What was Miami like 50 years ago? See protests, a crash, what the famous looked like then
It’s 1972 in South Florida.
The Miami Dolphins are on their way to an undefeated season. Miami Beach is hosting both the Democratic and Republican national political conventions. An Eastern AIrlines jet about to land in Miami from New York crashes into the Everglades.
But that’s not all.
Chris Evert of Fort Lauderdale has just become a professional tennis player. And, of course, we get a hurricane.
Let’s take a look through the archives to see what was happening in Miami, and the rest of the country, 50 years ago. The following article was originally published in the Miami Herald in 1999, part of a series that looked back at the century in South Florida as we approached a new one:
What’s happening?
The Dolphins achieve their fabled Perfect Season! But beyond that, two years into the 1970s, America still seems to be living the tumultuous ‘60s decade. The war heats up, with North Vietnamese offensives, U.S. bombing campaigns. Anti-war hippies, yippies and zippies vow to disrupt the Democratic and Republican national conventions, held in Miami Beach, and are restrained by a new national hero, Police Chief Rocky Pomerance. Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam, earning the enmity of U.S. soldiers fighting in the south. A “third-rate burglary” hits Washington’s Watergate complex, but its grave, historical portent is not immediately clear.
Miami Dolphins
The Perfect Season! The Dolphins go 14-0 through the regular season and win all three postseason games, to become the first team in NFL history to go unbeaten and untied. Early in the season, young quarterback Bob Griese suffers a broken ankle, and veteran Earl Morrall takes over the team, with Griese returning in the playoffs. Kicker Garo Yepremian kicks his longest field goal ever, 54 yards, against Buffalo. Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris rush for more than 1,000 yards each. Miami caps its Perfect Season in Los Angeles, with a January 1973 Super Bowl VII win over Washington.
Miami Beach political conventions
Call it Woodstock South: Both Republican and Democratic parties hold their national conventions in Miami Beach, luring thousands of delegates and tens of thousands of demonstrators - revolution-seeking Yippies, pot-smoking, skinny-dipping Zippies, the mule train-traveling Poor People’s Party and the jack-booted American Nazis. Many plan to disrupt events by goading police into a repeat of the “police riot” at the Chicago convention of 1968. Instead, they meet Rocky Pomerance, 275-pound police chief in sport shirt and slacks, who becomes a national hero by making friends with the zany crowd with his trademark blend of firmness and conciliation. The 10,000-person naked march down Collins Avenue planned by protest leaders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman never happens. But Miami Beach Vice Mayor Harold Rosen does take a pie in the face from a hippie.
Across South Florida
▪ Dade prosecutor Jack Orr deals perennial Miami and Metro Mayor Steve Clark the only defeat of his political career, winning the county mayor’s job; but Orr will die in office two years later, and Clark will return.
▪ Republican Paula Hawkins wins in an upset victory over Gerald Lewis, becoming the first woman ever elected to the Florida Public Service Commission.
▪ Dianne Dove, 19, is named to the Orange Bowl court, becoming the first black princess in the festival’s 39 years.
▪ Teenager Chris Evert of Fort Lauderdale turns tennis pro.
▪ The Tiger Bay political club, a potent force in local politics, votes 128-108 to extend membership to women.
▪ Hurricane Agnes hits Florida, but reserves its strongest punch for the Eastern Seaboard, even Central Pennsylvania, killing 134, including 12 in Florida and Cuba.
▪ In December, an Eastern Airlines plane crashed into the Everglades, killing 101 people. A flight attendant rallied the 75 survivors by singing Christmas carols until help arrived.
Miami places and people
.JPG)
Across the country
In February, President Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to visit China, ending decades of official hostility, greeting Premier Zhou Enlai, creating new links to counterbalance the world influence of China’s enemy, the Soviet Union. The American public applauds. Two months later, Nixon becomes the first president to visit the Soviet Union, signing a weapons treaty with Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, marking a break in the Cold War. More applause.
In June, night security guard Frank Willis finds two doors taped open at the Watergate hotel-office complex in Washington. Police nab five men with electronic surveillance equipment. Four of them, Bernard Barker, Rolando Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez and Frank Sturgis, are anti-Castro activists; the fifth, James McCord, is a security officer for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Next morning, Nixon’s campaign manager, John Mitchell, says the burglars were not “operating on our behalf.”
Most newspapers lose interest in the story. But Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein keep probing. By October they report that the FBI believes Watergate is part of a massive campaign of political spying and campaign sabotage. The White House dismisses their story as “character assassination.”
At their national conventions in Miami Beach, the Democrats nominate Sen. George McGovern and Sen. Tom Eagleton; the Republicans choose Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. In November, McGovern loses 49 states to the Nixon landslide.
The opening of the first Cuban Film Festival in New York City is upstaged by anti-Castro youths who release white mice, sending the audience screaming, during the screening of Humberto Solas’ Lucia. The mice were followed by stink bombs, and several fights break out.
Drifter Arthur Bremer tries to assassinate Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Wallace survives, with multiple bullet injuries, and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and in chronic pain. Bremer pleads insanity, but is convicted and given a life sentence.
Angela Davis is acquitted on all charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, stemming from a 1970 courthouse shooting.
The Vietnam War
War heats up in Vietnam. North Vietnam launches a massive offensive into South Vietnam. The U.S. blockades and bombs Hanoi and Haiphong. Henry Kissinger engages in secret, then open, negotiations with the North Vietnamese. But talks break down, and the U.S. increases its bombing efforts.
Actress/activist Jane Fonda visits Hanoi, dons a helmet and poses for photos sitting in the gunner’s seat of a North Vietnamese antiaircraft weapon. And she makes a radio broadcast scolding U.S. soldiers in the south: “I implore you, I beg you to reconsider what you are doing.” She’s dubbed “Hanoi Jane” by many back home, and the furor won’t die entirely, even after 1988, when, with Barbara Walters on ABC’s 20-20, she apologizes to U.S. Viet vets: “I know the power of images. To have put myself in the situation like that was a thoughtless and cruel thing to have done.”
The photo seen ‘round the world shocks America’s conscience: Terrified, sobbing, 9-year-old Vietnamese girl Pham Thi Kim Phuc running naked, her clothing burned away by a U.S. napalm air strike that hit her school. The image wins Associated Press photog Nick Ut the Pulitzer Prize. Phuc undergoes 17 operations, later moves to Toronto, helps set up the Kim Foundation to help children. Decades later she will say: “I really think this picture stopped the war and changed the war.”
Across the world
At the Summer Olympics in Munich, 11 Israeli athletes are killed in a hostage-taking by Arab terrorists of the Black September movement and a subsequent rescue attempt by German police. Israel refuses the terrorists’ demand to release 200 jailed Palestinian guerrillas. The tragedy overshadows U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz’s historic feat of winning seven gold medals.
A disturbed man attacks Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome, severing Mary’s left arm and damaging her face. SPORTS
Major League Baseball suffers its first general strike since 1900, as players demand a bigger pension fund.
Celebrity weddings
Carly Simon and James Taylor wed.
Deaths
Harry Truman, former U.S. president.
Duke of Windsor, British royal family.
Maurice Chevalier, actor.
J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director.
Dan Blocker, actor.
Charles Atlas, muscleman.
Roberto Clemente, baseball player.
Jackie Robinson, baseball player.
Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer.
Cristobal Balenciaga, couturier.
Ezra Pound, author.
Walter Winchell, newscaster.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., politician.
At the movies
The Godfather, with Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and James Caan.
Cabaret, with Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey and Michael York.
Deliverance, with Burt Reynolds, John Voight, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty.
Last Tango in Paris, with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider.
The Poseidon Adventure, with Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Stella Stevens.
On TV
The Bob Newhart Show
M*A*S*H
Sanford and Son
The Waltons
The Streets of San Francisco
Products
Snapple Fruit Juices are introduced.
McDonald’s unveils the Egg McMuffin
Ms. magazine is launched by Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin.
