‘We need to know our history.’ West Grove is now officially called Little Bahamas

When Thelma Gibson was a child in Coconut Grove, other kids would use the term “Nassau” to make fun of her Bahamian heritage.

This week when West Grove was officially designated as “Little Bahamas of Coconut Grove,” the “Nassau” pejorative appeared to have lost its hatefulness.

“It’s good to be an old Nassau,” Gibson, 95, quipped to the crowd, which erupted in laughter.

Gibson and dozens of others gathered Monday afternoon at the E.W.F. Stirrup House to celebrate the community’s Bahamian roots and the renaming. The event featured a Junkanoo band, spoken word poetry as well as reflections from Grove pillars like Gibson.

“I’m so excited about it,” Gibson said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “It’s a great way to honor our ancestors.”

The oldest neighborhood in Miami, Coconut Grove was settled by Bahamians in the 1870s — long before the Magic City’s incorporation in 1896. George Simpson Jr., the Bahamas Diaspora Association chair, expressed it simply.

“There was no Miami without Bahamians,” Simpson, the great-grandson of Stirrup, who built hundreds of homes for Black Miamians throughout Coconut Grove, told the Miami Herald.

West Grove’s name change comes amid an increasing fear of displacement due to gentrification, among longtime residents, many of whom can trace their ancestry to the first Bahamian settlers or former enslaved people from the American South. U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, who helped spearhead the resolution, says she overcame initial opposition to the renaming by going church to church pleading her case.

“I made a promise that we would not divide this community,” said Wilson, a Bahamian American. She later called the renaming “the beginning of a journey that’s long overdue.”

Wilson also presented community leaders with a $6 million check in federal funds to help construct an arts and culture museum in the neighborhood. The museum will seek to educate about the contributions of Bahamians for generations, said Historic Hampton House founder Enid Pinkney.

“Their stories need to be told and shared with young people,” Pinkney said. “We need to know our history and be inspired and motivated by it.”

Little Bahamas of Coconut Grove extends north to Bird Avenue and U.S. 1 and south to Franklin Avenue, according to the resolution sponsored by Commissioner Ken Russell. The neighborhood spans to Brooker Street and Armbrister Park in the west and McDonald Street in the east. More than just renaming the area to attract tourists, Russell, who’s running as a Democrat for Florida’s 27th Congressional District, said that he wants to also bring more affordable housing options to the neighborhood before he leaves his commission seat in early 2023.

“If we name this Little Bahamas and there are no Bahamians left in this community then we have not done our job,” Russell said.