The Ralph McCartney
Oral-History Archive

Ralph McCartney was a son of Overtown — community activist, mentor, keeper of his neighborhood's memory, and the man for whom the McCartney Academy is named. This archive preserves his own words and the public record that honored him, so that the testimony grounding our work is kept, sourced, and unerasable. A people that keeps its own record can never be told it has none.

Recorded for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program under the title “Tell the Story.” Short excerpts, used under Fair Use and attributed; the full interview is held by the program.

• The house that fed the neighborhood. The McCartney home doubled as a gathering place — kids nicknamed it “the McCartney Palace on McCartney Square.” Of his parents he said: “Never did a hungry person cross that door and leave out that same way.”
• The school as catalyst. In his Overtown, school was the center of pride: “To go to school is what was cool at that time.” The school, he said, was the catalyst of the whole community.
• The Big Monster. When the expressways came, they “dissected and bisected the community” into “four different areas where there was once a whole community.” His verdict was unsparing: “Those whom the Gods will destroy, they first make proud — so they gave us Booker Washington and they made us proud, and they took it away, and they destroyed us.”
• Keeping children out of jail. After a life spent steering young people away from it, he took a post inside the county jail: “I must have worked in the jail for at least 7 or 8 months before I learned to stop crying every night.”
• The charge he carried. “When you see something wrong, you've got to speak out against it — because if you don't, then you're perpetuating that wrong.”

The whole neighborhood was a family.Ralph McCartney, oral history, 1997

Excerpts © Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida (2005); used under Fair Use with attribution.

In 1997 the City of Opa-Locka — “a community of brotherhood and sisterhood” — proclaimed “Mr. Ralph McCartney Day,” honoring his decades of community activism, his civil-rights work, and his labor to preserve Black history.

Fig. I — Exhibit I · Proclamation Document

Rep. Carrie Meek (FL-17) rose in the United States House of Representatives to pay tribute to Ralph McCartney of Overtown — a man, she said, best known for his eloquence reciting great literature, but whose most outstanding contributions came “from working behind the scenes.” She named three key elements of his legacy:

• The Edison Park I-95 overpass. Through his relentless effort it was built, so that — in her words — “young children no longer have to face the death-defying temptations of taking a short-cut across I-95 to get to school.”
• The rebuilding of Booker T. Washington School. “The tireless work of Mr. McCartney, the late Dr. Johnny Jones, the school board, and the community led to the successful rebuilding of the school.”
• The Department of Defense Race Relations Institute Through which many gained a deeper understanding of their role in making America and its institutions more just.

Fig. II — Exhibits II & III · House Proceedings

Asked how he wished to be remembered, he answered simply: “That I was a McCartney.”Congressional Record, February 1, 1994