Places, people and history: New app maps out Black landmarks in Broward

A new app created by the Broward Department of Transportation highlights Black history in the county. Threads is an interactive map that allows residents to identify historical Black landmarks and designated bus routes to take them there.

“It’s just amazing that all of these stories, all of these people, all of these activists and individuals who kind of came together throughout Broward County history, wove this diverse and vast and important history that we’re still living today,” said Rachel Richardson, who spearheaded the project for the Department of Transportation.

The department collaborated with the county library system to curate the historic locations. The landmarks are designated on the map and the app allows viewers to create their own bus tour of the sites.

The Threads project comes at a time when the state is restricting how public school teachers can discuss Black history in the classroom.

Last week, the state’s Department of Education published guidelines mandating, among other things, that “beneficial” aspects of slavery be taught. Also, lynchings and other mob violence against Black people is to be taught alongside violence perpetrated by Black people.

READ MORE: Harris targets Florida’s rules on Black history pushed by DeSantis

To combat that restriction on Black history, the map will serve as a “living” document that can be updated.

“We’ve been looking at things like including where people might be able to add events or add Black-owned businesses, so that we have a whole lot of ideas that are kind of rotating around that might be a really great way to create a more engaging app for the community to use,” Richardson said.

Residents also will have the chance to submit historic locations that aren’t on the map through the app.

The team published the app in June, to coincide with the Juneteenth Holiday. WLRN recently toured some of the sites with the people who helped curate the map.

Branhilda Richardson-Knowles Memorial Park

Nowhere in Broward County symbolizes the fight to preserve Black history better than the small fenced-in plot of grass in Deerfield Beach.

Romona LaRoche is a librarian at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center who has an interest in genealogy, especially burial grounds. She was one of the people who curated locations for the Threads map.

“For years the black community had been saying that their ancestors were buried here and a developer was actually trying to build here for a while. So they had not one, not two, but three archeological digs. The first two, they said they found nothing. And finally in the third one, they found skeletal remains, and that’s when they ceased the development of condominiums on the plot,” she said walking around the park.

The memorial park is the burial ground for dozens of Bahamian people who worked on the railroad and on farms during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the northwest corner of the park there’s a statue honoring the park’s namesake: Branhilda Richardson-Knowles. During segregation — when Black people couldn’t use white hospitals — she was the area’s only midwife.

“She delivered most, if not all, of the babies during her period here,” said LaRoche.

The park was built in 2018. In honor of a Bahamian burial tradition, conch shell sculptures are spread throughout the space and a wall engraved with the names of some of those buried stands at the center. Still the community, some whose ancestors are buried under this land, is fighting to preserve the space from encroaching development.

“People that want to come and visit, a lot of times there’s no parking because of these new condominiums that just came up within the last year,” LaRoche said. “So the city has been trying to figure out what they should do in order to ensure that people who want to come and just convene and have a meditative moment in their ancestral burial ground will have parking available.”

Attucks High School

In 1914, the Dania School for Coloreds was built by Isadore S. Mizell and Joseph Sidney, according to the Threads app which compiled history about each location from the library’s archival records.

In 1925, the school was reconstructed and renamed the Dania-Liberia School of Education at the present-day location. The school was later renamed Attucks High School named for Crispus Attucks, the first person killed during the 1770 Boston Massacre.

In the early 1930s through the 1960s Joseph A. Ely was principal of Attucks. He was married to Blanche General Ely who was the principal of the Pompano Colored School. Together the Ely’s are considered “the parents of African American education in Broward County.”

“Attucks was the epicenter to this community,” said Emmanuel George. He is a local archivist who curated locations for the Threads map in South Broward where he has spent most of his life.

“It was the educational and social epicenter of this community. There was school, but there would be different fundraising events, dances, Attucks was everything to this community,” George said.

The school was founded in 1908 during segregation. The last all Black class graduated in 1968.

Among the notable alumni are Eddie, Carter and Rose Cornelius. The siblings are better known by their stage name Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. The former high school now operates as a middle school.

C.W. Thomas Park

A few miles north of the Attucks school is another landmark tucked away in the historically Black section of Dania Beach known as Danie.

C.W. Thomas Park, formerly Modello Park, is named after Charlie Will Thomas who is an Attucks alumni known for his philanthropy and community service.

The baseball diamonds here used to be home to the Dania Redbirds, a semi-pro negro league baseball team. Even after the league was integrated the team continued to entertain fans in Black neighborhoods throughout south Florida.

As a teenager in the 70s, Oddibe McDowell played for the Redbirds. “We played Hallandale Dodgers and Delray and Perrine and Homestead and up in Pompano all across the East Coast here,” he told WLRN.

McDowell went on to play professionally after being drafted in the first round by the Texas Rangers. Now he coaches at his alma mater: McArthur High School in Hollywood. “It was a lot of fun, a lot of music, dancing, playing. It was a good time, really enjoyable,” he said, recalling his time with the Redbirds.

The team was created in 1958 by local high school graduates from Attucks High School and included players from the Libera, now Hollywood, and Dania Beach neighborhoods. Other notable Redbirds players include former Chicago Cubs Outfielder Andre Dawson, nicknamed the “The Hawk” and “Awesome Dawson.”

According to a1989 Sun Sentinel article, the Red Birds and Modello Park “provided a social center for its neighborhood and given it a collective past to embrace.”

Florida’s education standards are changing. WLRN would like to hear from people in South Florida — particularly parents, teachers and students — to gauge how they feel about the state’s new rules on teaching Black history. You can share your thoughts here.

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