Overtown Jazz and Highway Scars

This walk introduces the Overtown that once dazzled Miami as Little Broadway. The Lyric Theater, historic churches, rooming houses, restaurants, and former nightlife sites reveal a sophisticated Black cultural district built through talent, enterprise, faith, and mutual support under coercive segregation. Along the way, celebrated performers share the story with the residents who sustained the neighborhood: cooks, clergy, teachers, journalists, police officers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and families. Gallery visits, soul food, church facades, and surviving homes make the history vivid without treating today’s community as a museum set. The route also confronts the enormous physical presence of I-95. Parks, disrupted streets, traffic noise, and highway columns show how routing decisions displaced thousands, erased property, severed pedestrian networks, and accelerated disinvestment. Historical maps are especially powerful here because they reveal the dense blocks hidden beneath today’s infrastructure. Travelers interested in jazz, Black history, civil rights, architecture, foodways, and urban planning will find this walk deeply rewarding. Allow several hours, bring water, confirm interior hours, and approach active churches, schools, parks, and restaurants as a respectful guest.