Religion

Local church members reenact last steps of Christ

Members of Saint Matthew Community Baptist Church and residents of the Grove gathered at Coconut Grove Cemetery on Good Friday to walk behind the cross. The event, now in its sixth year, is a recreation of Jesus’ last steps.
“It’s to let people know that we feel we have our cross to bear too,” said Lottie Person, a former member of the Coconut Grove Village Council and the creator of the Good Friday walk.

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Roots of the Grove: Photos of a memorable day

Roots of the Grove Garden Party was held on November 7th, 2009 replanting the Grove garden for the second season. It was a beautiful day for gardening and many in the community showed their support. Photographs by CC.
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Church provides sanctuary for the homeless

One Wednesday morning church service in the Village West community typically caters to about 70 people who show up each week to nourish their souls as well as their bodies.

At 11 a.m., they are seated on the crimson-carpeted wooden benches at Greater St. Paul AME Church, 3680 Thomas Ave., where they listen to the Rev. Jesse Harvin. The congregation – all of them homeless – sings hymns and recites Bible verses.

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Where the foundation of the community lies

The historic roots of West Coconut Grove lie along Douglas Road between Charles and Franklin avenues.

Here, at the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery, is what some say is the heart of Miami’s oldest black community, today called the West Grove or, more recently, Village West. The area was founded before the city itself and within Charlotte Jane’s iron gates rest the settlers who sailed into the Florida Straits from the Bahamas.

“It is the foundation,” Billy Gibson, 58, a lifelong West Grove resident and one of the cemetery’s caretakers, said adding that a community must know where it’s been to know where it’s going. “Without it you can’t build up and out.”

Gibson said he regularly paints the above-ground vaults in the cemetery and places flowers on graves at Easter and Mother’s Day when loved ones cannot.
To him, the graves chronicle the area’s evolution from a tiny settlement reachable only by boat into a neighborhood with a bustling business corridor along Grand Avenue to the efforts to crawl out of the decline into a crime-heavy zone.

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