Historically Black Coconut Grove nurtured young athletes. Now that legacy is under threat
MIAMI– Amari Cooper’s football jersey hangs in the Coconut Grove Sports Hall of Fame. That includes Frank Gore, in addition to paying tribute to Negro League baseball player Jim Colzie and football coach Traz Powell, whose names grace perhaps the most revered high school football stadium in talent-rich South Florida.
They represent West Coconut Grove when it was a vital black majority neighborhood, hidden among some of the most affluent areas in Miami, thriving with family businesses, local hangouts and sporting events. Some call it West Grove, Black Grove or Little Bahamas a nod to his roots. Most simply call it The Grove – a place steeped in cultural history that has been transformed over the decades.
“When you talk about what The Grove is, you’re talking about the true history of South Florida,” said Charles Gibson, grandson of one of the first black members of the Miami City Commission, Theodore Gibson.
Sports were his heartbeat. It fueled the early careers of Olympic gold medalists and football stars like Coopernational champions and future football Hall of Famers like Gorewho all trace their first sporting memories to this close-knit community.
Today, few remnants of that proud black heritage survive. Years of economic neglect, followed by recent gentrification, have wiped out much of the neighborhood’s cultural backbone. Robust youth leagues and sports programs have declined. Now the community that once created an environment for young athletes to succeed – a trusted neighbor looking out for a young football player on his way to practice, a respected coach teaching a future star athlete discipline and perseverance – is in danger of extinction.
“I think in two or three years, if nothing is done, Black Grove will be completely wiped out,” said Anthony Witherspoon, a West Grove native and founder of the Coconut Grove Sports Hall of Fame.
Witherspoon, known to everyone in town as “Spoon,” is a former college basketball player and coach who returned to West Grove in 2015 after nearly three decades in Atlanta and found a neighborhood very different from the one in which he was raised.
Witherspoon recalled the late 1970s, when after a high school football game on a Friday night, he would walk down the aptly named Grand Avenue — once the economic epicenter of West Grove — eat at a local mom-and-pop restaurant and hang out at the popular Tikki club.
The neighborhood’s previous generations died, many of their families moved elsewhere, and disinvestment led to poverty and neglect. Than redevelopment came in, replacing longtime locals with non-black newcomers. The mom-and-pops are largely gone. That includes the Tikki Club, now a vacant building whose last bit of vibrancy is the Bahamas-inspired colors on the walls.
“I was here. I was living in the community. I felt the impact of sports,” Witherspoon said. “I came back from Atlanta, Georgia, and I encountered gentrification. And this was in the back of my mind: We still need to always preserved.
Witherspoon founded the Hall of Fame as a way to keep that legacy alive. A time capsule of approximately 90 area athletes and coaches, it begins with figures like Colzie, a World War II veteran who played baseball for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, and continues with former pro running back Gore and Cooper , a time capsule of approximately 90 area athletes and coaches. receiver with the Cleveland Browns.
“Coconut Grove is the breeding ground for all the athletes in this area,” said Gerald Tinker, a West Grove native who won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games as a member of the U.S. 4×100-meter relay team. “They always expected us to be just as good (as previous generations), and also just as humble. And it has always been that way.”
The community’s reputation for athletics originated at George Washington Carver High School, a segregated black school. Carver was a football powerhouse in the 1950s and 1960s, winning five state championships under Powell, who helped shape the landscape of Miami’s high school 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 has lasted generations.
“He was a coach; he was a mentor,” Cole said. “He was responsible for so many athletes coming out of Coconut Grove.”
Cole said West Grove still has youth sports programs, but as many families have moved and children have spread out to other school districts, “it’s not quite the same.”
Integration in the 1970s forced Carver to close. It is now a high school, located in the wealthy nearby city of Coral Gables.
“Those divisions to some extent broke the fabric of the community in the ’80s,” Witherspoon says.
Nichelle Haymore’s family hopes to preserve part of the old neighborhood by reopening the Ace Theater, a popular spot for black residents during the Jim Crow era. Haymore’s great-grandfather, businessman Harvey Wallace Sr., bought the theater on Grand Avenue in the 1970s. A native of West Grove, Haymore spent years in Texas before moving in 2007 to help maintain the theater.
“The feel of the neighborhood is different,” Haymore said. “Neighbors who may have noticed your house in the beginning don’t say hello, they don’t say anything. People walk their dogs in your garden. That respect for the neighbors is different because the neighborhood is different.”
Shotgun style houses of black residents have been demolished for sleek, angular estates — some call ice cubes — and condominiums far too expensive for the middle-class people who built the community. Abandoned, boarded-up buildings stand where crowds used to be. Giant real estate advertisements are pasted on the fences of vacant lots.
“They’re tearing down houses that have been in people’s families for years, and they’re building townhomes,” said Denzel Perryman, a Coconut Grove native and former University of Miami star who is a linebacker for the Los Angeles Chargers. “So it does impact the community because some of the kids that come from there end up going to different places and parks because they don’t live in the Coconut Grove area.”
Perryman, who lived in Miami historic black neighborhood of Overtown As a child, he spent most of his time in West Grove, playing football at Armbrister Park or participating in the many after-school activities the community had to offer.
Some still exist. Perryman watched his youth football team, the Coconut Grove Cowboys, win a Pop Warner championship in December. Youth teams still hold training at Armbrister Park, although some look different to teams of years past.
“It’s a shame because you lose so much, the character,” said Gibson, a football and lacrosse coach. ‘There are certain things in a community that are associated with family ties. When you lose that, I think it’s sad.”
Gibson, like many other residents, is determined to foster the same family environment that nurtured him.
‘You can’t put a dollar sign on the text: ‘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 inside. How can you attach value to that?”
In The Grove, that’s the question people struggle to answer – before it’s too late.
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