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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/sobek/FIVK045612/00001
Notes
- General Note:
- This is an oral history interview with Dr. John Brown and Marie Faulkner Brown. Dr. Brown was born in Oklahoma in 1922 and he came to Miami in 1954. Dr. Brown said that he came to Miami to practice medicine. He attended medical school at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Brown took a residency in general surgery and then became an ophthalmologist. When he first arrived in Miami, he said that "it was a place where blacks had a good time" because of Miami's nightclubs. Dr. Brown then briefly talks about segregation in Miami. Then he revealed that there were about "fourteen" black doctors in Miami when he arrived in 1954. Dr. Brown then talks about Virginia Key beach, which he visited "every other Sunday." He liked the water at the beach, but he did not like the fact that due to Miami’s segregation laws, he could not experience the beach anywhere that he wanted to. Dr. Brown noted that even though he was a physician, he did not have extra privileges in Miami because he was black. Although he worked at Christian hospital, he could take his patients to the segregated wards at Jackson hospital. At the time of the interview, Dr. Brown says that he knows about the restoration efforts at Virginia Key beach. He remembers the signs for Virginia Key beach that said "For Colored Only" and he thought the signs were crazy. He did not understand why part of the beach could be only open to blacks, and the other part for whites only. Dr. Brown tells the interviewer that he belonged to Miami’s King of Clubs organization. Next, Dr. Brown talks about segregation in Miami and his role in protesting the city’s segregation laws. Dr. Brown noted that he organized Miami’s branch of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality). He also revealed that Jack and Barbara Gordon directed Miami’s C.O.R.E. branch. Jack Gordon was a white banker who sympathized with Miami's sit-ins. Dr. Brown participated in the lunch sit-ins at Miami. He described the sit-ins by saying that they would go in and sit at the lunch counters, where the workers refused to serve them. The workers, black waitresses, informed the group that they "did not serve colored people." He said that they sat at "every lunch counter that we could find." Dr. Brow noted revealed that students and people off the street, most of them waiters and waitresses also participated in Miami's sit-ins. The protestors met at a C.O.R.E. meeting point and then decided as a group where they would sit-in. Dr. Brown said that C.O.R.E. operated under certain rules, one of which included no violence. Then he tells the interviewer that he brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Miami. He previously met Dr. King at Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. Brown said that he when we went back to Tuskegee during the bus boycott that he wanted to meet Martin Luther King because he "had the same ideas that I had." Dr. Brown said his friend, Moses Jones, went to the same church as Dr. King and introduced the men at his house. He said that Dr. King offered his help with the Miami protests. Dr. Brown said that at the time, they were mainly interested in voter registration and that they wanted to bring Dr. King to Miami to speak at some of the meetings. And that is how Dr. King came to Miami "the first time." The Miami C.O.R.E. group mostly met at the Congregationalist Church and the Episcopal Church headed by Father Coleman. Then, Marie Faulkner Brown talks about how they formed their own Congregationalist Church in Miami, called "The Church of the Open Door." Dr. Brown then talks about his time as a physician in Miami, where the white physicians refused to accept him on an equal basis. Dr. Brown said that even though he was a member of the Dade County Medical Association, he was an associate member, not a full one. Dr. Brown noted that he worked on several white patients, which started when he first arrived in Miami. Dr. Brown said that he worked at the Veterans Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he took over its ophthalmology practice after its previous owner was in a car accident. Dr. Brown met Malcolm X once, in Miami. He said that Martin Luther King visited Miami at least four to five times and that he usually stayed with a local lawyer named Henry Arrington. The Browns end the interview by saying that Miami only had C.O.R.E. and the NAACP, not the Black Panther Party.
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- Virginia Key Beach Park Trust
- Holding Location:
- Florida International University
- Rights Management:
- No copyright - United States
- Resource Identifier:
- FIVK045612
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