Betty T. Ferguson

Betty T. Ferguson died on the morning of Saturday 14 November 2026 while in hospice care. No cause of death was made public. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called her my first County mentor, Commissioner and Congressman-elect Oliver Gilbert III and Commissioner-elect Steve Gallon III praised her fight for single member districts, Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins called her a true trailblazer, and the Miami Dolphins described her as a champion for civil rights and for Miami Gardens.

Betty T. Ferguson was born and raised in Miami. She was in the first class of first graders at Bunche Park Elementary School in 1951, and her family was among those displaced from Overtown when Interstate 95 was built through the neighbourhood, according to the official history of Miami Gardens. She studied education at Florida A&M University, where she met Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr., and earned a master's degree in speech pathology and audiology from Ohio State University. Reports of her age at death differed: the South Florida Times and M.I.A Media Group said 81, giving a birth date of 28 January 1945, while the Miami Herald and CBS Miami said 91.

Ferguson taught at Howard University and Florida Memorial College before joining the North Campus of Miami-Dade Community College, now Miami Dade College, where she taught speech and English as a second language from 1971 until she retired in 2001. She said she was inspired by the educator and congresswoman Carrie P. Meek. She founded the Unrepresented People's Positive Action Council, a Saturday breakfast forum in north Dade where residents discussed community problems. The plan to build Joe Robbie Stadium in a predominantly Black community with little local input drew her into county politics.

Ferguson ran for the Dade County Commission in 1986 and 1990, when every commissioner was elected countywide, and lost both races. Her main campaign issue was a switch to district elections. After her second defeat she joined a federal voting rights lawsuit, and in 1992 a federal judge ruled that the countywide system diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic residents. Under the new single member districts she won the District 1 seat in 1993, a result the attorney H.T. Smith called the political emancipation of Black people in Dade County. She was reelected twice without opposition and served 11 years. County records credit her with money for drainage, sidewalks and safer routes to school, $12 million for the Carol City Community Center, sewer improvements along Miami Gardens Drive and a $1 million Life Support Initiative for basic needs. She announced in 2004 that she would not seek reelection.

Ferguson led the push to incorporate the unincorporated neighbourhoods around the stadium. A first incorporation vote failed in 1995. In 2002 she appointed members of an advisory committee that revived the effort, and on 13 May 2003 residents approved the charter creating Miami Gardens as Miami-Dade County's 33rd city.

She was married to Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr., a Florida appeals judge whom President Bill Clinton appointed to the federal bench in 1993. He died in 2003, and the federal courthouse in downtown Miami bears his name. The couple had two children.

Ferguson's lawsuit and campaign helped produce the district system still used to elect Miami-Dade commissioners. Miami Gardens renamed the Carol City recreation complex the Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Complex, the county commission co-designated NW 22nd Avenue from Ali Baba Avenue to NW 183rd Street as Betty T. Ferguson Boulevard in 2006, and Miami Dade College established the Betty T. Ferguson Endowed Teaching Chair.