Born in Hawthorne, Florida, Julia Jenkins Baylor organized a Y-Club for black women that about a decade later would become a branch of the national YWCA. On June 22, 1923, Baylor began the Y-Club in the home of noted Miami businesswoman, Florence Gaskins.

Gaskin is known for help to organized Mt. Zion Baptist Church and turning her washerwoman service into a successful laundry business. The laundry service helped finance her other successful business ventures in real estate, office rentals and the first black employment agency in Miami.

Charter members of the Y-Club were: Baylor, Eliza Graggs, Annie M. Coleman, Lucy Calloway, Pauline Collins, Wilhelmenia Woods, Florence Gaskins, Peal & Phebie Osbourne, Ida Regester, W.B. Thomas and Henrietta Washington.

In the early 1930s a Washington official from the YWCA attended a meeting here and asked why there were no “colored women members”. She was told that blacks would have to open a branch in their own neighborhood. The Washington official was sent to Mrs. Julia Baylor and then asked her to open a YWCA in the black community.

Baylor and her sister, Mrs. Gardner, went to the Idle Hour Art and Social Club to develop a plan for the YWCA. First they needed a place with affordable rent. Together they persuaded Deacon Stokes, who owned quite a bit of property in Overtown, to rent them six rooms on the lower floor of his property at 235 N.W. 10^th Street. Stokes provided the rooms at a “very low rent”.

To furnish the first YWCA in the black community, the organizers persuaded the manager of Atlantic Furniture Store to rent some second-hand furniture in good condition at a low weekly rate. The rooms were then set up as three bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and a dining room.

The first housekeeper of the black YWCA was Mrs. Watson. To help pay bills, members served dinners on two Thursdays a month. Later the facility was reorganized and called the Murrell Branch YWCA.