Five miles long, the Miami River has gone from a crystal clear wild river to gritty urban sprawl. Its early settlers, the Tequestas, shared the river’s banks and pools with panthers and alligators. In the first half of the 20th century, the Miami River Rapids area was dredged and dynamited to build the Miami Canal, […]
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La Pequeña Habana ‘Little Havana” got its name from the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who fled their homeland between the late 1950s and early 1970s and settled in what originally was a lower-middle-class Southern and Jewish neighborhood. By the early 1970s, the Cubans had changed the landscape. The aroma of just-brewed cafecito was everywhere. […]
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In the annual “Mutt Derby” charity race, canines compete while their proud owners cheer them from behind the finish line. The motley pack of pups seem to scamper for only a few feet before stopping and then shooting off in different directions. The charity event was organized by local Jaycees associations around South Florida. In […]
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Downtown Miami has had its ups and downs. Crowded sidewalks and empty condos have reflected the boom-and-bust cycle of Florida real estate. From the bustling ’40s through the moribund ’70s to the vibrant downtown of today, the city’s core has bounced back over and over again, shaped by by speculators, hurricanes and exiles. Though the […]
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Miami’s first Jordan Marsh store opened downtown in 1956, complete with a swimming pool and a dock. Styling itself “The Store with the Florida Flair,” Jordan Marsh’s sales and profits grew as it opened stores throughout the state — at Sunrise Shopping Center in Fort Lauderdale in 1960, at Colonial Plaza in Orlando in 1962 […]
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Florida has a long history of moonshiners and rumrunners. But long after Prohibition ended in 1933, moonshiners continued to make illegal liquor in South Florida cities and the Everglades. Into the 1950s and ‘60s, police and revenue authorities battled the moonshiners in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and other parts of the South, seizing untaxed home brew […]
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The landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court came out in May 1954, but it wasn’t until 1959 that Miami-Dade County’s schools admitted the first group of African Americans to Orchard Villa Elementary School, which had been all white. Seven-year-old Gary Range and three other black students broke barriers […]
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Riots erupted after four white police officers were acquitted by an all-white jury in the death of Arthur McDuffie, a black Miami insurance agent.
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Over the years, from the ’60s through today, skateboarders in Miami have made impromptu ramps out of stairs, railings and Miami Marine Stadium.
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On April 22, 1970 across Florida and across the nation, hundreds of thousands of Americans took unprecedented action to “give earth a chance” on the nation’s first earth day. Throughout the area hundreds of clubs, schools, organizations and environmental groups attempted to dramatize the threat to mankind’s environment on earth. The “Dead Orange Parade” -organized by […]
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