SUMMARYColored Town in the census: 966 Black Miamians in 1900, 727 of them foreign-born (Miami, 1900 to 1920) [Connections: Miami & Lake Okeechobee, Nov 5, 2026]
RECORDThe University of Miami Libraries' Overtown chronology records: 1900 Census, 966 Black residents in Miami, 727 foreign-born (excluding Bahamian seasonal workers); 1910, 2,258; 1920, Black residents were 32 percent of the population but held only 10 percent of the space; a 1916 segregation ordinance (No. 199) failed, but NW 20th Street became an unofficial line. George (1978) writes that Black Miami was "twenty-five to forty per cent" of the city in its first generation, that many were Bahamian with fewer Jamaicans and Haitians, and that about fifty years before incorporation enslaved people from the Carolinas were brought to south Florida plantations
PATTERNThree in four Black Miamians in 1900 were born abroad, mostly in the islands, and were all filed under one race heading
LENS (WW9)Bahamian, Jamaican, Haitian, Carolinian: one box, "Negro."
OPENPull the 1900 Dade County census sheets to see birthplaces and any "Indian" or "mulatto" entries; check whether any Bahamian arrivals were from the Red Bays / Andros line (see below)
SOURCEOvertown Chronology (University of Miami Libraries); George, FHQ 1978.