Traffic violations officer Tania Ledesma became legendary as a meter maid for South Miami police. In a 1985 profile, Herald writer Francine Barron wrote: “Walking for eight hours in Florida heat and thunderstorms, rarely taking a break, shouldering the abuse from outraged citizens who arrive at their cars an instant too late, Ledesma is intimately […]
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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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Not long ago, 45-inch singles and 12-inch LPs sporting beautiful artwork and superb liner notes were the norm. South Florida music fans would faithfully visit their favorite record stores to discover the next Pink Floyd and find rare, out-of-print treasures. South Florida still houses a few audiophile havens including Sweat Records, Yesterday and Today Records, […]
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While a Miami Beach photographer shot pictures, the girls lolled on the sand in their swimsuits, smiled, decorated the lifeguard boat, smiled, read big black headlines in the New York papers about “Bitter Cold In Storm’s Wake” and “Deep Freeze Hangs On,” smiled and acted warm. Then they confessed. Said Adrienne Bourbeau: “Not that I’m […]
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