Gregory W. Bush. White Sand, Black Beach

As the field of public history has matured since the 1970s, its scholars have extended the original focus from “putting history to work” (e.g., museum and site management) into cutting-edge analyses of the role of preserving public spaces as “special” places of memory and heritage for various community constituencies, particularly minority groups. In White Sand, Black Beach: Civil Rights, Public Space, and Miami’s Virginia Key, Gregory W. Bush employs this emerging methodology and cites extensive sources to scrutinize the historical record and contemporary results of Miami/Dade County’s “colored beach” through its journey from a place of special interest for local African Americans (1945–1970s), to a neglected urban park (1980s), to a commercial target for revenue-thirsty planners and profit-driven developers (1990s), to the present rather ambiguous status of Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Bush’s argumentation persists throughout his narrative: the intersection of complex tripartite interests in South Florida almost predictably resulted in skewed or failed urban planning policies, compounded by voracious developers intent on transforming any waterfront property in the “Magic City” into a profit-producing enterprise. In the process of these sorts of internecine community, governmental, and commercial conflicts, the public stewardship of the black community’s place of special historical and kinfolk memory—its once segregated and remote beach at Virginia Key—arose as a flashpoint in Miami in the 1990s as the booming region of South Florida faced unprecedented commercial threats to its signature tourist attractions—waterfronts and beaches. A wide array of scholars, laypersons, students, and readers interested in civil rights, urban policy, and lessons on public will versus private machinations will find this work appealing and didactic, despite some minor flaws.

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