A new kind of storytelling takes the stage in Coral Gables—not one told through speeches or textbooks, but through photographs, oral history, and shared space. On Sunday, June 1, from 1 to 5 p.m., the Sanctuary of the Arts at the St. Mary Campus will host the opening reception of Documenting Goombay and Little Bahamas, an exhibit that shines a light on the Black and Bahamian communities whose labor, faith, and traditions helped build Coral Gables from the ground up.
Held at 136 Frow Avenue, in the heart of the historically Bahamian West Grove, the event invites the public to witness and honor a living archive—one created not by scholars alone but by volunteers, neighbors, and youth with cameras in hand. The exhibit showcases photographs taken during the 2024 Goombay Festival, as well as a community photo walk held in January, where participants documented streets, faces, and memories in what’s often referred to as “Little Bahamas.”
Story long overdue
The exhibit is the result of a 2024 Community Collections Grant from the American Folklife Center of the U.S. Library of Congress, awarded to the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at Florida International University. The grant supports community-driven documentation of underrepresented cultural groups. Here in Coral Gables and Coconut Grove, that means capturing the legacy of the Bahamian immigrants and Black residents who laid the foundations—literally—for many of the city’s iconic landmarks.
As WLRN and other local institutions have highlighted in recent years, Bahamian workers were instrumental in the physical construction of Coral Gables in the 1920s. Yet their contributions have often gone unacknowledged in official narratives. This exhibition offers a corrective: it centers the perspectives of those communities and invites the broader public to reflect on their continuing presence and impact.
Multisensory community celebration
The free event opens at 1 p.m. with an outdoor reception on the grounds of the former St. Mary First Missionary Baptist Church, now home to Sanctuary of the Arts. Guests are invited to explore the exhibit inside, which will remain open through 5 p.m.
At 2 p.m., a musical performance by students from G.W. Carver—a school with deep roots in the community—will accompany welcome remarks. Then, from 3 to 5 p.m., HistoryMiami Museum will lead a Community Story Collection session, inviting attendees to share memories, photographs, and reflections. These oral histories will help deepen the exhibit’s impact, ensuring it is not just about the past, but shaped by the voices of the present.
Cultural reclaiming—through photography
Unlike traditional exhibitions, Documenting Goombay and Little Bahamas is powered by everyday observers. Volunteer photographers—including students, community members, and amateur artists—captured the rhythms of the Goombay Festival, an annual celebration of Bahamian culture in Coconut Grove, through portraits, street scenes, and candid moments.
The photo walk earlier this year added a quieter, more introspective layer—documenting the homes, churches, and gathering spaces that define daily life in a neighborhood at risk of erasure due to gentrification and rising real estate pressures. The result is a people’s archive, focused not just on what has changed, but on what endures.
Importance of place
That the exhibit is being hosted at the Sanctuary of the Arts at the former St. Mary’s Baptist Church is symbolic. The building is a landmark of spiritual and civic life in the Bahamian-American community, a space where generations have gathered for worship, education, and activism.
This reuse of sacred space for cultural storytelling adds depth to the exhibit’s message: that the history of Coral Gables is incomplete without the stories of West Grove. The photographs, oral histories, and performances invite reflection on how communities document themselves—and how civic memory is shaped not only by architecture, but by who gets to speak and be seen.
Why it matters
As Coral Gables continues to grow and evolve, the pressures of development can risk flattening the stories that made the city what it is. Events like Documenting Goombay and Little Bahamas offer a vital counterbalance. They give voice to legacy residents, empower youth to document their world, and invite newcomers to learn what—and who—came before.
