Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in this Miami neighborhood. It is now getting its due.

Growing up in black Miami prior to the 1940s, there were only a few areas in Miami-Dade County designated as places where Colored people could dream of owning their own property and building a home for their families. Browns Subdivision (now known as Brownsville) was such a place.

Located about eight miles northwest of Miami, the Brownsville community prior to the mid-1940s was comprised of middle-class, single-family homes for whites. The neighborhood started to change in the late 1940s, as blacks started moving in, trying to fulfill their dream of becoming homeowners.

The dream, however, often became a nightmare, when the Ku Klux Klan in full-hooded attire would hold meetings to scare off the Colored people who wanted to buy property there, said Ernestine Williams, 94, and one of the pioneer residents who still live in the area. Thus, the area became known for its stand for civil rights.

Williams came to Browns Subdivision in 1948 with Roger Williams, her then husband-to-be. They had met in Memphis, and he persuaded her to moved to Miami with him, where his father Bishop J. D. Williams was a prominent clergyman and sometime Realtor.

“Browns Sub, as we called the area back then, was basically an underdeveloped area occupied by several white residents,” Williams said. “Besides the few whites in the area, the only other thing black was the two cemeteries — Lincoln and Evergreen. They used to be beautifully kept back then.

“The KKK wanted to keep the area white. But two men — a Realtor named Leslie Garrison, and Bishop J. D. Williams, my father-in-law, wanted to build affordable houses for blacks. And they did. Lots went from $1,000 to $1,500 a piece and you could get a brand new, two-bedroom house for as little as $5,000.

Williams remembers the site where the Historic Hampton House is now, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed when he spoke in Miami, and how it was nothing but a rock pit and sand. The two pioneering churches were First Baptist of Brownsville and Antioch Baptist.

“We need to preserve this [Brownsville] area. Most of the old settlers have died off. Their offspring don’t seem to want the property that their parents and grandparents worked so hard to get. So they are just selling off the property to the highest bidder. They won’t listen to us old-timers.”

Williams said she was happy to hear about the $50,000 grant from the National Park Service, awarded recently to Dade Heritage Trust (DHT), which will allow the organization to undertake a full survey of Brownsville and take a snapshot of the neighborhood’s historic assets and to assess its historic significance.

“The people of Brownsville need to thank Enid Pinkney for that,” Williams said, “and they need to take some of that $50,000 to clean up the cemeteries and restore them as historical sites.”

Said Pinkney, the leader behind the Hampton House’s restoration, “We have been trying to get historic designation for this neighborhood for a long time. The grant for the survey is the first step to determine if we qualify to preserve Brownsville as a historic site.”

Pinkney, the past president of Dade Heritage Trust and the first African American to hold that office, said her family moved to the area in the mid-1950s, when it was still called Brown Subdivision. She remembers how the late Bishop J.D. Williams tried to get her parents to move to the area in the 1940s.

“But my mom said, ‘No, I don’t want to be out there with those dead people (meaning the cemeteries).’ That just goes to show you how much things can change over the years,” Pinkney said with a chuckle.

David Vela, the National Park Service’s deputy director, said in a press release that the grant will “... fund important projects that document, interpret and preserve the sites that tell the stories of the African American experience in the pursuit of civil rights.”

Indeed, there are many, rich African American stories in Brownsville, said Kenneth Kilpatrick, a resident and the executive director of The Alternative Program. His grandfather, the late George Kilpatrick, was a well-known businessman in Brownsville.

“I can name about eight sites they should consider to preserve.” He named the homes of the late Joe Lang Kershaw; the late Gwen Cherry, attorney and first African American member of the Florida House; Georgette’s Tea Room; the Hampton House; the Evergreen and Lincoln Memorial cemeteries; and the homes of former County Commissioner Neal Adams; the pioneering Johnson Family, which includes Dorothy Fields, founder of the Black Archives; and Judge Leo Adderly.

Virtual private music lessons

If you are bored and tired of staying home during the pandemic crisis, consider this:

The African Heritage Cultural Arts Center’s Music Department is offering free virtual private music lessons, taught by John Harden II. Each lesson will be 60 minutes.

Classes are being offered in flute, clarinet, saxophone and keyboard, and are available from 2:30 to 3:30 pm., Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Interested persons may schedule their free online private music lesson by contacting Harden at john.harden2@miamidade.gov.

This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 6:00 AM.