Miami historian and activist Enid Pinkney gets street by Hampton House named after her
Gary Allen recalled driving his aunt Enid Pinkney to dialysis and seeing a name on a street sign.
“We would be going down 50th Street, and she would be telling me about the name of the person on that [sign],” he told the Miami Herald. That street in particular was named for renowned South Florida pastor and activist Bishop Joseph D. Williams, who spent his life helping Black people register to vote.
Now, Allen will be able to see Pinkney’s name on the street sign near the Historic Hampton House. Pinkney spent her life fighting for Black history to be celebrated and preserved throughout Miami and now her name is further etched in Miami’s history with a street renamed in her honor.
“She’d been fighting for black people all her life to have a rightful place,” AnnMarie Henry, co-founder of nonprofit Profiles in Black Miami, told the Miami Herald in the days leading to the unveiling. “She’s been doing this her whole life. This is why we felt that she was deserving of having a street named after her.”
On Friday morning a ceremony was hosted to unveil the street sign to commemorate the historian. The stretch of street that will now be known as Dr. Enid Curtis Pinkney Street spans Northwest 42nd Street between Northwest 27th and 29th Avenues by the Historic Hampton House. The renaming was sponsored by Miami-Dade County Commissioner Keon Hardemon’s office along with nonprofits Profiles in Black Miami and the Curtis Foundation.
Hardemon said the naming ceremony is a reminder of the legacy Pinkney has left for the communities she’s affected. He said Pinkney has preserved two key pieces of the county’s history – the Hampton House in Brownsville and the Lyric Theatre in Overtown.
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“Both of those are really and truly senses of pride for everyone, and they are places of culture and activity that I think will continue to grow in the future,” Hardemon told the Herald prior to the naming ceremony. “So, if she gave us her time to preserve our history, I think we should take the time to preserve hers.”
Attendees at the ceremony were treated to the tunes of a junkanoo band, an homage to Pinkney’s Bahamian heritage, outside the historic venue, which was once a hotel in the heart of Miami’s Black community that hosted artists, athletes and civil rights pioneers including Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It is also one of a plethora of landmarks that Pinkney saved from demolition.
“As I think about it, her legacy and her name and the value which she has contributed to this city and even around the world, the message that she had was being proud of your heritage and your culture and knowing who you are and dignity and respect,” Allen told the Herald. “Her name speaks of all of that.”
Born to Bahamian parents, Pinkney was born and raised in Overtown with her three siblings. It was her father Henry Curtis’ bravery — he stood up to a white police officer during a traffic stop — that led her down the path of fighting for the civil rights of others and preserving Black history in Miami.
Holding the renaming at the Hampton House is of great significance as Pinkney led the charge to save the venue. The former hotel opened in 1954, but fell into disrepair once it closed in 1970 and was later on the verge of demolition before Pinkeny urged elected officials and community leaders to save the building in the early 2000s. The building was purchased by the county in 2004.
In 2015, the Hampton House reopened as a nonprofit cultural center, which features a museum and includes tours of the space and galleries.
Pinkney devoted her final years to preserving Miami’s Black history and fought one last cause before her death in July at age 92: preventing Hialeah from attempting to annex Brownsville, the neighborhood she had lived since 1968.
At the event, Allen said the sign will remind him of the times he’s spent with his aunt and the moments they shared.
“It will remind me of love, forgiveness and pressing through the hard times of facing our fears, my fears, the laughs at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and talking,” he said, then he joked, “The sign will remind me of her getting on my nerves and me still having to help her out of the car.”
But more than anything Allen is glad the street sign will live on as a testament to Pinkney’s legacy.
“She always stressed knowing who you are, where you are from,” he said. “And I think that street naming represents that if people were to inquire when they saw that name, ‘Well, who is Enid Pinkney?’ it would bring all of that to the forefront what she stood for.”
