Miami Burning
The Fuse
Jackson Browne
The Pretender
((( Fire In The Sky )))
don wright
Miami photographs by albert diaz
wednesday
october 2, 1980
vol 74 no 9
MIAMI
The cauldron still bubbles
By David Futch
Alligator Staff Writer
At 2:36 p.m. on May 17, an all-white Tampa jury acquitted four white Dade County Metro police officers of the December beating death of black insurance salesman Arthur McDuffie.
What followed three hours later in the Miami enclave of Liberty City has been called America’s worst race riot since the Watts uprising in 1965.
For 11-year-old Shanreka Perry, life in Liberty City will never be the same again.
The Holmes Elementary School sixth grader, basketball player, and cheerleader had her left leg severed from the socket hours after the riot began.
A 1969 Dodge Dart slammed her into a concrete block apartment less than 100 yards from her home in the Liberty Square housing project.
Jeffrey Kulp, a white passenger in the car that struck Perry, never knew what happened to him. Kulp was dragged from the car by blacks, beaten, his ears cut off and tongue cut out. He died 26 days later.
Seventeen other persons were killed during the three-day siege which caused more than $100 million damage. Miami’s tropical azure sky was streaked gray and black by hundreds of fires.
It was a rebellion borne out of disgust with the criminal justice system. Contempt had been building for more than a year.
For instance:
• On Feb. 12. 1979, one uniformed Metro officer and four narcotics investigators knocked on Nathaniel LeFleur’s door. The 48-year-old elementary school teacher slammed the door in their faces. The cops kicked it down and gave the black man a couple of broken ribs and cuts. He was not a drug dealer. The police had gone to the wrong house. A Dade grand jury said the officers made a mistake, but violated no laws.
• An 11-year-old black girl was sexually molested on Jan 9, 1979, by a white Florida Highway Patrol trooper. The girl was on her way home from her Homestead elementary school. A Dade circuit judge gave trooper Willie T. Jones three years probation. He was allowed to resign.
• Randy Heath died last September, shot by a Hialeah cop working as an off-duty security man. White police officer Larry Shockley said he shot Heath in a struggle. Shockley later changed his story, saying his gun went off accidentally. Last March, a Dade grand jury found Shockley’s conduct negligent, but the shooting was not deemed a criminal act.
Then came the case of Dade School Superintendent Johnny Jones. Jones had a national reputation, and black Miamians looked to him for inspiration. Until the so-called gold-plumbing caper became his Waterloo.
With school funds, Jones attempted to purchase $8.934 worth of gold-plated plumbing fixtures for his Naples home.
He was convicted two weeks before the outbreak of violence in Liberty City. Someone was out to get Jones, blacks charged.
But the torch that ignited the bomb was lit last Dec. 17.
Arthur McDuffie was stopped following a high-speed motorcycle chase through Miami. The insurance salesman died five days later.
Officers who were at the scene tried to cover up the cause.
McDuffie had been in an accident, they wrote in their reports. But during the Tampa trial of the four police, officer Charles Ververka, immunized from prosecution, testified that Metro officer Alex Mar rero beat a handcuffed McDuffie with a nightstick or long-handled flashlight.
The patrolmen slumped in relief when the jury returned 13 verdicts of innocence. The charges ranged from second degree murder to accessory after the fact.
More than 300 miles away, the fuse in Liberty City finally reached its end.
Four months have passed since the May riots and Miami leaders — both black and white — say it will be many years, and maybe never, before Miami heals the wounds inflicted during the three days of rage.
“You’re never going to overcome the problems of 200 years of neglect in three months.” said Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre.
“You’re not going to overcome the problems of the criminal justice system that has not been responsive, that has not dealt equally with people and all of a sudden correct it. The problem has been there many, many years.
Leaders say despair can be felt anywhere in America where blacks are squeezed into an asphalt sardine can.
Most of the damage in Miami’s sardine can was confined to an area between Northwest 62nd and 71st Streets from 12th to 22nd Avenues.
Damage in the black sections of Coconut Grove, Perrine, Brownsville, Opa-locka, Overtown and Carol City also occurred, but not like the destruction in Liberty City.
Hopelessness, unemployment, anger and a high crime rate – the chief ingredients of the May riots – are still in place, said T. Willard Fair, Greater Miami Urban League president.
Another uprising could occur in the next five years or in the next five minutes, he said. The timing is unpredictable, but another riot is inevitable, Fair said.
“Not a damn thing is being done to prevent it,” he said.
“It was police brutality that started what happened May 17 and violence will bring an end to (the black man’s) struggle in the future.” he said. The people (of Liberty City) continue to live in a very violent environment.”
Unemployed street people cruise the asphalt jungle whites created during the land boom of the 1920s. A half-century ago, whites evicted most of the black settlers from communities surrounding Miami and herded them into an area called the “Railroad Colored Addition.” Land was needed for development, city leaders said.
Today, 50 percent of the 16 to 22-year-olds who live in Libertv City are unemployed, said Don Hill, labor market analyst for the South Florida Employment Consortium.
Drugs are a way of life. Children 10, 11 and 12-years-old cut their adulthood teeth on pot and alcohol.
Marilyn O’Neal, 20, has never had a job. She spends most of her time indulging in alcohol, marijuana, and Ouaaludes.
O’Neal has another name for her home.
“This is dope city,” she said. “Anywhere vou walk you can buy dope. It’s just our thing because you can’t find any jobs. You just get sent from building to building.
The scenario is not unique to Miami, says Dr. Marvin Dunn, community psychology associate professor at Florida International University in Miami.
Grants and scholarships enabled Dunn to break away from the poverty and hopelessness of Liberty City 23 years ago to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta. Another six years were spent in the Navy. But his concern for Liberty City and its people remains.
He is pessimistic about any changes taking place in the community Miami police call the “war zone.”
The most disturbing thing to me is the great number of youngsters involved in serious crimes, particularly thefts, burglaries, rapes, murders,” Dunn said. “In this community, it’s very common for youngsters to be criminally involved. I find the drug involvement very disturbing.
Official figures indicate that more than 3,000 persons live in the James E. Scott housing project at Northwest 22nd Avenue and 75th Street. But the figure for the 868-apartment complex could actually be twice that high.
Only those families with a wage earner report they are living in the apartments. In the Scott project, 70 percent of the black women rear children without benefit of a husband, Dunn estimates.
Still, the underlying cause of the riot was not poverty, Dunn said.
If that were the case, there would be rioting all the time.
The Miami riot was a direct response to a breakdown in the criminal justice system in the McDuffie case and the cases that preceded the McDuffie trial, Dunn said.
Revamping the criminal justice system is the most volatile factor in the racial equation in the United States today, he said.
Fumbling with a large rubber band, Dade State Attorney Janet Reno said she was “bitterly disappointed” at the jury’s decision. She felt there was enough evidence against the four officers to convict. them on at least some of the charges.
The ploy didn’t work. Reno has been criticized for not trying the officers separately. Dunn said separate trials would have been ideal rather than going for the whole ball of wax.
Reno admits the criminal justice system is in need of reform. She looks forward to the day when all persons are treated as equals. “I think the ultimate goal is to look at a jury and not see color, sex or ethnic background,” Reno said.
The problems inherent in the criminal justice system can be solved, but Dunn doesn’t think they will be, at least not for a long time.
“I think white people feel there are enough laws on the books to assure equal participation for black people.” Dunn said. “They feel enough federal and state money has been allocated to provide housing, education programs and help for the needy. But damn little is being done in terms of what the problems are, and basically nothing in terms of what will be a long-term impact.
So there is no instant fix that will solve the plight of Miami’s blacks, said William Ruben, Florida Chairman of the Board for Jordan Marsh. Ruben also is one of 11 members appointed by Gov. Bob Graham to the Dade County Community Revitalization Board.
The six blacks and five whites on the board must see that programs are developed and dollars are guided into those programs that will benefit Dade’s black communities. Almost $90 million in federal. state and local money has been targeted for the riot areas, but plans for revitalization are moving slowly.
Realistically. the problems created environmentally and educationally over the years are not going to be solved overnight, Ruben said. There is no short-term solution. Money is not the answer.
In the long run an assessment of the black com-munities, the people who live there and what jobs they can do will determine the future of Liberty City, he said.
“They (the residents of Liberty City) want an instant fix, but they don’t know what it is they want,” Ruben said. “Most of those on the street have not communicated with us. There are 15,000 to 20,000 unemployed, but they’re unskilled and the business community has not built vocational training schools to train them.’
Miami’s economic base is centered around banking, international finance, tourism and the airlines.
Businessmen have not taken it upon themselves to train blacks in these areas. By the nature of their work, businessmen are activists. If that activism can be ig-nited, community problems can be solved, Ruben said.
Joe Oglesby, a black columnist for The Miami Herald, disagrees with Ruben’s assessment.
The spark won’t come from either blacks or whites unless a profit can be made, Oglesby said. There is movement, he conceded, and the programs to help are gearing up, but a basic pattern has been established.
The programs will allow middle-class blacks to take advantage of the system, he said. None of the programs focus on the specific people involved in the rioting.
“The reaction from the street people I’ve talked to is this is more of the same garbage that was attempted in 1968, and (the white power structure) didn’t follow through with the money,” Oglesby said. “Nothing’s going to change because it’s not in the interest of the landowners and those in power to see it change.
It’s difficult to change the hustler who knows only what the streets have taught him, Oglesby said. He can’t read or write (and won’t admit it), but he can tell you how to steal a car. The street people are the ones who need the most help, he said.
“You have to first motivate them, teach them the basic skills and then you can go with vocational train-ing,” Oglesby said. “If you can solve it here in Miami, you can solve it anywhere in the country.
“Miami isn’t an isolated situation; Miami just had a riot. It’s the same anywhere: no housing and no jobs.
Oglesby came to The Miami Herald in 1972. In eight years he has learned that the people who control Miami are not black. There are no black leaders, he believes.
“There are only “pipe cloggers,” surrogate leaders who communicate the dictates of the whites who control the public and private sectors.”
The “pipe cloggers,” Oglesby said, have lost the respect of those they most want to help.
Georgia Jones Ayers is not a pipe clogger.
Gov. Bob Graham selected her Aug. 11 as one of six black members of the Dade County Community Revitalization Board.
Black people can’t afford to wait for long-term projects to be finished, she said. Most white leaders are pushing for economic development, Ayers said. But first there must be social change, particularly in the housing projects.
“Social service is a crumb here and a crumb there, Ayers said. “People (on the street) say to me, ‘Hey, you talk about long-term economic development. Well, hell there ain’t no businesses and jobs right now and I want something to eat.”
So what does the black man want?
“Black people want to live a life where their kids can get an education, where they can put food on the table, they want a job and they want to grow old gracefully,” Ayers said. “This is what everyone wants, white black or indifferent. We all want a piece of the pie. The black man wants to live like Mr. White America lives.”
Blacks don’t have a monopoly on poverty. Poor whites are shunned by the “haves” whether the
“haves” are white or black. The “haves” have because they refuse to give up that from whence they came, Ayers said.
Touché, says Dunn.
Americans who tend to be denied justice are poor people, most of whom are white, said psychology professor Dunn.
Justice is not a white issue. Justice is a human issue that affects everybody in this country who lacks means to protect himself, he said.
Liberty City won’t be saved by the white community and Liberty City won’t be saved by liberal Democrats in Congress.
“Liberty City is going to be saved from decay by black people,” Dunn said. “I think the gravest mistake we’ve made in the last century is to wait on white people. Neither Carter nor Reagan is going to do a damn thing for black people.”
It is totally unacceptable for the wealthiest country to exist when 50 percent of Miami’s young blacks are unemployed, Mayor Ferre said.
“Until we can address that issue, there is no way we can address the issue of crime in the streets. There is no way we can have a safe society and there’s no way we can progress beyond where we are until we address it.
“The president of the United States hasn’t addressed it, and Gov. Reagan has addressed it even less.
“In the 1960s, the issue that divided blacks and whites was civil rights. In the 70s, it was affirmative action because white people felt blacks were pushing them out of jobs. Maybe in the 1980s the new frontier will be justice for all, Dunn said.
But don’t talk about what has been, Ayers said. Talk about what is now and what can be.
What is now, is a grim picture.
A 12-year resident of the Scott Housing project, Ar-volean Thomas said blacks who live there just don’t care anymore. Self-respect and pride is in short supply for those without work.
Sometimes you feel like you want to do better, but this bad economy keeps you in the projects, she said.
“People used to take pride in the Scott project and it was clean. But now they just don’t care.’
Children play along the glass-littered asphalt drives, while the unemployed mill around Thompson’s Grocery store at Northwest 75th Street and Northwest 22nd Avenue to rap.
Futile months spent searching for work end in dejected return to the streets.
Anthony Bethel, 24, was “making it until the May riots broke out. The job market tightened. Out of despair Bethel stopped looking for work two months
ago.
African Square Park on Northwest 62nd Street is a gathering spot for the jobless.
Young blacks mope around drinking, and smoking pot.
Josephine Kirkland blames the justice system for putting her out of work. Some cops killed a “brother” and nothing was done. The store where Kirkland worked as a meat cutter was burned down during the riots. She also blames the federal government for catering to the Cuban refugees.
“When they land here they get what they want,” she said. “But the black American who is born here got to go out and steal, rob, beg and borrow what he wants to get ahead. The Americans in Miami are the real refugees.
The possibility of race riots more terrible than those in May faces Miami because of the Magic City’s mixed ethnic and racial character, said Maj. Clarence Dickson, the highest ranking black officer in the Miami Police Department. The potential for violence increases while Cubans, blacks and whites jam into eastern Dade County, the 46-year-old major said.
The toughest assignment of Dickson’s life came during the strife. Dickson ordered his men into Liberty City to face the rain of sniper fire. It was their job to save the innocent people unlucky enough to stumble onto the riot.
A decade ago, blacks and whites walked hand-in-hand at anti-war and anti-almost-anything demonstra-tions, venting their frustrations against the most visible entity of the establishment – the police.
In May, structures, symbols and innocent bystanders were the victims in Miami.
During the ’60s, whites and blacks marched
together and hated the cops,” Dickson said. This time, it was not a white and black effort. This time, for a few moments, it was white against black.” The criminal justice system is to blame. It must change or another riot is just around the corner, Dickson said.
Police departments are the cleanest parts of the criminal justice system today, the policeman said. The courts, lawyers and the media hounded police in the ’60s until the cops cleaned house.
The other parts of the criminal justice system — the courts, the state attorney — go along as they please without checks,” Dickson said.
“There’s nobody beating them over the head telling them what to do.”
At least one person blames the criminal element in Liberty City, not disgust with the system. Metro Detective Les Bluman said the riots were initiated by common criminals who seized the opportunity to loot. The rest of the community joined in when they realized the police were helpless, the white detective said.
“I can remember seeing kids sucking on lollipops in a car while their mother was stealing carpet,” he said.
“There was sniper fire flying overhead. We were so short-staffed, all I could do was send her home.” The looters took what they could until police showed up.
Bluman worked with the officers found innocent in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie. He described them as “just hard-working policemen,” and never witnessed “any brutality on their part” during an arrest.
“You don’t find the police rioting because the criminals were released in court on a technicality,” he said. “And you don’t find the victims on the street cutting off ears and tongues of innocent people because they are frustrated (with the criminal justice system.
“If you have poor people out of work, living in poor housing infested with rats, roaches and jammed into a two or three-block area, it’s got to explode.”
In Dade County, a record 387 persons had been murdered as of Sept. 23. During all of last year in Dade County there were 360 homicides and 261 as of Sept. 23, 1979.
Murder and the May riots have made Miami residents paranoid.
Gun sales have more than doubled, from 2,600 in July 1979 to 5,400 in July 1980.
High crime. Unemployment. Crowded, often nonexistent housing. Drugs. Illiteracy. Latinization. White flight. Apathy. Helplessness. Fear.
Everyone sees those things as pieces of the large puzzle. And almost everyone has solutions to one or more of the problems.
But what are the means to achieve those ends?
Government aid? Private businesses? Self-help groups? Or a combination of all three?
The answers will be long in coming. But more than one person believes that in the future, Dade County’s blacks are not going to be quite as patient.
Athalie Range, Miami’s first black city commissioner, saw the signs more than 12 years ago, after the 1968 riots.
To Range, Liberty City is a Frankenstein monster created by the white community years ago. Now more than ever, whites can’t control the monster, she said.
Whites ignored black problems until they absolutely were forced to listen to black complaints.
“If whites fear for their lives and homes, outraged citizens could demand police action in the black communities,” Range said.
“I believe annihilation is a very real, real threat to Liberty City,” she said. “I don’t know what is going to happen to Miami. Everywhere, Miami is suffering from the effects of the riot. Fewer businesses are coming here, fewer people are moving here and more are moving out.
“The only reason blacks don’t leave Liberty City is because they have nowhere to go, and I certainly am depressed, because the things that can be improved are not.”
—30—
Under sniper fire, police pulled the two white brothers out of the bloodied street gutter. A month later, both were dead.
Shanreka by michael lewis
news
RETURN TO SPACE (ALLIGATOR)
RETURN TO SPACE (COLUMBIA MTV SPACE COAST)
MARIEL BOAT LIFT (Kyle Kulish Kim Kulish Barbara Hansen)
MIAMI BURNS (David Futch Albert Diaz)
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE POPE (“FUNKY NASSAU”)
K.K.K (LAKE CITY CHRISTIANS)
WOMEN INMATES (EQUAL PRISON RIGHTS)
LOOKING BACK AT HELL (SUICIDAL VET)
O’CONNELL CENTER (OF ATTENTION)
O’CONNELL CENTER (“O” DOME)
CONVENIENCE IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
IRANIAN HOSTAGES
PREACHERS (ON THE GREEN)