The 44 Percent: Miami Gardens family biz, Juneteenth, mental health in Broward
Family means something different to everyone.
As Black people in America, family can mean coming together with loved ones for Juneteenth, or starting a business. My mother had 13 siblings and my father has six. We may not get seconds at breakfast, but we will always make it work.
It means something different for us to come together after all of the challenges we’ve faced in America and find joy.
As I reported on Juneteenth celebrations in Miami this week, I was mesmerized by how excited young kids were to learn about the holiday and what it meant for their family members.
Speaking to Black-owned OneUnited Bank CEO Teri Williams, she mentioned that she never thought the day would become a federal holiday when she celebrated Juneteenth in the late 1960s as a girl with her family members in small Indiantown, Florida.
There’s a need for optimism in this world, and being Black centers on that. We each move forward because our ancestors did it for us and it’s all we can do to inspire our future descendants.
INSIDE THE 305
Their father grew this beloved specialty market in Miami Gardens. Now it’s their turn
I reported on Sunshine Meat Market, a family-run business in Miami Gardens that prides itself on quality and maintaining close connections with its diverse customers.
On a quiet corner in Miami Gardens, the arrival of fresh collard greens fills Sunshine Meat Market with joyful noise on a Wednesday morning. A line of excited customers weaves through the brightly lit and colorful family-owned business. With wide smiles, sisters Vanessa and Karissa Disla talk to customers and help them with whatever they need.
This is how their father, owner Rafael Disla, 54, imagined growing the business with his family when he bought the market over two decades ago.
On that Wednesday, Rafael was in the Dominican Republic ahead of his father’s 90th birthday, something he said he was only able to do because of his daughters’ work ethic.
A Miami-Dade man, 83, believes his father was among the last Americans born into slavery
Doug Hanks reported on Wilbur Bell, a local man who believes his father was among the enslaved Black people in America.
Wilbur Bell, 83, believes he is a living son of slavery in America.
Family history has Bell’s father, Cornelius, born in Georgia on May 18, 1865. That was weeks after the end of the U.S. Civil War but months before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery nationwide.
Bell said the possibility of his father being born into slavery had never come up until decades after his death in 1961. Bell’s parents separated when he was 3, and he only saw his father during occasional visits. It was only after looking at his father’s obituary years later that Bell realized he was possibly only one generation removed from a family member’s enslavement.
“I had his obituary. I was looking at the dates on it,” he said. “That’s when I put it together.”
OUTSIDE THE 305
The site of the first free Black town in the U.S. is being rebuilt near St. Augustine
C. Isaiah Smalls II explored how the site of the first free Black town in America will be rebuilt near St. Augustine by 2025.
It all started as a term paper.
In the mid-1980s, then-University of Florida graduate student Jane Landers hit the archives to research something for a class assignment. There, she stumbled upon something rather unique: an Underground Railroad that went south to Florida as far back as 1687. Landers was baffled and knew the subject needed more “scholarly attention.”
“I care about what kids think of themselves and I don’t want every child to think their whole background is getting off barefoot from the slave ships,” Landers said. “There were all these other kinds of experiences; there were free people.”
What Landers ultimately discovered was Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, better known as Fort Mose, the first town for free Black people in what would become the United States of America. Established in 1738, the town sat just a few miles north of St. Augustine, the oldest city in the country, until the Spanish sold Florida to the British in 1763. And while this history lay dormant for years until the mid-80s, its importance to not only Florida but this country will be enshrined forever once the reconstruction of the fort is finished in 2025.
‘Can’t believe this is mine’: People with mental health challenges get new home in Broward
Raisa Habersham wrote about how a Broward County nonprofit is helping people with mental health challenges live healthy lives.
R&B music drifted from Marie Honoré-Rigaud’s radio as she sifted through her belongings in her new Pembroke Pines apartment earlier this month. She had just moved in, but her home was already decked out with Alpha Kappa Alpha paraphernalia, a reminder of her younger days and the support system she still has.
This moment — having a place to call her own — was decades in the making for the 59-year-old, whose mental health diagnoses left her without consistent work or housing for most of her life. Now, for the first time in her life, she will have a place of her own with the help of the Footprint to Success Clubhouse, a Broward County nonprofit that assists adults with serious and persistent mental illnesses in developing life skills. Founded in 2010, the organization is in the middle of laying its footprint in Pembroke Pines with a location that has housing for its members and will soon have a teaching kitchen to provide skills for those who wish to work in the food service industry.
With pardons in Maryland, 2.5 million Americans will have marijuana convictions cleared or forgiven
Black people have been incarcerated in disproportionate numbers due to marijuana convictions over the last several decades. This AP story from Geoff Mulvihill breaks down what pardons in Maryland mean for individuals who have been in prison because of marijuana.
Maryland this week became the latest state to announce mass pardons for people convicted of marijuana-related crimes as the nation wrestles with how to make amends for the lives disrupted in the decadeslong war on drugs.
Under Gov. Wes Moore’s plan, more than 175,000 convictions for possession of cannabis or drug paraphernalia will be pardoned, but not permanently erased from people’s criminal records.
Here’s a look at where the U.S. stands in addressing old marijuana convictions.
HIGH CULTURE
Throughout Miami, Juneteenth celebrations combine joy and reflection
In my story with Michael Cartwright about Juneteenth celebrations all over Miami, joy and reflection were consistent themes all around.
Nearly 100 kids at the Overtown Optimist Club’s Juneteenth celebration jumped with excitement when a six-member Bahamian Junkanoo troupe marched into the gym. Wearing brightly colored ornate costumes, the band members handed out maracas to the crowd and invited them to join them for a conga line.
Throughout Miami, Juneteenth moments like this conveyed the joy of the federal holiday. Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation and education of Black people.
“We started in 2022 and have done it every year since,” said Overtown Optimist Club executive director Ieshia Haynie. “It is super important to think about our wellness and longevity as a community and that we appreciate that our families and ancestors have persisted. We want [the kids] to think about the joyfulness that can be found in knowing your culture.”
The kids in attendance played games, meditated and danced to clean versions of hit songs from Ice Spice played by a DJ. Jeremy Grant volunteered at the event and his 8-year-old daughter Olivia is a cheerleader at the center. He believes the Juneteenth celebration is important in helping a changing Overtown maintain its identity.
Every time I think I’ve written about the end of Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s rap beef, something major happens.
Brande Victorian wrote for the Hollywood Reporter about how Kendrick’s Juneteenth concert in Los Angeles was epic and seemed to mark the absolute end of this saga.
Kendrick Lamar may have begun his set during Wednesday evening’s Ken & Friends – the Pop Out with a performance of “Euphoria”— one of multiple diss tracks the Compton lyricist has aimed at Drake amid their recent rap beef — but the focus of the Juneteenth event was to showcase unity among West Coast talent, more than two dozen of whom made an appearance at the concert.
“This is unity, y’all just don’t know man,” Lamar said as a group photo captured the more than 25 artists from across L.A. who performed at the show while instructing everybody on stage to say, “One West.”
Where does “The 44 Percent” name come from? Click here to find out how Miami history influenc
