Arva Moore Parks is a Miami native, historian, preservationist and community leader. She has studied Miami and its roots for more than four decades and has authored, co-authored, edited or contributed to more than 30 books and film documentaries. Her latest book, The New Miami the Magic City, a revised and updated version of her classic work, was just released.
She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida in 1960 and her master's in history from the University of Miami in 1971. Both institutions have named her an alumna of outstanding distinction.
More than an objective onlooker, Parks has taken an active role in improving her hometown and preserving its historic landmarks. She was a force for school integration and helped Miami's diverse communities come together. Her leadership in racial, gender and ethnic relations has brought her many honors from such diverse groups as the Black Archives, Temple Israel, Florida Memorial College, the Cuban Women's Club and the Theodore Gibson Fund.
She was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Miami Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Most recently, in 2008, Parks received the Florida Historical Society's Caroline B. Rossiter Woman in Florida History Award and the first Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce George E. Merrick Spirit of Excellence Award.
She has served on numerous boards and commissions, and currently chairs the City of Miami Planning Advisory Board. Nationally, she held a presidential appointment to the Federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and chaired the Southern Region of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Board of Advisors.
A lyric voice for the black history of South Florida, Dorothy Jenkins Fields has devoted her life to preserving the heritage of the African-American community and raising awareness of African-American history to a national level.
A Miami native, she is responsible for the establishment of Miami’s Black archives, the designation and restoration of the landmark Lyric Theater and other historic sites, the creation of the Black Heritage Trail, and the designation of the Historic Overtown Folklife Village as a national Trust “Main Street” community. Fields has received many honors for her unprecedented research and documentation of African-American history.
In 1960 Fields graduated m. from Booker T. Washington High School. The following year, she enrolled at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia as an art major. As a freshman, Fields participated in the 1960 march with Dr. King to desegregate Rich’s department store in downtown Atlanta. Upon completion in a student exchange program at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, Fields earned her B.F.A degree in art from Spelman College in 1964. She then accepted a librarian and reading teacher position in her hometown of Miami.
Fields’ maternal family moved to Overtown from the Bahamas in 1903 and immediately became an integral part of the fabric of South Florida’s history themselves. Fields’ grandfather, in fact, was one of the gardeners who planted the original gardens at the Deering Estate, Villa Vizcaya, in 1914. The Johnson lineage came full circle in 1999 when Fields was nominated to the Vizcaya Trust by Alvah Chapman, founder of the Community Partnership for the Homeless, and appointed by then Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas.
She was a school librarian, reading teacher and educational specialist for Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 40 years. Fields began her career is 1964 after graduating from Spelman College, Atlanta, GA. Then, in 1974, in preparation for the nation’s bicentennial, she began a search for information from which curriculum materials could be developed on the black experience in South Florida. When she was unable to find any information about South Florida’s black history in any school or public library, she embarked on a journey that would become her lifelong professional mission.
The first step in her journey was to establish The Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida, a nonprofit manuscript and photographic repository for the legacies of Miami’s black community. She was assisted in her effort by University of Miami history professor Gregory Bush, who introduced her to the field of public history. Later she earned her certification in archives administration at Emory University and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction at the University of Northern Colorado. She was also a Woodrow Wilson Teacher’s Fellow at Princeton University. At The Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio she earned a Ph.D. in 20th century African-American history, historic preservation, and public history.
Today, The Black Archives, History & Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc., serves as a national resource for the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in the urban south. It also has been the catalyst for Fields’ campaign to preserve the Lyric Theater and other historic sites in Miami’s Colored Town now known as Overtown. The theater underwent a major restoration and reopening in 2000, a Welcome Center and Lobby was added in 2005, and the stage expanded with an adjacent three story Black Archives headquarters in 2010. Anchored by the historic theater The Black Archives/Lyric Theater/Welcome Center Complex opens in 2012.
Recalling the splendor and exuberance of its days as one of the only black-owned and operated theaters in America.
Fields’ research is also helping transform the neighborhood of Overtown, once a thriving African-American community, into a two-block, mixed-use marketplace and cultural district. Her efforts have been called “the Harlem Renaissance of the South,” and her goal is to attract scholars and others engaged in documenting the 20th century black experience t live, study, create art, and work in Overtown as they did nearly 100 years ago.
She is a true Florida pioneer exploring routes through unmapped territories so that future generations may find their way.