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To commemorate Black History Month, Brightline, the only provider of eco-friendly high-speed rail in the U.S., is partnering with The Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida to host an art installation featuring original works by Purvis Young, a renowned artist who was born in Liberty City and lived and painted in historic Overtown.
Brightline’s headquarters and its MiamiCentral Station are located in Overtown, and this collaboration underscores its commitment to support and positively impact local communities throughout South Florida.
Throughout the month of February, guests can view the Purvis Young exhibit inside Brightline’s MiamiCentral Premium Lounge. The complimentary display features 19 original pieces, along with a QR code that links to video of the artist detailing his works and creation process, all courtesy of The Black Archives, a non-profit organization that collects and preserves the rapidly vanishing material that reflects the African American experience in Miami-Dade County.
Riders taking Brightline and looking to explore more of Overtown also can visit The Black Archives Historic Lyric Theater, Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum, Dorsey House, Red Rooster, and Lil Greenhouse Grill.
Purvis Young was born in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood on Feb. 2, 1943. He never attended high school, and as a teenager, Young served three years in prison for breaking and entering.
It was in prison that Young began to develop his interest in art and began drawing. When released from prison, Young began to produce thousands of small drawings, which he kept in shopping carts and later glued into discarded books and magazines that he found on the streets. Eventually, Young’s artwork grew in size to accommodate other found items, such as wood, masonite, rugs, metal, and other scraps.
In 1971, he moved to the historically Black inner-city neighborhood of Overtown, where he was attracted to Goodbread Alley, a vacant corridor named after the smell of residents baking bread in their ovens in Overtown’s early years.
In December 2006, Young was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Black Archives for his outstanding contribution to the art world. Through the years, Purvis Young’s art has been collected by internationally famous names such as Jane Fonda, Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Damon Wayans and Lenny Kravitz.
On April 20, 2010, at age 67, Young died of cardiac arrest and pulmonary edema. Shortly after, The Black Archives received almost 400 pieces of Purvis Young’s artwork from the Bass Museum of Art.
The Black Archives Research Foundation of South Florida was founded in 1977 by Dr. Dorothy Jenkins Fields as a non-profit organization to collect and preserve the rapidly vanishing material that reflects the African American experience in Miami-Dade County.
Over the years, the collection has grown, and The Black Archives is now a national resource for this history of the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a rich repository of materials that are used by scholars, students, teachers, the media, and the community alike. The Black Archives is headquartered at the Lyric Theater, which is within walking distance of MiamiCentral.
