Historically, Miami’s Black Coconut Grove has nurtured young athletes. Now that legacy is at risk

MIAMI (AP) – Amari Cooper’s football jersey hangs within the Coconut Grove Sports Hall of Fame. The same goes for Frank Gore, in addition to tributes to Negro League baseball player Jim Colzi and football coach Traz Powell, whose name graces arguably essentially the most respected highschool football stadium in talent-rich South Florida.

They represent West Coconut Grove when it was a majority-Black neighborhood hidden amongst Miami’s wealthiest areas that thrived on family-owned businesses, local gatherings and sporting events. Some call it West Grove, Black Grove or Little Bahamas, referring to its roots. Most simply call it The Grove, a spot steeped in cultural history transformed over the a long time.

“When you talk about what The Grove is, you’re talking about the real history of South Florida,” said Charles Gibson, grandson of certainly one of the primary black members of the Miami City Commission, Theodore Gibson.

Sport was his heart. It has supported the early careers of Olympic gold medalists and football stars like Cooper, national champions and future Football Hall of Famers like Gore, who make their first sporting memories on this close-knit community.

Today, there are few remnants of this proud Black heritage. Years of economic neglect followed by recent gentrification have destroyed much of the realm’s cultural backbone. Vigorous youth leagues and sports programs have dwindled. Now the community that once created an environment during which young athletes could succeed – a trusted neighbor caring for a young soccer player heading to training, a respected coach instilling discipline and perseverance in a future track and field star – is at risk of extinction.

“I think in two or three years, if something isn’t done, Black Grove will be completely destroyed,” said Anthony Witherspoon, a West Grove resident and founding father of the Coconut Grove Sports Hall of Fame.

Witherspoon, known by everyone on the town as “Spoon,” is a former college basketball player and coach who returned to West Grove in 2015 after nearly 30 years in Atlanta and located a neighborhood much different than the one during which he grew up .

Witherspoon recalls the late Nineteen Seventies, when he walked down the aptly named Grand Avenue — once the economic epicenter of West Grove — after a Friday night highschool football game, dined at a neighborhood mom-and-pop joint and frolicked at the favored Tikki Club.

Earlier generations in the realm died, lots of their families moved elsewhere, and disinvestment led to poverty and neglect. Redevelopment then kicked in, replacing longtime residents with non-black newcomers. Mommies and daddies have largely disappeared. The same goes for Club Tikki, currently an empty constructing with the last vestiges of vibrant Bahamas-inspired colours on the partitions.

“I was here. I lived in the community. I felt the influence of sports,” Witherspoon said. “I got here back from Atlanta, Georgia, and I used to be exposed to gentrification. In the back of my mind, I had this thought: We still must protect this history.

Witherspoon founded the Hall of Fame to maintain that legacy alive. A time capsule of roughly 90 area athletes and coaches, it begins with characters like Colzie, a World War II veteran who played baseball for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, and ends with former pro running back Gore and Cooper, a receiver from Cleveland Browns.

“Coconut Grove is a nesting place for all of us athletes in this area,” said Gerald Tinker, a West Grove resident who won a gold medal within the 1972 Olympics as a member of the U.S. 4×100-meter relay team. “They would always expect us to be just as good (as previous generations) and just as humble. And it’s always been like that.”

The community’s status for athletics was born at George Washington Carver High School, a segregated black school. Carver was a football powerhouse within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, winning five state championships under Powell, who helped shape the landscape of Miami’s highschool sports scene.

Harold Cole, a former coach and athletic director at nearby Coral Gables High School who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019, said Powell’s influence lasts for generations.

“He was a coach; he was a mentor,” Cole said. “He was responsible for many of the athletes who came out of Coconut Grove.”

Cole said West Grove still has youth sports programs, but since many families have moved away and kids have gone to other school districts, “it’s not the same anymore.”

Integration within the Nineteen Seventies forced Carver to shut. It is now a junior highschool positioned within the affluent nearby town of Coral Gables.

“This division to some extent broke the fabric of the community in the 1980s.” Witherspoon said.

Nichelle Haymore’s family hopes to preserve a part of the old neighborhood by reopening the Ace Theater, a preferred venue for black residents through the Jim Crow era. Haymore’s great-grandfather, businessman Harvey Wallace Sr., bought the Grand Avenue theater within the Nineteen Seventies. Born in West Grove, Haymore spent years in Texas before returning in 2007 to assist maintain the theater.

“The atmosphere of the area is different,” Haymore said. “Neighbours, who may have taken care of your home at the beginning, don’t greet each other or talk. People are walking their dogs in your yard. This neighborly respect is different because the neighborhood is different.”

Shotgun-style homes owned by black residents were torn down in favor of sleek, boxy developments – some called ice cubes – and apartment buildings far too expensive for the middle-class individuals who built the community. Abandoned, boarded-up buildings stand in places where they once attracted crowds. Giant real estate advertisements hang on the fences of empty plots.

“They’re tearing down homes that have been in families for years and building row houses,” said Denzel Perryman, a Coconut Grove resident and former University of Miami star who played as a linebacker for the Los Angeles Chargers. “So it has an impact on the community because some kids from there are going to different places and parks because they don’t live in the Coconut Grove area.”

Perryman, who lived in Miami’s historic Black neighborhood of Overtown as a baby, spent most of his time in West Grove, playing football at Armbrister Park or participating in the numerous extracurricular activities the community offered.

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Some still exist today. Perryman watched his childhood football team, the Coconut Grove Cowboys, win the Pop Warner championship in December. Youth teams still train at Armbrister Park, although a few of them look different to groups from years ago.

“It’s unfortunate because you lose so much, character,” said Gibson, a football and lacrosse coach. “There are certain things locally that are related to family. When you lose that, I feel it’s sadness.

Gibson, like many other residents, is determined to support the identical family environment that raised him.

“You can’t put a dollar sign on a sign that says, ‘Go to grandma’s house. She (lives) next door,” Gibson said. “You don’t even have to look outside because you know it’s only 10 steps away and they’re home. How can you put a price on it?”

In The Grove – individuals are trying to search out the reply to this query – before it is too late.