One Night In Miami Dr Pinkney Interview (Part 1) 4K | Hampton House

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

the hampton house has been here for quite some time it really was built in the 50s during the course during the days of segregation the mokovitz which was a jewish couple wanted a nice place a very elegant place for black people to come and enjoy miami in in south florida so uh they built the book of terrorism the the original name was the book of terrorists and people enjoyed coming here and they brought in some fabulous entertainers also to to work here and then other entertainers who worked on miami beach but could not stay on miami beach would stay here at the hampton house and when they would get off from work they would have jam sessions here at the hampton house and they got to be very popular and so a lot of the white people who had seen them on miami beach started following them over here to the hampton house and so even though it was during a period of segregation the hampton house was a place of integration which was really against the law and this was a place where you know if you wanted to know who was in town who were the celebrities in town you stopped by by the hampton house and you would probably see them this was where you'd meet and greet people and so that lasted for until i guess around the 70s and then with integration coming things changing people could go wherever they wanted to go it it was not as popular as it had been before but but this was a place where you got all dressed up when you came to the hampton house you were looking your best and it was just everything was first class and so that was what was expected of of everybody that came here and you felt safe and it was just a great experience the food was good everything was you know exciting the entertainment was good after entertain after integration things began to drop and the the the markovics the markovics was a jewish couple that owned it and their children were not interested in continuing uh the motel and so uh what happened you know the the drug addicts took over the homeless took over the prostitutes the undesirable people came and the neighborhood the neighbors were complaining and it became an unsafe structure so as a result of the complaints the county was going to tear it down but we didn't know that um but in 2001 kathy hirsch came to me and said that she had heard that dr martin luther king had said his i have a dream speech here at the hampton house even before he said it in washington d.c and a.d moore said that on a film that was produced by the black archives so she had she was learning about the building and the history of the building and how it was a place of integration during the time of segregation and of all of the celebrities and the famous people who used to stay here and so she felt that the building deserved historic designation and she asked me if i would get the african-american committee of date heritage trust to sponsor historic designation for the [Music] building [Music] you