PARKS & OUTDOORS
Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park
Broward County · South Florida & the Keys
A beach park at Dania Beach whose name records how the beaches here came to be open to everyone.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
It opened in 1953 as a segregated beach, the one stretch of sand Broward County would allow Black residents to use, and it existed at all only after years of pressure from Dr. Von D. Mizell, a surgeon, and Eula Johnson, who led the local chapter of the NAACP. Getting that beach was not the end of it. In 1961 the two of them led wade-ins at the whites-only beaches in Fort Lauderdale, and the county's beaches were desegregated the following year. The park was called John U. Lloyd Beach State Park, after the county attorney who helped secure the land, until July 1, 2016, when it was renamed for Mizell and Johnson. What is there now is a long stretch of Atlantic beach beside the Port Everglades inlet, with Whiskey Creek running behind it as a manatee sanctuary and canoes for rent on the creek. Offshore, the Dania Beach Erojacks reef draws divers. The gate opens at eight in the morning and closes at sundown, every day of the year
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