Public schools were segregated. Black students could not attend the University of Miami or any of Florida's other state-supported colleges except Florida A & M University in Tallahassee. Blacks were living in horrible conditions in areas such as Liberty and Overtown. Certain jobs were not available to black people, and blacks were excluded from most labor unions. This list could hardly every be exhausted because segregation was present in every aspect of human life. What was more shocking to myself throughout research on the topic, is that The Miami Herald had barely mentioned these issues in their highly circulated newspaper. There were minimal, occasional and rare mentions of the movement, which vaguely reported on decisions or impacts on the community in Florida. It became evident that history would really have to wait before out reactive society and government ever become proactive. Meanwhile, African Americans were living with their deteriorating freedoms that almost pushed them back into slavery. As valiant as the protest efforts were in helping to defeat Jim Crow segregation, the practice of White racial domination modified its method to adapt to new patterns of societal organization. Historic forms of white racial domination gave way to modern forms, such as institutional racism, that continued to perpetrate Black suffering and discontent. .
As the decade of the 1940s unfolded, a few changes for the better began to take place. In the late summer of 1944, a precursor of white and black cooperation appeared in the Miami Daily News announcing the city's first multiracial group specifically organized to address problems between whites and blacks relating to housing, health and recreation. The committee was composed of six white and six black members. Members of the Dade County Interracial Committee toured sections of Miami's black communities in order to observe living conditions firsthand.