Would Miami locals own their city if the mission of The Miami Women’s Club of 1930 had been accomplished?

    Since 1930 Miami has changed drastically and it seems as though it was out of anyone in particular’s control. However, if the locals of Miami had taken control, the city would most definitely not be the same. If the Miami locals had held on to their pride of every part of the city, the city would not have been taken over by people who do not call it home. An inspiring and optimistic group of women called The Miami Women’s Club were dedicated to creating a city that they could be proud of. After creating the library system in Miami and assisting in creating the Everglades, their voices became muffled in the traffic of mobiles stacking up skyscrapers along the beautiful beaches and the extraordinary inflow of cuban immigrants.
    The main focuses of the The Miami Women’s Club of 1930 were agriculture, environment, health, industry, community business and purchasing local goods. Today, Miami has issues in all of these areas, because the foundation for them was not built correctly. If these women were given the opportunity to build these ideals into reality by locals for locals, the city would function today in a more just way. However, now that Miami has been build to neglect locals, they are ignored. The women’s club in 2012 work with the community to support art of all forms and the home life of women (with a focus on unwed mothers). These issues are not unimportant, but they have far less of an impact on the whole of the city. It seems to me that when the voices of the women of Miami were silenced, they gave up on creating the city and settled for fixing it. Miami is no longer in a position to form its own identity, because it has already been established by income seeking mobiles and exiles trying to support themselves. If these local women had been able to create the city in the way they had envisioned it, the city would be owned by the locals and not outsiders.
    The depictions of Miami constantly fall into the hands of mobiles and exiles. I want to focus in on a group that is not only local, but female. Their underrated perspective could have made the city a place locals could have owned and been proud of. I would like to use an abstract idea to bridge the local community today to the ideals of the Women’s Club in 1930. They are both perspectives that are clouded by the media, but strive for the same ultimate goal. The Women’s Club of 1930 wanted a city to call their own and the locals today deserve that ideal.


"MIAMI WOMANS CLUB - Not for Ourselves Alone." MIAMI WOMANS CLUB. Http://www.herbsosa.com/. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://themiamiwomansclub.org/index.html>.

This is the website of the Miami Women’s Club themselves. It is the perception the these women are putting out into the world. The website is intended for people who have an interest in donating money, joining the club, or wish to attend one of their events. The website include a summary of their history and their current committees and events. It is very important to use information promoted by the people themselves I am speaking about. Although I was criticizing their current efforts in the community, I took the information to back that up from information published under their name. It was not as personal, like the Year Book source, as I would have hoped, but it was helpful in providing insight into the club at present.




Cohen, Howard. "Woman’s Clubs Build on History to Better Their Communities." Miami Herald [Miami] 23 Feb. 2012. Print.

This article is a little biased, because it is trying to be a flowery article on how great the Women’s Club is in helping the community. However, it contained a lot of great history on the women’s club and a perspective on how the club has evolved. It was interesting to see how the women were presented as never changing their goals throughout history when the contradiction between their yearbook from 1930 to the website of 2012 is so obvious. Still, the intention of the piece was to make people in Miami to feel good about there community in some small way.


Dade County Federation of Women's Clubs Year Book. Miami, 1932. Print.

This resource provides a lot of unknown insight into the goals of The Miami Women’s Club in 1930 (to 1932). It is shocking how advanced their ideals were for the city of Miami and it proves that they were smart and should have held more power. The intended audience was the member’s themselves and therefore the statements appear genuine. This resource is much more insightful into the inner workings of the Miami Women’s Club than both their website and the Miami Herald newspaper article on the club.