar sight: his own house.
Marquis, 10, was among 40 or so Liberty City Elementary students invited to explore the history of Liberty City on April 7. He discovered his house is located across the street from a historical landmark: the home of Frank Legree, a black man who moved into a then white section of Miami in 1957, resisting picketing and a Ku Klux Klan demonstration to raise his family there.
"Activities like these will self-motivate the children and make them proud," said Selena Williams, a lead teacher in the I-Choose initiative that seeks to improve enrollment at county schools through new learning programs.
"The source of what we’re trying to get to them is how the community evolved, how it even started," Williams said.
As the bus moved from point to point in the largely black area, Paul George, a renowned tour guide with the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, told the story of Legree and other important black figures who once lived or visited Liberty City. The bus stopped at several landmarks and the children were encouraged to get out and take pictures with disposable cameras provided by tour organizers.
The museum has partnered with television’s History Channel to teach Liberty City Elementary students about their history through tours, interviews with elderly residents and comparing new and old photos in the museum archives.
"It’s a need in the community both academically and socially," Mara Zapata, director of education at the museum, said during the tour. "It’s a community little known about even by the people who inhabit it."
Zapata, a former elementary school teacher, said the museum chose Liberty City Elementary, at 1855 NW 71st St., for this program because its students have flexible schedules and are at an age where they can acquire the knowledge to make them better prepared for high school.
"We’re building a sense of civic responsibility in them," Zapata said.
George started the tour by saying that Liberty City was nothing but farmland until the area began to develop as a black community in the 1930s.
In 1937, Liberty Square opened as one of the first public housing projects in the nation.
George went on to tie the story of influential black people in Liberty City to the struggles blacks faced during segregation and the development boom in the area.
After visiting the Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery — where George said the area’s first black millionaire Dana Dorsey is buried — the bus stopped at the foundation of an old segregation wall along Northwest 12th Avenue.
"There were children sitting in the bus and staring at that wall," Zapata said. "They didn’t know what it was. [This kind of reaction] is what we want to bring out."
George pointed out Georgette’s Tea Room, where legendary singer Billie Holiday used to stay at a time when black performers weren’t allowed in all-white hotels.
"If you don’t know things that have happened, you can’t avoid them happening again," Williams said to the group of students aboard the bus.
—–
Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.