Christmas in Downtown Miami, 1953

A half-century ago, shoppers flocked to Burdines in downtown Miami, the biggest and best department store in the region. Throughout the 1950s, to get everyone in the holiday mood, Burdines annually lit a huge neon Santa between its two buildings. It worked--old timers still fondly remember seeing the Burdines Santa. This December 15, 1953, view of the sign looks south on Miami Avenue.

Credit: Miami News Collection, Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 1989-011-23202.

-- Rebecca A. Smith, Curator of Research Materials

Halloween in Pahokee

This snapshot shows us children dressed for a 1943 Halloween party at Pahokee, Florida. From right: a monkey and his organ grinder, a girl who has raided her mother’s closet, a store-bought skeleton, and a mysterious costume—what is the boy on the left impersonating?

Interama

As I write this, our exhibits designer and preparations staff are at the Kovens Center, located at the Biscayne Bay Campus of Florida International University, to install the traveling version of Interama: Miami and the Pan-American Dream. The exhibition going up there is only natural, as BBC was part of the Graves Tract that the state of Florida purchased to house the permanent World’s Fair that never was. In a sense, the university’s campus is all that ever came of Interama. It was originally to be called “Interama University,” but was eventually combined with FIU when the creation of that institution was imminent. In fact, the only building that was ever built by the Inter-American Center Authority now houses the internationally-renowned hospitality management program.

In a sense, this coming together is very personal for me in a number of ways. I graduated from FIU twice, and both times I was at the Biscayne Bay Campus. I took a large portion of my undergraduate classes there, then worked at BBC as a teacher’s assistant while working on my master’s degree. Panther Square and the Wolfe University Center were the hub of my social life, and BBC became my second home.

In addition, when the Interama exhibition went up, I was still an educator, though I had started helping to digitize the archaeological collection thanks to an IMLS grant. I assisted with the final touches in my budding role as a curator, making it the first exhibit I ever worked on, and then gave the first tours to the general public in my role as a museum educator. Now, I am one of two persons working on launching a formal traveling exhibitions program, which could include this slightly scaled-down version of Interama.

If you want to see the exhibit, call 305-919-5700 for more information.

-- Robert Harkins, Assistant Curator - Object Collections

Summer with the Teachers

Time literally flies when you are having fun. It’s hard to believe that what felt like an endless 11 week summer … is nearly over! We have had our last week of camp, our last week of working on our teaching collection inventory, and our last week of curriculum re-writes for fall programs.

The summer is over … and we got the first taste of that when our new school program brochures were delivered last week. It was hard to believe when I saw the 2009-2010 written on the front cover!

So where did our summer go?

In Summer Camp we went around the world, from Mariachis to Junkanoo bands. Unlike any other museum in our community, we ran camp for the full 11 week Miami-Dade Public School summer season.

A small team of museum educators scoured over our teaching collection, took a critical inventory and started entering everything into a database.

We overhauled our school programs through the lenses of “Understanding by Design,” a planning and teaching method which allows the educator to think big and narrow down in layers. So yes, we’ve been buzzing on the mezzanine level, a.k.a. Education … and tweeting on Twitter about it all summer long.

-- Cecelia D. Slesnick, Vice President, Education

Burned Cross in Black Crossroads

As a history museum, we’re charged with finding the visual images and objects that tell the story or piece of history presented in an exhibition. This can be a challenge since more history has been captured in text than in actual photographs, and objects are often junked before their historical importance is realized. This was not the case with burned cross above, one of the signature objects on display in the museum’s Black Crossroads: The African Diaspora in Miami exhibition.

The cross is part of the collection of the Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida. Its charred frame sits at the entrance to the Struggles section of the exhibition – the area that explores blacks’ century-long struggle for equality in Miami. It was burned on the lawn of Hazel Howard in 1982. Howard was an African American woman who had just moved into a new home in North Miami.

As telling as that story is about the prevalence of racial prejudice in Miami, how this piece of history got saved also deserves telling. The Community Relations Board (CRB), an inter-racial group created by county in 1963 “to solve hardcore social problems and economic distresses” collected the cross from Howard’s lawn after the incident and attempted to investigate the event. Members of the CRB at the time included community activist Bob Simms, who recalls that they then kept the cross in their offices as visual symbol of the past.

Eventually the board donated the cross to the Black Archives, saving it from historical extinction and enabling future generations to also experience its significance. And experience it they do – visitors to the exhibition are compelled towards it and have reported back to us the powerful connection they make to it. The charred 10-foot cross speaks volumes, makes the past real in a way no text can. All thanks to the CRB who saw that an object of history, no matter how painful, has something to teach all of us.

-- Joanne Hyppolite, Ph.D. Chief Curator.

Apollo 11

On July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission blasted off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins ventured through space to the moon. On July 20, Neil Armstrong became the first person to step out onto the moon’s surface, followed shortly thereafter by “Buzz” Aldrin. The astronauts safely returned to earth on July 24, the mission a success.

This pass came into HMSF’s collection in 1989, a gift of Marie Oscar. Individuals invited to watch the launch of the mission were issued one of these official guest passes. Even though Kennedy Space Center is over two hundred miles from Miami, Dade County residents were still able to see the orange streak in the morning sky created by the Saturn V rocket as it pushed the spacecraft into orbit, though the view was certainly much better for those “official guests.”

As a space geek, I would like to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 by reminding everybody that it was “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

-- Robert Harkins, Assistant Curator – Object Collections

1989.031.001

Pan Am Captains Martin & Martin

When Frank Carroll Martin renewed his membership, he chose the new category of Senior. This level requires a birth date to prove that the member is 65 years of age or older, so I called Mr. Martin to record his date of birth, which did not appear on his application.

As I spoke to Mr. Martin, I noticed airplane pictured on the check he had enclosed with his renewal. Curious, I asked him if he had been a pilot. Frank said that he had been a Pan Am Clipper skipper and that his father, Frank Crawford Martin, had been an original China Clipper pilot.

I invited Frank to come to the museum to see some of the Pan Am Collection and to have lunch with the President/CEO Bob McCammon. During lunch, his father’s extensive flights during World War II brought forth many tales about Miami’s place in aeronautical history. Frank informed us that the majority of the soldiers captured from Rommel’s Africa Corps were housed as POWs in South Dade. He told us that the St. Sebastian Apartments in Coral Gables were used as barracks for Royal Air Force student pilots and navigators who were trained almost exclusively in Miami due to its advanced aeronautical facilities. One particularly interesting story relayed was that near the end of the war, his dad piloted the then Prince Feisal of Saudi Arabia to America for his first visit and, true to the “it’s small world” axiom, Bob’s father had flown the prince on the second leg of this same journey in California.

Frank Carroll Martin served as a Pan Am captain for more than fifteen years. He is currently the Area Coordinator for the Blue and Gold Program of the United States Naval Academy, in which he and his associates identify and mentor fine young men and women to become Midshipmen.

Frank is proud of Miami’s place in aeronautical history and the accomplishments of his father that changed the lives and history of the African American community in South Florida. The rewards of Frank Crawford’s labor are still being reaped today; the work of Frank Carroll will be seen tomorrow in the lives of young officers that will serve our nation with distinction.

Captains, the Historical Museum salutes you both!

-- Hilda Masip, Membership Officer

Top picture: Pan Am China Clipper, ca. 1935. HMSF, 1992-233-11.
Bottom photo: Frank Crawford Martin. Courtesy of Frank Carroll Martin.