Pierre Rutledge will never forget his grandma’s Miami Beach ID card.
A 1936 ordinance mandated that Black visitors, many of them hospitality workers, carry the card at all times in Miami Beach or risk arrest. As a result, Rutledge and his family, save for his grandmother who worked as a domestic worker with white families, never really frequented Miami Beach growing up.
Now, as the chair of the Miami-Dade Black Advisory Board, Rutledge sees a connection between the city’s handling of Blacks in the past and in the present after a state of emergency was declared this week following two shootings over the weekend.
