Debutantes Take Brightline to Miami, Tour Overtown District and Perez Art Museum

Reported By: Caroline Dalal

Source: Frances J. Bright Woman’s Club

Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties – On April 19, 2025, the Taste History Art & Culture Study Tours hosted the debutantes of the Frances J. Bright Woman’s Club for a trip via Brightline trains to Historic Overtown Miami, an old African American district, and to the Perez Museum of Art in Downtown Miami. Florida’s high-speed rail Brightline sponsored the roundtrip transportation from the Boca Raton station to the Miami Central station. The debutantes on the tour are 12th grade girls who came from Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, and West Palm Beach in Palm Beach County, Florida. The 12th graders are students who attend high schools at Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach; Boynton Beach Community High School in Boynton Beach; Dreyfoos School of Arts in West Palm Beach; and John I. Leonard High School in West Palm Beach, Florida. The study tour was organized by Lori J. Durante who serves as the Volunteer Tour Organizer.

Upon the arrival of the student debutantes and their mentors at the Boca Raton station for Brightline, they were greeted by City Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney, Jr. who gave them a send-off message. The students and their mentors were all gifted tote bags plus with a complimentary copy of the cookbook The Rise: Black Cooks and Soul of American Food published by Voracious Books. Also, gifted were swag bags from Visit Miami. And, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava sent a welcome letter.

The exceptional ride on Brightline from Boca Raton to Miami included a continental breakfast. Upon arrival to Brightline’s Central Miami Station, the group enjoyed a tour of the station and a hot buffet breakfast in the Premium Lounge. That was followed by a walking and bus riding tour to several notable sites in Historic Overtown Miami that were the Lyric Theater (year 1913) and the Black Archives; the Ward Rooming House (year 1925); the D.A. Dorsey House (year 1915); the Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum (year 1949); the Overtown Performing Arts Center (building is year 1948 and is former Ebenezer Methodist Church) and the Dunns-Josephine Hotel, (Josephine Hotel was built in 1938 and the Dunn Hotel in 1947).

The Soul Food Buffet Lunch took place in the 1954 building of the historic former Clyde Killens Pool Hall, which is now a restaurant in Historic Overtown. The final stop was a short bus ride to the Perez Museum of Art in Downtown Miami where the students and their mentors were guided to works by Black and Caribbean artists.

Other sponsors, to date, are Walgreens Delray Beach (West Atlantic Avenue); Sally Ann Gilmore; Liz Heir, DJW Enterprises, LLC; and Dr. Deborah J. Wright (who is a native of Delray Beach, a retired educator from the School District of Palm Beach County, Florida plus Dr. Wright is the paternal grandmother of tennis champion Coco Gauff).

The Frances J. Bright Woman’s Club (FJBWC) is named in honor of Frances J. Bright, a Black educator who came to Delray Beach, Florida in year 1899 to teach at ‘colored’ school #4 that was established in year 1895 located on historic NW 5th Avenue in Delray Beach. It was the first public school in Delray Beach. The first principal at Colored School #4 in year 1895 was Mr. B.F. James of Miami (Lemon City). Mrs. Bright was the first Black teacher in Delray Beach. The school was a part of the Dade County Public School System at that time because Palm Beach County was not incorporated as a separate county until year 1909. The leaders of this prestigious organization of the FJBWC who are also mentors for the debutantes are esteemed African American educators, professionals, and business owners which are the same composition type as those who established the FJBWC organization. The mission of FJBWC debutante program is to provide mentorship and help provide etiquette training and cultural experiences for high school girls who are invited into the program based on their academics and good character status. The debutante program also raises educational scholarship monies for young ladies to pursue career goals.

The non-profit Taste History Art & Culture Study Tours program evolved from the non-profit Taste History Culinary Tours of Historic Palm Beach County developed by historian and volunteer tour guide Lori J. Durante and was launched in 2011. The Taste History Culinary Tours evolved from the non-profit Narrated Bus Tours of Historic Delray Beach, Florida that Durante created in a volunteer capacity in year 2004 that expanded to include other cities that are Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Lantana, Lake Worth Beach, and West Palm Beach. Subsequently, school field trips were also offered. The narrated history tours were hugely popular hosting over 10,000 people. Post the COVID-19 pandemic, in year 2023, the Taste History Art & Culture Study Tours were launched as an additional option of history tours and it was established with its own separate 501c3 status, and the late philanthropist Iris Apfel who passed away in year 2024 made the lead financial donation in year 2023 for the beginning year of those tours.

The mission of the non-profit Taste History Art & Culture Study Tours is to offer curriculum based multi-sensory educational experiences for students by providing historical information highlighting multi-cultures, ethnic cuisines, architectural designs, historical places, people, artifacts plus ways of life of the past of the area toured. The tour program is designed to be a school educational out-of-classroom experience, on the road, that infuses curriculum strands and benchmarks. The Study Tour creates an active, immersive, tangible experience and object-based learning for the students’ journey. Some of the ways in which the Study Tour helps and enhances the students’ educational learning:

✔️ curriculum comprehension

✔️ memorization

✔️ observation skills

Here is some information as to how the study tours program contents provide tangible, object-based, out-of- classroom learning experiences plus subliminally infuse and stimulate the natural instincts of multisensory reactions. Even the tours inclusion of sampling ethnic cuisine at eateries is a multi-sensory experience which is evoked by tasting and seeing the ethnic cuisine and smelling the aroma of the ethnic cuisine and feeling the various sensations of eating the food as it touches inside the mouth (such sensations as smooth, crunchy, etc.) plus hearing the narration of the historical information about the origin of the cuisine and that eatery. Then learning and multisensory experiences are provided by visiting relevant museum exhibitions and seeing historical artifacts and mural arts and hearing the narrated history being provided during the tour which includes valuable learning information about the sites, the city/community and its history, its people and ways of life of the past. For this particular tour for the debutants to Overtown, Miami which will be the first time any of the 12th graders have ever ridden on Florida’s high speed rail train, this will be the excitement of traveling on Brightline which is that very high speed train.

In a study by Harvard University, it confirmed that object-based tangible learning adds another dimension to educational experience and enhances the focus of the students. The University of Miami in Florida says that object-based learning (OBL) is a student-centered learning approach that uses objects to create a more profound learning experience.

The community of Overtown is one of the oldest neighborhoods within the original boundaries of the City of Miami. Adjacent to downtown Miami, Overtown is bordered on the north by N.W. 21st Street, to the south by N.W. 6th Street, the east by N.W. 1st Avenue and on the west by 1-95. Segregated by both custom and laws, it began as “Colored Town” at the turn of the 20th century. The area was assigned and limited to Black workers who built and serviced the Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway (F.E.C), Flagler’s hotels and built streets that may have been needed for Flagler’s hotels. The success of Miami’s pioneer tourist industry depended on the labor of Black workers from the Bahamas and from the Southern States of the USA. For more than 50 years, Black residents were the primary work force in Miami and southern Florida and for the railroad of Henry Flagler’s F.E.C that connected the entire east coast of Florida and Black workers were used for building Flagler’s hotels that were built in various towns thru which Flagler’s FEC railroad route went and these hotels were built for wealthy white tourists plus Black workers were used for installing streets in areas that may have needed them to service Flagler’s hotels.

Overtown grew and developed into a vibrant community. As early as 1904, the official City of Miami directory listed businesses owned and operated by Black people. These businesses included general goods and services, a medical doctor, 26 laundresses, and several hundred laborers. Miami’s Colored Board of Trade was established as a clearinghouse for commercial and civic betterment. Black women were not members of the Colored Board of Trade, but some were in business, including seamstresses, landlords, restaurant owners and a hat maker. Blacks living south of Miami in Coconut Grove and Lemon City to the north, would travel to Miami’s Colored Town for shopping, business transactions and entertainment.

When Miami became a city on July 28, 1896, more than 1/3 of those listed on the original charter were Black. The Fourth Census of the State of Florida taken in the year 1915 records the population of Miami City at 15, 592. Of those, 5,659 residents were Negros. Their holdings in real estate and personal property were estimated at $800,000. Several owned their own properties. Schools, churches, and businesses became prominent components of Overtown, as well as restaurants and hotels which accommodated the likes of US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and W.E.B Dubois to name a few. National artists such as Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cook, and many others performed and stayed in hotels and clubs in Overtown, often performing first for whites on Miami Beach then performing again after hours in Overtown. Because Overtown became a thriving Black community it was known as the Harlem of the South.

Source: University of Miami School of Architecture, Center for Urban and Community Design, The Black Archives and Visit Miami

The historic African American Frances J. Bright Woman’s Club (FJBWC) was established in Delray Beach, Florida in 1959 and its debutante program was started a few years later. The FJBWC is named in honor of Frances J. Bright, a Black educator who came to Delray Beach, Florida in year 1899 to teach at ‘colored’ school #4 that was established in year 1895 located on historic NW 5th Avenue in Delray Beach and it was the first public school in Delray Beach. The first principal at Colored School #4 in year 1895 was Mr. BF James of Miami. Mrs. Bright was the first Black teacher in Delray Beach. The school was a part of the Dade County Public School System at that time because Palm Beach County was not incorporated as a separate county until year 1909. During segregation, the Black schools were initially attended by Black children who lived in Delray Beach, Boca Raton,