Garth Reeves and the Miami Times

4th GradeFlorida History

Essential Question

How did the life of one person make a difference in the lives of others?

Garth Reeves and the Miami Times

Florida Literacy Standards Alignment:

LAFS.4.RI.1.1Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

LAFS.4.RI.1.3 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.

NGSSS -Social Science Standards Alignment:

SS.4.C.2.2Identify ways citizens work together to influence government and help solve community and state problems.

SS.4.A.6.3Describe the contributions of significant individuals to Florida.

SS.4.A.6.2Summarize contributions immigrant groups made to Florida.

Topic: Garth Reeves and the Miami Times

Essential Question

How did the life of one person make a difference in the lives of others?

Learning Goals

Students will learn about ways to research a historical figure, learn about historical figures through classmates, take notes, use information to make a shoebox, and act outtheir historical figure.

Overview

Students will research the life of Mr. Garth Reeves.
Students will present a skit on his life.
Students will complete the formal assessment at the the end of the lesson?

Background Information

Garth Reeves, publisher emeritus of The Miami Times, moved to Miami with his family in 1919, four months after his birth in Nassau, Bahamas. Mr. Reeves graduated from Miami’s Booker T. Washington High School in 1936 and earned a Bachelor’s degree in printing from Florida A&M University in 1940. After serving in World War II, Mr. Reeves returned to Miami and began to work alongside his father, Henry E. S. Reeves, who established The Miami Times in 1923. Under his leadership, The Miami Times has become the Black community’s voice. Today, the publication is Miami’s oldest and largest black newspaper. Mr. Reeves broke the color barrier in Miami’s white establishment, becoming the first Black to serve on the governing boards of Miami-Dade Community College, Barry University, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and the United Way of Dade County. He also served as organizing chairman of the board for National Industrial Bank, the first integrated bank in the State of Florida. In the 1950s he was instrumental in integrating local beaches, parks, and golf courses. Mr. Reeves served 10 years as president of Amalgamated Publishers of New York City representing 110 Black newspapers throughout the country, and served two terms as president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He is a life member of the NAACP, Sigma Pi Phi and Omega Psi Phi fraternities and a founding member of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation.

-BellSouth Miami-Dade County African American History Calendar, 2002-2003

Materials

Reading Passages on Mr. Garth Reeves

Interview Questions to ask after the skits are presented

Activity Sequence

Introduction (3 minutes)

Ask students to think about a time when their actions have affected others either negatively or positively.
As the students arerespondingcreate a web on the board with the students’ answers.

Activity (10 minutes)

The students will use the materials and articles provided to research Mr. Garth Reeves life. This is a good time to use protocols such as “Think Pair Share, or Turn and Talk” All students will share their ideas with the class.
Students will collect all research.
Students will decorate a shoebox and place all of their research in the box.
The students will take turns presenting a skit of different periods of time in the person’s life.

Closure (2 minutes)

Ask students Interview questions after their skit to help them to synthesize the informationpresented.

What would you say is your most important accomplishment? Why?
How do you think your actions help other minority groups fighting the same issues?
Additional Interview Questions:

Describe your leadership qualities.
What is the most challenging experience you have had?
What have you learned from your mistakes?

Optional Extension Activities:

Write a letter to Mr. Garth Reeves. Let him know what was so fascinating about his life.

References for links

Video of Miami Civil Rights Pioneers

Research Articles

GARTH REEVES

BIOGRAPHY |

INTERVIEW DATE:6/5/2013

Newspaper publishing chief executive Garth C. Reeves, Sr. was born on February 12, 1919 in Nassau, Bahamas. His family moved to Miami, Florida four months after he was born. His father, Harry Ethelbert Sigismund Reeves, was a partner in The Magic Printing Company and founder of theMiami Times; his mother, a homemaker. His daughter, Rachel J. Reeves, became publisher and chief executive officer of theMiami Timesin 1994 following the untimely death of her brother, Garth C. Reeves, Jr. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in Miami in 1936, Reeves enrolled in Florida A & M University where he earned his B.A. degree in printing in 1940.

Reeves served in the U.S. Army during World War II from 1942 to 1946 in both the European and Pacific theaters. He then returned to Miami to work under his father Harry Ethelbert Sigismund Reeves, who founded theMiami Timesnewspaper in 1923. In 1970, Reeves was named publisher and chief executive officer of the when his father passed. Reeves went on to become the first African American to serve on the governing boards of the Miami-Dade Community College, Barry University, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and the United Way of Dade County. He also served as organizing chairman of the board for National Industrial Bank, which was the first integrated bank in the State of Florida. During the 1950s, Reeves worked to integrate the local beaches, parks, and golf courses. Reeves served for ten years as president of the Amalgamated Publishers of New York City, which represents over one hundred African American-owned newspapers throughout the United States. He was also elected to serve two terms as president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Reeves is a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and a founding member of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Miami, Florida. He was awarded Honorary Doctorate Degrees from the University of Miami, Barry University and Florida Memorial University.

Garth C. Reeves, Sr. was interviewed byThe HistoryMakerson June 5, 2013.

GARTH REEVES

Miami, FL

I was born in Nassau, Bahamas. I came to Miami when I was four months old in 1919. My dad came first on his way to visit a brother in New York City.
He was going to buy some printing equipment in order to go into business for himself in Nassau. He met some of his compatriots who had come over from Nassau and were living here. They said that this was a great town. They saw a lot of progress and opportunity in this young city. He must’ve seen it, too, because he decided to stay. He sent for my mother, my three sisters and me.
He had a sister living in Miami at the time and she rented a place for him on Northwest 15th Street between Second and Third Avenues. We lived there for a few months and then my dad bought a home in the 1900 block of Northwest Fifth Place. That’s where we all grew up.
Living in segregation, I wonder how I managed to get through without being hurt too badly. Back in my day, lynchings were every week. My mother sheltered me to keep me from getting involved with white people. When I returned from my duty in World War II, I gave my mom a list of cities that I would rather live in than Miami. She said that a lot of these places weren’t that different from Miami. They’re segregated just like it is here.
She said, “Anywhere you go, you’re gonna find the same kind of people and you’ll always be black.” She said that I’m not a person to run from something. If something isn’t right, then I ought to fix it.
When Martin Luther King came down, I attended some of his meetings. My friend was a good friend of King’s and I used to attend meetings where he would preach to us about nonviolence. I remember talking to Martin a few times and I said, “Martin, you really believe that if I was somewhere and a white guy spat on my face, you think I would walk away from that?”
I said I’d try and kill that son of a b----. He said, “That’s why you’ve got to try to learn to control yourself.” I liked him.
Working for my father at The Miami Times is the only job I’ve ever had. I was working in the printing department, where the money was. The former state president of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) used to come by my office all the time and talk to me about becoming more active in the NAACP. I said that my dad handles all that at the newspaper with the coverage. He thought my dad was too hesitant about taking a stronger stance and he knew I was tougher. His name was Father Theodore Gibson. He had Christ Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove. He said he needed my help, so I started helping out the NAACP a little more.
The first project I got involved with was integrating the golf courses in 1949. Back then, we could only play one day a week and that was Monday. That was the day that they maintained the golf course. They watered the lawns and cut the grass and we’re out there trying to play golf. I went and I talked to Gibson about it and started thinking about how we can attack it.
We decided to file a suit. We went out to the golf course in Miami Springs on a Wednesday instead of a Monday and presented ourselves to play golf. They wouldn’t let us in. I think it was two days later that we filed a suit. It took us seven years before the Supreme Court wrote a decision and said that you cannot take a person’s tax dollars for a municipal golf course and tell that person that they can only play once a week because he’s black.
After that, we had the beach. Twenty-eight municipal beaches everywhere but one beach for blacks, Virginia Key Beach. We decided we’d go after them in 1957. We called and arranged a meeting with the County Commission.
We got a good solid group together. We made sure that all of us were registered voters and all of us were freeholders. We had read the rules and believe it or not there was nothing in the county charter that said black people were restricted to one beach. But we had been told so many times and refused entrance to a white beach.
We had a meeting at 10 o’clock at Crandon Park. We went in and all the county commissioners were there. We made our appeal. They sat there and didn’t say a word. Nobody. We went on saying that it was wrong and that we wanna know what they’re planning on doing about it. They didn’t say anything. I guess they thought we’d just go away.
We then said, “It’s 10:20 now but what we plan on doing is coming back over here at 2 o’clock, and we’re going in the water. It’s up to you to do whatever you please. You can beat us up like most of you police always do when we go to the white beaches.”
Two o’clock came and our 12 had dwindled down to maybe about six of us. Oscar Range, whose wife went on to become our county commissioner, and myself, put on our trunks under our shirts and pants and just had on some sneakers. There were police out there just standing around us as a preliminary thing. We walked straight down to the beach, we kicked off our shoes, took off our shirts and we jumped in the water; just two of us. We were waiting for 20 minutes on something to happen, and nothing did.
We came back, put on our shoes, shirts and left. The next day, I called the NAACP and told them, “We’d like you to go to the beach tomorrow, any beach other than Virginia Beach.” We showed up and nobody said anything. The County Commission got the word out what we were doing and they knew they couldn’t defend it. From that day on, black people have been using all 28 beaches in Dade County.
Those are two things I’m most proud of. It taught me a lesson that you just gotta push and do your homework. First, you gotta be right. You’ve gotta have the right cause and you’ve gotta involve the right people. You just need some warm bodies to take a stand and get to the course and you’ve got a good chance.
(This story was compiled by HistoryMiami intern Lisann Ramos as recounted by Garth Reeves)

LEADING BLACK MEDIA IN MIAMI

Garth Reeves, 1980 (State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory)

Garth Reeves came to Miami in 1919 from the Bahamas. He was a veteran of World War II, and he began writing at his father’s newspaper,The Miami Times,after the war. Reeves later became publisher of the paper, Miami’s oldest and largest black newspaper. Reeves was a civil rights leader in the city, leading the charge to integrate parks and beaches, and he later becamethe first Black to serve on the boards of Miami-Dade Community College, Barry University, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and the United Way of Dade County.

“I moved over and started writing articles about discrimination and prejudice. At that time, the main thing was really — it was still lynching and discrimination and segregation, and that’s what we talked about. We pointed it out to the people. You might not be able to do anything about it, but at least we want you to know about it that what you’re doing is wrong and it should be corrected and I think that our newspaper did a good job because theMiami Heraldand theMiami Daily News, which was publisher at that time, was not gung-ho about the civil rights of black people. They didn’t publish anything much about the civil rights of black people. They didn’t publish anything much about protests. They published the news and it kind of went along with everybody else; it’s a status-quo. But theMiami Timeswas always there talking about the segregated patterns and why are the black schools so different from the white schools? Why have the white schools got more facilities than the black schools? And we thought it was very important to keep hammering those things home, and we stayed on it, we stayed on that all the time. We kept pointing out the inequities of the system which were many and I think today, a lot of people have benefited by our protest and we were strong in that. We took part in all the protest movements, all the Civil Rights Movements; we were represented all the time. We brought the news as it was, we didn’t print just what any other — any person other than us wanted to say, but we tried to bring the news as it happened and tell the truth, tell it as it was. And I think that’s one of our legacies today that we hung in there.”

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES