With the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing civil unrest, historians, educators and the general public once again fixated on the “long hot summers” of the 1960s. Where every year, for the latter half of the decade, America was embroiled in widespread violent protest. While this keystone era certainly provides some background for the current historical moment, it is the in-between times which offer greater context to the continuous cycle of oppression, protest and violence in American history.
On December 17, 1979, motorcyclist Arthur McDuffie led officers from the Dade County Public Safety Department on an 80-mile-an-hour chase through the streets of Miami. Eight minutes later, McDuffie, an African American insurance executive, was dead. Immediately doubt grew about how he actually died. While the officers on the scene claimed his death occurred because of an accident, the coroner’s report stated that the fatal injuries were inconsistent with a motorcycle crash. After lying in their initial statement, the officers involved began to confess their roles in McDuffie’s murder and the subsequent cover up. After the victim voluntarily surrendered, his helmet was pulled off and at least four policemen beat McDuffie with their Kel-Lite flashlights, resulting in multiple head wounds, including a 10-inch-long skull fracture. Officers who arrived later to the scene then carved the pavement with a tire iron and ran over the fallen motorcycle with their patrol cars to produce evidence of a crash that did not happen. One officer even threw McDuffie’s watch into the gutter to manufacture the force of impact.
Eleven days later State Attorney Janet Reno filed charges against four officers: Ira Diggs, Michael Watts, William Hanlon and Alex Marrero. Since 1973, these men had amassed 47 citizen complaints and 13 internal probes between them. Citing the heightened racial climate, the trial moved to Tampa where, despite the coroner’s report, eyewitness testimonies, and confessions from the police involved, an all-white, six-person jury acquitted the officers of any wrongdoing on May 17, 1980.
Furious, nearly 5,000 Black residents gathered in downtown Miami to protest yet another incident of race-based injustice. As day turned to night, people expressed their anger and disappointment through acts of property violence, targeting white businesses and the Dade County Department of Public Safety headquarters. Although mainstream leaders and organizations, like Jesse Jackson and the NAACP, pleaded for calm, the violence did not end until Governor Bob Graham called out the Florida National Guard.
