OVERTOWN LYRIC THEATER

SIDE ONE: The Lyric Theater was built in 1913 by Geder Walker, an enterprising African American businessman from Georgia who also owned and operated the theater. It quickly became the center of a thriving entertainment district of hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs known as “Little Broadway” and “Harlem of the South.” The Georgian-style theater had classical detailing, a decorative parapet, and Corinthian columns flanking the end bays. In 1915, the well-appointed 400-seat interior was described by the Miami Metropolis as “the most beautiful and costly playhouse in the Southland owned by colored people.” For almost 50 years it served as a movie and vaudeville theater. It hosted community musicals, concerts, dance, movies, political rallies, boxing, cantatas, beauty pageants, school plays, and commencements. Many notables performed at and visited the theater, including the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ethel Waters, and Marian Anderson. This theater and its flourishing nightlife symbolized the prosperous early 20th-century history of Overtown. SIDE TWO: Originally called “Colored Town,” Overtown is one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in Miami. Overtown’s population peaked in the late 1950s before government leaders decided to combine and expand interstate highways I-95 and I-395 through the neighborhood. Hundreds of homes and businesses were demolished. Thousands of people were displaced. The Lyric Theater remained under the operation of Geder Walker’s wife, Henrietta, after his death in 1919. In 1959, she sold the building to The United House of Prayer for All People for use as a church. The building deteriorated until the Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc., acquired the building in 1989 and spearheaded its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The renovated building opened as the Black Archives Historic Lyric Theater in 2000. The Black Archives, founded by Dr. Dorothy Jenkins Fields in 1977, preserves and reflects on the African American experience in Miami-Dade County. It is the richest repository of 19th- and 20th-century South Florida Black history. The site is part of the Overtown Folk Life Village and symbolizes Black economic influence, pride, culture, and a social gathering place for the community.