Miami riots of 1980
The Miami riots of 1980 were a significant and violent response to the acquittal of four police officers involved in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie, an African American motorcycle rider. This incident occurred in the context of heightened tensions surrounding several allegations of police brutality within the Dade County area, particularly against the African American community. Following the jury's ruling, which was entirely composed of white members and perceived as unjust by many, unrest erupted on May 17, 1980.
The violence resulted in the deaths of eighteen individuals, injuries to hundreds, and approximately $80 million in property damage, affecting businesses owned by African Americans, Cubans, and native-born whites alike. The riots were marked by targeted attacks on white motorists, which distinguished this event from earlier urban riots that often resulted in unintentional casualties. The aftermath highlighted ongoing racial tensions and societal divisions, signaling that the progress made during the Civil Rights movement had not fully alleviated the underlying issues faced by marginalized communities.
The events in Miami reflected a broader national concern regarding race relations and foreshadowed future civil disturbances in other American cities. The 1980 Miami riots serve as a poignant reminder of the complex dynamics between law enforcement, race, and community relations in the United States.
Miami riots of 1980
Significance: The Miami riots of 1980 constituted one of the most violent urban disorders in the United States since the 1960s. The random killing of whites, not merely the looting of stores, was the goal of the rioters. Yet if the excesses of the rioters were terrible, the provocation that moved them to these acts was also severe.
On December 17, 1979, Arthur McDuffie, a thirty-three-year-old African American insurance agent with no criminal record, was riding along the highway on his motorcycle when several officers of the Public Safety Department of Dade County ordered him to stop. When he refused to do so, he was pursued; when captured, he was beaten severely with nightsticks and heavy flashlights. McDuffie died a few days later from the injuries he had sustained at the hands of the police. This was the last of several incidents of alleged police brutality in the county in 1979: These included the shooting death of a teenager in Hialeah; the alleged sexual abuse of a prepubescent African American girl by a white police officer; and the severe beating administered by police to a black schoolteacher, after the police had raided his house in search of illegal drugs.
The Trial and Aftermath
The state attorney for Dade County, Janet Reno, prepared a case against four Dade County police officers who had beaten McDuffie. The case was brought to trial on March 31, 1980, in the town of Tampa, on the state’s gulf coast; it was believed that the officers could not get a fair trial in Miami. Because of peremptory challenges by the defense attorney, the jury before which the case was tried was all white. The jury’s decision, handed down on Saturday afternoon, May 17, 1980, shocked Miami’s African American community: The police officers were acquitted of all charges.
In the early evening hours of May 17, the anger of the black Miamians boiled over into violence; rocks began to fly, and mobs began to attack individuals. Later that evening, after a mob attempt to set fire to the Metro Justice Building was barely repulsed, the governor of Florida, Bob Graham, ordered the National Guard to Miami; it did not arrive in full force, however, until Tuesday. It was not until May 23 that the situation was returned to normal. As a result of the riots, eighteen people died and hundreds were injured. There was eighty million dollars’ worth of property damage and 1,100 people were arrested. Many Miami businesses were burned: African American, Cuban, and native-born white business owners all suffered.
Major arteries of traffic, used by motorists of all races and ethnic backgrounds, ran through Liberty City, a black area near Miami. In the evening hours of May 17, several white motorists, presumably unaware of the verdict, drove through that neighborhood, where they encountered maddened crowds, composed mostly of young people, bent on revenge. About 250 whites were injured that night in attacks by rioters; seven whites died as a result of the injuries sustained. Of those who died, one middle-aged woman perished from severe burns when her car was set afire; a young sales clerk, a teenager, and a sixty-three-year-old Cuban refugee butcher died as the result of severe beatings. The reign of terror that night was mitigated only by the willingness of some courageous African Americans to rescue persons threatened by the mobs. The deliberate attacks on whites distinguished the Miami riot from the urban riots of the late 1960s, in which most deaths had occurred by accident.
In the days following that bloody Saturday, African Americans were riot victims as well. Some of those killed were rioters; others were law-abiding individuals mistaken for rioters by the police; still others appear to have been random shooting victims of unknown white assailants. Most Miami-area African Americans were neither rioters nor heroes nor victims; they simply waited for the disturbances to end.
For the United States, the Miami riot of 1980 ended twelve years of freedom from major urban riots. Riots broke out again in Miami’s African American ghetto in December 1982; in January 1989 (when a Hispanic police officer, William Lozano, shot and killed an African American motorcyclist); and in July 1995. The later riots, however, were not as costly in lives or property as the 1980 outburst. In May 1993, Lozano’s acquittal by a jury in Orlando was not followed by violence.
The Miami riot of 1980 was an alarm bell, warning the United States of the sharp tensions between the races that still persisted a decade and a half after the legislative victories of the Civil Rights movement, and of the combustible possibilities that existed wherever African Americans, native-born whites, and Hispanic immigrants lived side by side. The triggering of the Miami riot by an unpopular jury verdict rather than by immediate actions by the police foreshadowed the trajectory of the disastrous riot of April 29–May 1, 1992, in Los Angeles, California.
Bibliography
Anderson, Paul. Janet Reno: Doing the Right Thing. New York: Wiley, 1994. Print.
Mohl, Raymond A. “On the Edge: Blacks and Hispanics in Metropolitan Miami Since 1959.” Florida Historical Quarterly 69 (1990). Print.
Porter, Bruce, and Marvin Dunn. The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds. Lexington: Heath, 1984. Print.
Portes, Alejandro, and Alex Stepick. City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993. Print.
Skolnick, Jerome H., and James J. Fyfe. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free, 1993. Print.