‘Her heritage was important to her.’ Miami preservationist, historian Enid Pinkney dead at 92

Miami historian and preservationist Enid Pinkney died Thursday at age 92, her nephew Gary Allen confirmed.

Pinkney’s passion for preserving the history of Miami’s Black pioneers, landmarks and distinguished citizens can be felt throughout the city.

“Her heritage was important to her so she carried herself in a dignified way,” Allen said, calling her “the queen.” “Her heart was authentic when it came to historic preservation. Her work shows that. She did that tirelessly without expecting anything.”

Without Pinkney, landmarks like the Historic Hampton House, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed when in Miami, would have been demolished. The same goes for the Miami Circle at Brickell Point and the Lemon City Cemetery. In the eyes of many Black Miamians, she personified the pride and diligence necessary to preserve their heritage.

“She didn’t want to leave this earth until she fully let people know that we were important to Miami-Dade, from Coconut Grove to down south in Richmond Heights all the way up to County Line Road,” said Bea Hines, a Miami Herald columnist and longtime friend of Pinkney.

Born Enid Curtis to Bahamian parents Lenora and Henry on Oct. 15, 1931, Pinkney was born and raised in Overtown along with her three siblings. Jim Crow ruled the land during her childhood yet her parents refused to let their children be intimidated.

In a 2021 interview, Pinkney told the Miami Herald about her father’s bravery and grace. One night after church, the police pulled over her family, she said. Two officers ordered Henry to step out of the car and take his hat off but her father, imbued with the knowledge of American law, refused and asked what law he had violated. Shocked, one officer slapped Henry’s hat off, packed him into the car and sped off.

The officer, however, returned Henry unharmed roughly 10 minutes later because , according to Pinkney, “He knew his rights.” Then the officer asked him if he had learned his lesson.

“’I always respect police,’” Pinkney recalled her father telling the officer. “’You the one disrespecting me because you slapped me. You knocked my hat off my head.’”

That moment — and her father in general — gave Pinkney the courage to fight for her people, no matter the opponent.

“I don’t take no crap,” Pinkney told the Herald.

As a high school senior at Booker T. Washington Junior/Senior High School in Overtown, she served as student council president. Her role afforded her many opportunities, including producing a radio broadcast with white students. A cross was later burned in the yard of one of the participating students, she told the Herald.

“Everybody got nervous then people started saying ‘I’ve been telling her to stop going around there with Ms. Roberts,’” Pinkney recalled, referring to her civics teacher Marie Roberts who pushed her students to do activities together. “They were telling my father that he needed to stop me from doing that because something worse could happen. But he said ‘no.’ He wasn’t going to stop me.”

Undeterred, Pinkney graduated from Booker T. in 1949 and Talladega College in Alabama in 1953. For a short period, she worked as a social worker before eventually pursuing her master’s degree from Barry University, where she graduated in 1967. She was later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degrees from both St. Thomas University and Talladega College.

Pinkney worked as assistant principal of South Miami Middle School until her retirement in 1991. That same year, she also married Frank Pinkney after the two had met at a wake for one of their deceased friends.

“He asked me for my phone number,” Enid told the Miami Herald in 2018. “Normally, I would give guys I didn’t know a false number. But I gave Frank my real number. I guess it was because he didn’t write it down and I thought he wouldn’t remember. To my surprise, he called me a couple of days later.”

‘It’s the right thing to do’

In the 1980s, Pinkney joined the Dade Heritage Trust, Miami-Dade County’s preservation organization, where she pushed the body to focus more on preserving Black and Native American landmarks. She later became the first Black president of the Trust in 1998. Under her leadership, she helped discover the Black Americans who were buried at the Miami City Cemetery on Northeast Second Avenue and 18th Street. She also worked to preserve many landmarks including the Lemon City Cemetery at the corner of Northwest 71st Street and Third Avenue, and the Miami Circle, both of which brought her head-to-head with elected officials.

“I said ‘We got to try and preserve this because it’s the right thing to do,’” Pinkney recalled of her fight about the Miami Circle in 2021. “The City of Miami wanted to develop it so they could get money for the city. I said ‘No.’”

Pinkney also founded the Lemon City Cemetery Community Corporation, which worked tirelessly to memorialize the forgotten site. This too brought her at odds with the City of Miami, which had already sold the property to developers. Again, Pinkney emerged successful thanks to her tenacity: not only did developers reduce the size of the project, but she erected a monument containing the names of 523 of the deceased.

In her research, she later learned the cemetery held the remains of more than 1,200 Black Miamians and Bahamians, including her grandfather and a previously unknown older sister.

“I got so emotional, I couldn’t even talk,” Pinkney told the Herald about the moment she made the connections after seeing her grandfather’s name.

The preservation of the Hampton House on Northwest 27th Avenue and 42nd Street, however, was by far her greatest accomplishment. A hotel that opened in 1954 and hosted everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X to Cassius Clay before he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, the Hampton House became a source of pride for the surrounding Brownsville community. It hosted numerous legendary Black performers – Count Basie, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, just to name a few – who often graced the stage, ate at its restaurant or just relaxed in the lounge.

After its closure in the 1970s, the Hampton House fell into disrepair. It was on the verge of demolition before Pinkneyled the charge to save the building in the early 2000s. She talked to elected officials. She talked to the community. She talked to just about everybody who would listen.

In the end, she prevailed: The county purchased the building in 2004.

“Whew — the hurdles we’ve gone through to get to this point,” Pinkney told the Herald in 2006.

The Hampton House reopened after a $6 million restoration as a nonprofit cultural center in 2015. Today, the historic landmark has transformed into a museum, complete with tours, galleries and event space. That, however, wouldn’t have been possible without Pinkney.

“Ask anybody in the Black community,” Hines said. “We were all so proud of Enid.”

Forever an educator, Pinkney was especially enthusiastic about the educational opportunities that a space like the Hampton House could provide.

“We don’t have the appreciation for our local history and we need to teach it,” Pinkney told the Herald in 2021 . “We need to learn it. And this should be the citadel where that takes place.”

Pinkney’s work inspired historians like Nadege Green, the founder of the digital archive Black Miami-Dade.

“I looked up to her as a community historian,” Green wrote on Instagram Thursday morning, responding to news of Pinkney’s death. “Her stories on how she saved Miami’s Hampton House, the only Green Book-era hotel to still stand today, were master classes in believing in your power and your community.”

Peter Ehrlich, a board member of the Lemon City Cemetery Community Corporation, said Pinkney was “a very powerful public speaker,” calling her “one of the best I’ve seen in South Florida. I never heard her give a speech where she wasn’t thorough.”

In her final years, Pinkney remained active in preserving Miami’s Black history, especially the connection between Miami and her beloved Bahamian roots. Her most recent cause: Last year, Hialeah unsuccessfully attempted to annex Brownsville , the neighborhood she had lived since 1968.

“When cities and politicians want to improve an area, what they really want is to displace African Americans from that area,” Pinkney told the Herald in 2023 . “This is how we lost Overtown.”

Pinkney lectured to social work students of Florida International University’s graduate school who visited The Hampton House roughly two weeks before her passing.

“She was always ready to engage with my students, sharing her experiences about the Jim Crow era and beyond,” FIU clinical professor Shed Boren wrote in an email about the experience. “Her work was instrumental in recognizing history as the foundation for our shared humanity.”