Abstract
This thesis examines the creation of South Florida's tri-ethnic racial hierarchy during the postwar period, from 1945-1990. This racial hierarchy, coupled with discriminatory housing practices and police violence, created the necessary conditions for Dade County's first deadly uprising in 1968. Following the acquittal of several officers charged in the killing of an unarmed black businessman, a second uprising in 1980 culminated in three days and three nights of violent street warfare between law enforcement and black residents in Miami's northwest Liberty City neighborhood. The presence of state sanctioned violence at the hands of police in Liberty City set the stage for the city's second uprising. Further, the oftentimes murky and ambiguous racial divide that made people of color both comrades and rivals within Miami's larger power structure resulted in an Anglo-Cuban alliance by the late 1960s and early 1970s that only worsened racial tensions, especially among the city's ethnically diverse, English speaking black population. This thesis project uses a socio-historical framework to investigate how race and immigration, police brutality, and federal housing policy created a climate in which one of Miami's most vulnerable populations resorted to collective violence.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2018
Semester
Summer
Advisor
Lester, Connie
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
College
College of Arts and Humanities
Department
History
Degree Program
History; Public History
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0007173
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0007173
Language
English
Release Date
August 2019
Length of Campus-only Access
1 year
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
STARS Citation
Dossie, Porsha, "The Tragic City: Black Rebellion and the Struggle for Freedom in Miami, 1945-1990" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 6072.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/6072