For 85 years, this group has helped Miami build bridges and heal hurts from racial injustice

Standing up to the power of bigotry and racism, a committee of Christians and Jews formed a coalition in Miami in the 1920s.

A decade later, the group became the Miami chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ). Eighty five years later, as the Miami Conference of Christians and Jews (MCCJ), the mission remains the same, to embrace diversity and build an inclusive Miami community.

“In times of conflict and controversy in our community, MCCJ has been a bridge over troubled waters,” said Miami attorney H.T. Smith.

MCCJ is known nationally for creating the interfaith clergy dialogue. It provided community forums for candid and sensitive dialogue during the civil rights movement, worked with the Miami-Dade Community Relations Board after the McDuffie riots in 1980 and worked with the Miami Herald to co-facilitate nine community dialogues with different leadership sectors.

In the early days, the community rallied around the annual Brotherhood Dinner. Now, MCCJ’s gala, the Humanitarian Awards Dinner, annually recognizes business, education, religion, philanthropic and community leaders.

This year, MCCJ executive director Nestor Rodriguez noted that because of the global pandemic, the event would pivot from in-person to a “REIMAGINED” virtual celebration. “Our REIMAGINED event will be at the beginning of the season of thanks and giving.”

The virtual celebration was held Sunday, Nov. 22. Broadcast live from the the United Way headquarters, Calvin Hughes, news anchor at WPLG Local 10, hosted the evening. Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald columnist, gave the keynote address, “This Moment in History, Racial Equality and Cultural Diversity.”

Among the awards presented that evening:

▪ The 2020 Silver Medallions: Dr. Imran Ali, Jaret L. Davis, Robert Josefsberg and Cheryl Little.

▪ The Robert H. Traurig Lifetime Achievement Awards: Marvin Leibowitz (posthumously), Dr. Dorothy Jenkins Fields and Arva Moore Parks (posthumously).

▪ Interfaith Clergy Medallion: Rabbi Frederick Klein.

The gala’s chairs were Cristina Pereyra-Alvarez and Cesar Alvarez. The honorary chairs were Marsha and Brian Bilzin, Gail Ash and Albert E. Dotson Jr.

The program honored community leaders while raising funds to support programming, especially for youth.

Youth programs making a difference

The impact of MCCJ’s youth programs can be seen over generations. From 1958-1960, as one of the high school students participating in NCCJ’s then Intergroup Youth Council (IYC), I learned about the organization’s mission of creating safe havens for dialog, training leaders and highlighting the benefits of diversity.

Overtown’s Rev. Edward T. Graham, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church, and Miss Marie Roberts, a guidance counselor and human relations teacher at Booker T. Washington Junior & Senior High School, arranged for students to participate with white students at Miami Senior High School.

At the time, schools in Miami were segregated. Attending the IYC “integration” meetings was one of the only opportunities for people of different races to be in the same room at the same time. Lectures by local and national speakers encouraged dialogue about diversity, then known as “ the integration of the races.”

Between 1940 and 1960, participants from Booker T. Washington also included Leome Culmer, Enid Pinkney, Maud Newbold, Beverly Nixon, Marcai Saunders and Jewyll Wilson. Three were school administrators, one a school counselor, one a county administrator and one a church activist, mostly in Miami.

Participation in IYC helped prepare me for my lifelong friendship with historian and preservationist Arva Moore Parks. We began working together in 1974 at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (History Miami).

She primarily researched Miami’s white history, while I focused on Miami’s Black experience from 1896 to the present. Our research was used in two major projects: The Junior League of Miami’s documentary film, “Miami, the Magic City,” (1980) and the PBS WPBT documentary, “Parallel Lives” (2010).

Recording Miami’s history and telling our stories is a testament to MCCJ’s mission. The importance of documenting the relationship of different lives was the vision of Deborah Hoffman and Toni Randolph, members of IWF, the International Women’s Forum, the prime sponsor.

Decades later, Hoffman, also a member of the MCCJ board, nominated Arva and me jointly for the Robert H. Traurig Lifetime Achievement Award. We looked forward to attending the event together.

Unfortunately, Arva died on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2020. I accepted the award for both of us hoping that our example will help advance MCCJ’s mission.

Dorothy Jenkins Fields, Ph.D., is a historian and founder of the Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida Inc. Send feedback to djf@bellsouth.net

This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 12:10 PM.