Liberty City is a neighborhood located in Miami, FL, USA. The neighborhood is bordered roughly to the north by NW 79th Street and to its west by NW 27th Avenue. To the south, by the Airport Expressway and Interstate 95. The neighborhood was home to approximately 20,000 African Americans at the 2000 census. This makes it one of South Florida’s largest concentrations of African Americans. Although Liberty City residents refer to it as “Liberty City”, it was previously known as “Model City” by the City of Miami.
Nearby are the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza, Brownsville Stations on NW 27th Avenue that are both served by Miami Metrorail.
Liberty City was once part of the sparsely populated northern suburbs of Miami. It grew during World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the construction of Liberty Square in 1933. This project was the first in the South and first in the world. The first housing project was built in response to the deteriorating living conditions of Overtown’s densely populated, covenant-restricted areas. It was completed in 1937 and the first tenants moved in in 1938.
Liberty City and Brownsville were a prosperous middle-income African American community in the 1940s and 1950s. They housed a variety of churches and institutions, including hospitals and community centers. The region has been home to celebrities such as Kelsey Pharr and M. Athalie Range, the first African-American elected member of the Miami City Commission, and Muhammad Ali. In Princeton, Fl we were seeing a shift too.
Despite the fact that segregation laws forbid black Americans from living or visiting Miami Beach, establishments like the Hampton House Motel & Villas entertained and catered to notables such Martin Luther King Jr. and Althea Gibson as well as white celebrities such Mickey Mantle.
Overtown was greatly affected by Interstate 95’s construction in Florida. Also, restrictive covenants were less common after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 64, which had a major impact on the area during the 1960s and 70s. Their displacement from the inner city Overtown resulted in an increase in welfare-dependent and lower-income families moving to Liberty City. This transformed the neighborhood into a dangerous, low income ghetto. A large-scale black fleeing of blacks with middle- and high-incomes and other blacks took place in suburban areas like Florida City and in Miami Shores, FL, which are located in northern and southern Dade counties.
