George Floyd protests bring back memories of Miami’s worst riot

The picture of George Floyd with a white police officer kneeling on his neck until he died on the dirty, rough pavement of a Minneapolis street, has played out over every media outlet in America, as well as in some other parts of the world. It isn’t a pretty sight.

Last week, in the aftermath of Floyd’s violent death, the protests that started out as peaceful demonstrations turned into a violent, rock-throwing, building-burning fiasco in which where looters helped themselves to the spoils.

In the old days, I was a part of the news team from The Miami Herald sent to cover the “unrests” - a nice term for riots back then. Recently, as I watched the demonstrations on television from the safety of my home, I reminisced about previous protests - local ones - that turned from peaceful to angry and did harm to people as well as property.

Aside from doing my job as a reporter, I felt compelled as a black mother of sons to try to help get the young males I came in contact with off the street during such times. Once, during the McDuffie riots in 1980, I even rode with the late Georgia Jones Ayers, and Congresswoman (then a Florida Representative) Carrie Meek with a Metro policeman in his patrol car just for that reason.

I remember Ayers yelling “Go home!” from the car window whenever we saw a gathering of young black males. As mothers of sons, Ayers, Meek and I worried about these boys from other black mothers as though they were our own. We knew the consequences if, for some reason, one or more of the boys started throwing rocks at passing cars. Their rocks could have been met with bullets from a policeman’s weapon.

That riot, on May 18, 1980, was ignited by the acquittal of the four Dade County officers who murdered Arthur McDuffie, a black businessman. The demonstrations started out peacefully as several hundred black protesters awaited the announcement of the fate of the officers at the Civic Center. Those gathered anticipated that the four officers would be charged with McDuffie’s murder. It was supposed to be a celebration of justice served. After all, the officers had so brutally beaten McDuffie that his skull was shattered. The beating happened after McDuffie crashed his motorcycle during a high-speed chase.

The good news never happened. The four officers were acquitted, and it only took a minute for the news to sink in. Then Miami erupted like a bomb. Peaceful demonstrators turned into an angry mob. It was the worst race disturbance in Miami’s history. Store windows in black neighborhoods were smashed. Looters ran away with all kinds of goods, including televisions and furniture. Some innocent drivers, who unknowingly found themselves in the path of destruction, were pulled from their cars and beaten by angry gangs. Some, however, were saved by fast-thinking, peace-loving black citizens, and were rushed away to safety. In the aftermath, 18 people died; 350 were injured, and 600 people were arrested.

I’ve been black for a long time. I have lived through the injustices that Jim Crow dumped on African Americans throughout the history of our beloved country. So while I understand the frustration and pain and hopelessness that comes with seeing too many George Floyds die at the hands of racist police officers, I will never understand the tearing up of our neighborhoods where the livelihoods are destroyed along with innocent lives.

Yet, as the protests following Floyd’s death started, I’d hoped for a more peaceful demonstration. I’d hoped that our president would speak words of hope and justice, not words that would divide us. I’d hoped that people would realize that the burning and looting would not honor Floyd’s death, and would only mar his memory and interrupt his family’s mourning.

Then, I saw another face of the demonstrators. Not all the rock throwers and looters were black. Some of those I watched running away from the busted stores were whites who seemed to want to amplify and disrupt the demonstrations. Is it true that some white supremacists and other white racist organizations were burying themselves among the demonstrators to make sure the protests weren’t peaceful? Now, that really troubles me.

It troubles me, too, that our president has yet to comfort our hurting nation. I am embarrassed for him, that he came out of the safety of his bunker just long enough to reinforce his stance as a “law and order” president. And to allow force to be used against peaceful protesters in order to clear a path for him to pose in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, holding up the Holy Bible. It looked like a photo op.

His actions angered Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. “I am outraged. The President did not pray when he came to St. John’s … nor did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now,” she told Anderson Cooper on CNN’s “AC360” show.

I am outraged, too. Still, I dream and pray for a change of heart for our president. I dream that he will become a president for all the people. Instead, I watched the president of the United States use the Holy Bible in a mocking way for the whole world to see. Optimist that I am, I waited for the president to recite a scripture from the holy book he held up. It never happened. Does he even know a Bible verse? It was then that I realized the Holy Bible was being held by unholy hands, and the man holding it probably couldn’t quote a scripture from it even if his life depended on it.