In 2017, I did what all the multimillion dollar foundations in the area only talk about, and without their help I published three physical books of historic significance that are still collected to this day and that beat anything those same dorks have ever funded.
1. Inside The Music Biz with Henry Stone
2. Cuban Coffee Windows of Miami
3. A People's History of Overtown vol. 1
All three got positive reviews in multiple media outlets from a variety of established writers, supposedly experts.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/community-voices/article177186771.html
I always kind of liked this review by Dr. Dorothy Jenkins Fields of the Black Historic Archives, but the one big irony is that she criticizes me for so-called historical inaccuracies in the very same article where she does that very thing herself, about her own community.
Almost all published books on earth contain at least one typo, and my self published book on Overtown had a couple of misspelled names and one police man who was only a lieutenant, I originally called a captain. Those mistakes were corrected, but the ones in her own article, still there.
The Miami Herald editors or perhaps Fields herself also should be corrected for the sake of history. There is nobody called Archive McKay. His name is Archie. And there is nobody called Abdul Mushin. His name is Abdul Muhsin. Those are two published copy errors that still stand. Dyslexia or not, they are errors that are easy to make but wrong nonetheless.
Other mistakes in her article are the timeline of my work.
I started my People's History of Overtown book in 2009, and that is how I found out about Henry Stone, not the other way around.
And I am not from Mexico City but I did move from there to within a 5 minute bike ride of the city of Miami in 1988 and attended Little Carver Elementary, where I got my funk. And I have lived all over the county ever since.
Fields declined to share what info was inaccurate in my work when I asked her directly and I find that objectionable. I did not use her archives in any way to write my book. At the time, her headquarters were between locations and charged more than I could afford anyway. I almost always have no money and I almost always know how to get everything done through hard work, great strangers, extensive network, good timing, luck, and honesty. So I built my own archive from my own personal work, research, interviews, and text/photo/audio/video creations.
I believe that's called the Ingenuity Paradox, where greater constraints can produce greater output through forced creativity.
So, no matter what my budget is, my result is always 10x or 100x what people think it would or should be. Which also works at scale.
But Dr. Fields is a TRUE Miami pioneer. Generational. Bahamian. American. 1896. Original city charter. Incorporation. Majority of voters. And though I may point out what she got wrong about me, I respect her and everything she built.
Although it seemed to take a while for Sam Rabin to get the credit for his paintings advertising performers at the Sir John Hotel and The Knight Beat, which he owned.
So thanks Dr. Fields for reading, thinking about, and writing about my work, and there's always more on the way just around the corner.
Stay tuned