Greater Miami is Overburdened with Hypocritical Front-Running Phonies

By Seth H. Bramson

Recently, yet another vile and disgusting insult to and against me has been added by the faux-powers who shouldn’t even be here in what was once “the magic city” but for innumerable reasons has become, as our late, great talk show host, Neil Rogers would have said, “a shothole.”

First, the readers should understand who I am, besides the fact that I have done more to preserve the history of Miami-Dade County and the state of Florida than any other single individual in the state’s history, and that is neither an idle nor a specious boast, but, simply a statement of truth and fact, those two words generally very disturbing to said “powers that be,” who, in many, if not most cases, shouldn’t be.

Your scribe is America’s senior collector of Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway, Florida transportation memorabilia, Miami memorabilia and Floridiana, having begun the collecting, preserving and saving of all this “junque” now 63 years ago, the immediately past May. In addition, our collections of FEC Railway and Florida transportation memorabilia are the largest in the world: they are larger than the state museum’s collection (of like items, of course, not their entire collection) and larger than the Flagler Museum’s collection, the same disclaimer applying. But, and in addition to that, they are the largest collections of Miami memorabilia and Floridiana in private hands (private as opposed to the museums) in the country.

Just a few of the superlatives related to The Bramson Archive: we maintain, in addition to the largest collections in the country as noted above, we hold the largest Greater Miami images collection in private hands in the country, with, between photographs, negatives and slides, well more than 40,000 individual pieces; the largest collection of Greater Miami hotel/motel memorabilia in public or private hands in the country, including booklets, brochures, stationery, linens and more; the largest collection of Black/African-American memorabilia in white hands in the country, not comparing ourselves to Miami’s Black Archives but with the disclaimer noted as well as a number of other exceptional parts to and areas of the collection.

I give fourteen different talks on South Florida local and Florida transportation history and am the only person in the state who gives the talk titled “The History of Discrimination in South Florida,” which is half Jim Crow and segregation and half restricted clientele, dealing with the year during which Jewish people could not belong to certain private clubs or stay in certain hotel.

In addition to the above, I am America’s single most-published Florida history book author—none self-published—my 33rd, “LOST RESTAURANTS of MIAMI” having recently come out, and yet the shameful reluctance of the Miami Herald to properly cover it, along with their other hideously offensive actions toward and against me, need to be not only brought to public notice but remedied by that “news outlet” on an immediate basis. As noted below, more on and about this in our next column.

And yet, with all of that, such organizations as HistoryMiami, due primarily to one person who has poisoned them against me, have constantly and unendingly engaged in nothing other than bigotry, prejudice and discrimination toward and against me (and with all of their denials that—discrimination—is exactly what it is), excluding me—shamefully and disgustingly—from participation in their events, the same being true with the Jewish Museum of Florida and Miami Design Preservation League. This is as shameful as racial and religious discrimination and yet people who are supposedly of “good will” are either afraid to act or simply choose not to take these statements seriously, or to act on them in a positive and forthright manner, which is easy when they are not the affected party.

Next column: the who and the incidents and the shamefulness of all that they are doing. “Stay tuned!”

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