Historic Hampton House
The Historic Hampton House (HHH) stands as an anchor institution for the Brownsville, FL community, the first Black suburb in Miami. Once known as the “Cotton Club of the South”, it is one of the few surviving sites listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book and hosted luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Louis Armstrong, and Cassius Clay / Muhammad Ali – figures who gathered not only because segregation and Jim Crow laws barred them from staying at places like the Fontainebleau and South Beach, but because of the friendly social and networking environment that the HHH provided to Black leaders across business, politics, and the arts. Many others graced its halls and many more are still coming as HHH serves as both a museum and gathering space for community building and reckoning with the past and present. Brownsville faces systemic challenges of divestment, violence, discrimination, and inequity, which are only exacerbated by climate change impacts. Increasing heat and extreme storms threaten the community but they are ready to rise to the challenge, building resilience by carrying on the HHH’s legacy from social justice to climate justice.
