Arsht gala to honor iconic Marshall L. Davis Sr., a developer of young talent

When my older son Ricky (now deceased) was a toddler and my younger son Shawn was a baby, one of our favorite outings was to take a walk to Materia’s Grocery Store at Northwest 22nd Avenue and 62nd Street. The owner was friendly, and the store was small but clean and always had an ample supply of fresh vegetables and affordable cuts of meat.

That was more than 60 years ago. Little did I know that a little more than a decade later, the tiny building that once housed Materia’s Grocery Store would be the beginning of an institution - the Marshall L. Davis Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center - where the youth of Liberty City and the surrounding areas would learn to build their dreams, grow their creative wings and fly.

At 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14, at a star-studded event at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Knight Center Hall, the Marshall Davis Sr. African Heritage Cultural Arts Center (MLDAHCAC) will celebrate its golden anniversary. The celebration will chronicle the center’s history, from its humble beginnings in 1975 to its place of international prominence and honor today. In my opinion, the Miami -Dade community has good reasons to celebrate the center and what it means to our community, and indeed, our nation.

Establishing the center, which was first named the Model City Cultural Arts Center, was the brainchild of the late congresswoman Carrie Meek and pastor Sondra Roberts Julien. Julien envisioned a multi-arts facility, not just another teen center. She wanted a place where she could expand the work she was doing in the inner-city areas of Liberty City and Brownsville, where local youth got hands-on experience in the performing and visual arts. She wanted to include the works of the late Wendall A. Narcisse and the Theater of Afro -arts, which he founded, as well as the late Ruth Greenfield’s Music Conservatory.

It was a big dream. And with the help of Meek, Julien developed a grant proposal that was later submitted through Miami Dade Community College to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The grant was awarded, and later Julien went before the Miami-Dade County Commission and persuaded them to build a cultural arts center, not just another teen center where children were babysat while their dreams of the arts were being deferred.

It was while the center was being constructed that a young Marshall L. Davis visited Meek’s office and saw a display model of the future cultural arts center. Davis had met the congresswoman while he was a student at then-Miami-Dade Community College, where she was a professor. He remembers seeing the display model and saying to the congresswoman, “Wow! You all are building a culture arts center in Liberty City… I would like to work there.” The congresswoman said, “Well, Marshall, we are going to build it and you will have your opportunity.”

Davis was hired in December 1983 as the third director of the center, following Joanne Timmons and the late Doran Cooper. He has spent more than 40 years there, fostering the vision of Meek and Julien, along with his own.

“I have embellished their vision to my own visionary concepts, compassion and skills, creating a mission of using art to aid and transform lives,” Davis said.

Transforming lives is exactly what Davis has done for the more than four decades he has led the center. One of the first alumni of the center to gain national attention is Davis’s own son, Marshall L. Davis, Jr., who when he was 13, won “Star Search,” a competition program hosted by Ed McMahon. Today, Marshall Jr. is an internationally known tap dancer who has appeared on the world’s stages.

Other outstanding alumni include Robert Battle, the former artistic director of the Ailey Dance Company; Oscar-winner Tarell Alvin McCraney; astronaut candidate Dr. Lisa Alcindor; Carshena Allison, CEO of the Watson & Rice accounting firm; Lashawnda Batts, assistant dean and professor at Howard University’s Chadwick Boseman School of Performing Arts; Morris Copeland, former chief of Miami-Dade County government; former Miami-Dade County Police Chief Stephanie Daniels; and former Opa-locka Mayor Matthew Pigatt.

Davis, who grew up in Liberty City’s Scott Housing Project with two brothers and a sister, was raised primarily by his mother, Gertrude Ophelia Davis. He said she was “a strong woman” who taught her children the value of love and education and the importance of being respectful to themselves as well as to others.

A graduate of Miami Northwestern High School, Davis said he grew up in a “village” where everyone had the same mindset for their children. “We knew that our parents wanted only the best for us. So, when I became the director of the center, I wanted it to be the place where those same standards would be a priority. I wanted it to be a place where quality and intentional efforts to have quality learning would be first and foremost,” he said.

Davis said he knows what it feels like to have talent but no real fundamental training. “Growing up in the projects, I didn’t have the money to purchase the tools to pursue my artistic talent,” he said. “I learned that a person must come to college with certain skills,” he said. “I didn’t have them when I entered Miami-Dade Community College; I didn’t have the fundamental training to study art at the college level.” Later, Davis said, he switched his major from visual art to theater.

The lesson of not being fully prepared when he entered college was one Davis would never forget. It drove him to make sure the youngsters attending the center would have all they needed to enter their chosen professions.

Looking back over the past four decades, Davis said, “I wish I had been better prepared when I took the job as director of the center. But I thank God, because the lack of being better prepared has helped me to inspire in the youngsters coming to the center the importance of learning.

“I have been blessed through the youngsters I have mentored. So many of my own dreams have been manifested through my ‘children.’ For example, I once dreamed of winning an Academy Award. I have lived out that dream through Tarell Alvin McCraney, one of my ‘children’ from the center, when he won the Academy Award for the 2016 film ‘Moonlight.’”

The center’s golden celebration will feature the premiere of “An Instrumental Start: A Model for the Nation,” a documentary directed by Brian Bayerl and Michael Huter tracing the center’s journey; live performances by the center’s alumni and partners to include Nu Deco Ensemble, Marshall Davis Jr., a dance choreographed by Robert Battle, and tributes from actress Phylicia Rashad, tap dance icon Savion Glover and The Man himself, Marshall L. Davis Sr.

“Overall, the event is about the untold story of Black Miami that set the foundation for the center,” Davis said. It will highlight the Black Bahamians who signed the 1896 charter that incorporated the City of Miami, and it will shed light on early Black pioneers like D.A. Dorsey, (Miami’s first Black millionaire) and Ebenezer W.F. Stirrup, a Bahamian American pioneer. Dorsey provided loans to the Brickells, helping to shape Miami’s future, while Stirrup developed affordable housing for Bahamian immigrants in Coconut Grove.

Kudos to Davis, for cultivating a cultural haven that became a launchpad for excellence and a beacon of resilience in an underserved community.

This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 5:58 PM.