Inner-city Infrastructure: Overtown's Lyric Theater

I have come to realize that there are two different pedigrees when it comes to the inner-city areas of South Florida. One is a lineage that traces the roots of the marginalized community to white founders who fled to the suburbs as undesirable "others" moved in next door. The other lineage is derived from when a community was a segregated enclave in which Blacks were forced to live under Jim Crow laws. The four communities in South Florida that I am familiar with who have this kind of lineage are Overtown and Liberty City in Miami, Sistrunk in Fort Lauderdale, and Pearl City in Boca Raton.

The advantage of finding an area that was historically a segregated community is that the heritage is rich in culture. But in the case of Overtown, Sistrunk and Pearl City, these communities are all very close to what is now the commercial core of those cities. This simple fact is now putting them at risk. In all three instances there is an enormous amount of pressure to erase and "sanitize" the Black history and have the commercial district swallow it up. As a friend explained it to me, "Suddenly [the white folks] realized they had given up a prime location."

In Overtown, the historic Lyric Theater is a good example of what can be done to resist exactly this kind of pressure. In 2007 we were given an example of what kind of activism is needed in order to draw attention to not only the heritage of these communities, but also to preserving the buildings.

The Wikipedia post for Overtown almost seems to credit this increased attention to spurring on the revitalization of the theater, and by 2012 it looks like it will serve as a focal point of a youth program.

But back to that 2007 event. It was during the Art Basel festival season when a POPtv / nonradioMusic Studio Lab Project (no, that is not a typo) presented "AAPC+Overtown; A Snapshot of the Golden Age of American Music."

The project featured Derin Young and it was a multimedia performance that showcased historical Overtown residents and visitors by using both audio and video content. What it also did was celebrate the rich cultural history of Overtown. The performance utilized special segments highlighting Sammy Davis, Jr., Sam and Dave, Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington, as well as music from contemporary composers like Derin Young and R.M. Crews, who form the nucleus of the Studio Lab Project.

Indexing for This Topic:

"The Culture"

"White Flight"