1655-1 African American/Black Boycott THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1990, The Miami Herald
DATE: Thursday, June 28, 1990 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 106 lines
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: CARL GOLDFARB Herald Staff Writer
MEMO: see end of text for BUT NO SUCH HONOR FOR MANDELA
MANDELA BACKERS, CRITICS
BRACE FOR MOMENTOUS VISIT
The diverse voices of Miami rising to meet Nelson Mandela -- the joyous
greetings and the stern reprimands -- will converge on the Miami Beach
Convention Center early this morning when Mandela is to address trade
unionists.
Black activists and members of Cuban exile groups have said they will
arrive at the convention center by 7 a.m. Miami Beach administrators expect
dozens of groups. "The KKK, we believe, is going to be there; we've heard
about the skinheads. Our intelligence at this point is all over the map, " said
Miami Beach Manager Rob Parkins.
He anticipates about 2,000 demonstrators and spectators, though the
department is ready to handle many more.
"We prepare for what we believe will be peaceful times and expect the
worst, " said Parkins. "We're going to assure everyone has the right to present
their piece in peace and dignity without disturbing the event. "
Miami Beach Police detective Tom Hoolahan said the city would have 130 to
140 officers outside the center and would try to keep the black and Cuban
demonstrators apart -- "if that's possible."
A separate rally in support of Mandela is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
today at Gwen Cherry Park, 2591 NW 71st St.
The controversy over the South African anti-apartheid leader's visit was
sparked by his comments on national television last week embracing Cuban
President Fidel Castro, Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi and Palestine
Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
As Miami careened toward Mandela's arrival the rhetoric became more
heated and the stage expanded -- as both sides said the eyes of the world were
on Miami and made a play for the larger audience.
But on the streets, the tone was not as shrill and the divisions not as
pronounced as Miamians talked about how they felt about Mandela's visit as
they went about their everyday business.
Many black residents invoked Martin Luther King Jr. , the slain civil
rights leader, as they described Mandela's stature. "He's fighting for
freedom, freedom of speech, freedom for the black man, " said Willie Gaddy, 63,
a court bailiff. "I'm glad he's coming. "
Many Cubans who criticized Mandela did so gently. "I personally cherish
any person who fights for human rights," said Miguel Villalobos, a city of
Miami employee. "The question is -- is Mr. Mandela misinformed or does he not
have direct knowledge of what happened in Cuba in the last 31 years. "
At least a dozen religious and community leaders issued statements
categorizing their views: "We separate Mr. Mandela's role as a symbol for the
struggle of freedom and equality in South Africa, from that of Mr. Mandela's
statements as an individual who supports terrorists, terrorism and
oppression, " said a statement by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
The Spanish American League Against Discrimination recognized "Nelson
Mandela as the symbol of the unending struggle against apartheid and racial
oppression in South Africa, " while saying the organization was "dismayed and
saddened by Mr. Mandela's statements in support of people like Castro."
The city of Opa-locka was the only one in Dade to issue a proclamation
welcoming Mandela.
Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, who rebuked Mandela on Monday then tried to
play peace-keeper Tuesday, decided Wednesday he could do no more.
"I'm really not commenting further, " he said. "I don't think anything we
can say from here could unite the community and it might be divisive. "
One of the few mediation efforts Wednesday was made by several Cubans and
anti-Castro activists who asked to appear on WEDR-99 JAMZ, a black-oriented
radio station, and assured black listeners that their criticism of Mandela had
nothing to do with the color of his skin.
"This is not a racial matter, " said lawyer Armando Gutierrez. "Mr.
Mandela is a confessed communist."
In the political arena the rhetoric remained generally strident.
"Miami may go down in infamy as the only city in America that denounced,
criticized, castigated and threw its 'welcome mat' in the face of Nelson
Mandela," H.T. Smith, chairman of the Miami Coalition for a Free South Africa,
wrote to Mayor Suarez.
Commissioners will offend black people across the country and risk a
national black boycott if they don't honor Mandela with a key to the city and
official proclamation, Smith wrote.
Commissioner Victor De Yurre, appearing on WAQI-Radio Mambi, a
Spanish-language station, said the media spotlight that will accompany Mandela
gives Cubans "the opportunity to carry our message about Fidel to America, to
the world."
Modesto Castaner, immediate past president of the 2506 Assault Brigade --
a group of Bay of Pigs veterans -- said most of his groups signs would be in
English for the sake of the national media.
Staff Writer Olympia Ross contributed to this report.BUT NO SUCH HONOR
FOR MANDELA
The Miami City Commission, which decided not to issue a proclamation to
Nelson Mandela, has issued these proclamations in the past year:
* Save Your Vision Month,
* North Beach Elementary School Day, selected by the U.S. Department of
Education as one of the nation's best.
* Miss Wheelchair Week.
* Clean Air Week.
* Manuel C. Diaz Day for nurseryman Diaz, who has donated thousands of
dollars worth of trees to line Dade's roads.
* For the 168th anniversary of Peru's independence.
* Make-A-Wish Day to recognize humanitarian efforts on behalf of
terminally ill children.
* Laura Diane Bradley Day for Miss Miami 1990.
* Civil Air Patrol Week.
* Friends of the City of Miami Cemetery.
* Dr. Orlando G. Silva Day for a physician who treated Nicaraguan contras
and raised money for liver transplants.
Metro-Dade, Miami Beach and Hialeah didn't give Mandela a proclamation.
Opa-locka did.
KEYWORDS: MANDELA TRIP
TAG: 9002110963
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mh90 MARTINEZ CRITICIZES 06/28/1990
THE MIAMI HERALD
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mh90 MARTINEZ WON'T WELCOME 06/28/1990
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1990, The Miami Herald
DATE: Thursday, June 28, 1990 EDITION: PLM BCH
SECTION: PLM BCH PAGE: 3B LENGTH: 52 lines
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: JOE CRANKSHAW Herald Staff Writer
DATELINE: PORT ST. LUCIE
MARTINEZ WON'T WELCOME
MANDELA TO SOUTH FLORIDA
Nelson Mandela may have been welcomed to the United States by President
Bush, but he won't get an official greeting to Florida from Gov. Bob Martinez.
The governor also was mute on the actions of Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez
and members of the Miami City Commission, who balked at issuing a resolution
honoring Mandela. "I don't get involved in local governments' activities, "
Martinez said Wednesday during a re-election campaign swing through the
Treasure Coast.
Martinez did comment on the controversy Mandela's visit to South Florida
has sparked.
"I believe Mandela misspoke when he praised Castro and Gadhafi, " Martinez
said to the media before addressing about 150 supporters at Johnny's Corner
Restaurant. "I believe he has to understand he has to stand up for freedom
everywhere. You don't praise any dictator. He praised a dictator who has made
a million people exiles in South Florida and you can't blame them for being
upset. "
Mandela has thanked Castro for Cuba's support of the African National
Congress, which is fighting apartheid in South Africa. Asked if he would
officially welcome Mandela as Florida's governor, Martinez ignored the
question.
Graham Gilletta, Martinez' aide traveling with the campaign party, said
the governor was never asked to be involved in Mandela's brief South Florida
visit today.
Martinez "was never a part of the effort to bring Mandela to Florida and
has no official reason to welcome him," Gilletta said.
Treasure Coast educators got a message from the governor during his
visit.
"I think the education budget we passed was excellent, " Martinez said.
When told St. Lucie County educators face a sizable cutback and are unhappy,
he said: "They need to learn to
put those dollars into classrooms and get control of their spending. Too much
is being spent outside classrooms."
Martinez was met by a group of children from the Thunderbird Summer Camp
of the St. Lucie County YMCA. He left the luncheon, sponsored by the Port St.
Lucie Exchange Club and the Civic Coalition of St. Lucie County, to talk with
the youngsters, who were sipping cold drinks in the restaurant.
"You have to learn to work together, " the governor told the children.
"That is what life is all about. . ."
During his speech, Martinez told the crowd he is dealing with issues such
as crime, pollution and education, and wants to do it for four more years. He
also said he wants to debate the Democratic nominee on the issues "so the
people can see who has the best solutions. "
TAG: 9002120252
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mh90 MANDELA SLAP 06/28/1990
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1990, The Miami Herald
DATE: Thursday, June 28, 1990 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 70 lines
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: CHARLES WHITED Herald Columnist
MANDELA SLAP
IS SELF-SERVING
AND INSENSITIVE
Evelyne White Mincy was nine years old in 1930, the night the Ku Klux Klan
came through Miami's Overtown, but the sight still burns in her memory.
"There were two carloads of them, wearing hoods. They were looking for a
black woman who, they'd been told, was having an affair with a white man. I
watched from our front door. My parents said, 'Be very quiet, Baby. ' "
Apartheid, Miami:
The woman escaped unharmed. But blacks who violated racial segregation in
Miami, and in much of America, were dealt with harshly. Tarring and feathering
was not uncommon. Whites who brutalized blacks received scant punishment.
Miami was Deep South. The races were rigidly separated through the 1950s:
separate schools, separate eating places. A black person rode at the back of
the bus, drank water from a fountain marked "Colored, " went to separate
theaters, could be arrested for walking in a white neighborhood after dark.
Black travelers in Florida carried toilet paper and stopped in remote
areas, to relieve themselves in the bushes. Restrooms were scarce.
It was a violation of state law for blacks and whites to marry.
Black hospital patients had separate wards. Blacks could not swim at
white beaches or pools. Lunch counters did not serve them. Singer Sammy Davis
Jr. entertained white patrons in a Miami Beach hotel but could not stay there;
he slept at the Sir John in Overtown.
This dismal Dade County history is pertinent today as South Africa's
Nelson Mandela comes to speak at Miami Beach, over protests of local Cubans
and Jews who resent his praise for Cuba's Fidel Castro, PLO leader Yasser
Arafat and Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
While one sympathizes with the Cuban response, so deeply have exiles
suffered at Castro's hands, their outrage takes a different dimension in light
of what Mandela symbolizes to the black world. In that light, the posturings
of such elected leaders as Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, who let himself be used
as spokesman for right-wing militants, becomes shallow and self- serving.
In political expediency, it ignored the depths of black feelings as well.
For to masses of black America, Nelson Mandela goes to the very essence
of things.
I asked Johnnie McMillian, 48, a Miami native, Dade schools administrator
and president of the Miami-Dade NAACP -- herself arrested years ago as a
college civil rights protester in North Carolina -- what Mandela's presence
means to her.
"It is so deep, so emotional, that it's all I can do to fight back the
tears, " she said. "To look at him reminds me of how I must refocus into who I
am, my history and roots. My own struggles in the 1960s are minuscule compared
to his 27 years in jail. "
The effort, she adds, is far from over, as blacks still fight for equal
access to employment under a 1990 civil rights bill designed to correct an
ongoing dilemma: "We are still the last hired and the first fired."
"It's still not easy to be black in America," a middle-age black woman
journalist tells you. "Small wonder people are bitter. "
In the days of American apartheid, which persisted for hundreds of years,
it was the everyday indignities that galled: "Colored Day" at the circus in
Miami, whites-only elevators.
Evelyne White Mincy grew up to teach for 23 years at Booker T. Washington
High and, in 1966, became the first black counselor at Miami Senior High. Now
retired, she remembers shopping in downtown Miami, where a black woman could
not try on a dress or shoes. "To try on a hat, you first had to put on a
little skullcap, so you wouldn't get it dirty. White customers didn't have to
do that."
What does Nelson Mandela mean to her?
"I see him as a man of great strength, " Mincy says. "He stands for
courage and commitment.
"As a black person, I understand his beliefs.
"I have lived it. "
TAG: 9002110945
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mh90 BLACKS REJECT SUAREZ'S 06/27/1990
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1990, The Miami Herald
DATE: Wednesday, June 27, 1990 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 94 lines
ILLUSTRATION: photo: Johnnie McMILLIAM
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: CARL GOLDFARB Herald Staff Writer
BLACKS REJECT SUAREZ'S
OLIVE BRANCH ON MANDELA
The day after rebuking Nelson Mandela, Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez
moderated his tone, but black leaders Tuesday said the mayor's actions were
too little, too late.
Suarez was the lone Hispanic official to attend a meeting called by Metro
Commissioner Barbara Carey in support of Mandela, but he received a chilly
welcome from some.
"I think it would have been a good idea if he didn't show up," said the
Rev. Victor Curry, who accused the .mayor of trying to straddle the black-Cuban
divide over Mandela's visit.
So it went Tuesday, the day before Mandela is to arrive in Miami, as
efforts to ease racial tensions and find common ground fell short in three
meetings held by different segments of the black community.
Black leaders demanded a worthy welcome for Mandela, while Cuban exile
groups announced plans to protest outside the Miami Beach Convention Center
where Mandela is to speak Thursday morning.
The controversy -- the latest rift between Miami's black and Cuban
communities -- continued to dominate Spanish-language and black-oriented radio
stations.
It also took center stage at a lunchtime meeting by black activists at
Miami City Hall, an evening press conference called by Metro Commissioner
Barbara Carey and an NAACP meeting where members vowed to marshal the black
vote against the politicians they say have insulted Mandela.
"To reject Mandela is to reject us, " said Johnnie McMillian, president of
the Miami-Dade NAACP chapter. "He is our brother. If they say he's not
welcome, they're saying we're not welcome, too."
The 30 NAACP members spurned Suarez's peace-keeping effort -- a statement
that praised Mandela, but emphasized the need to criticize the human rights
abuses under Fidel Castro, Libyan president Moammar Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat,
head of the Palestine Liberation Organization -- three leaders Mandela has
embraced. The mayor, who was not at the meeting, had hoped to have a wide
range of community leaders sign the statement.
"Insincere, " said Roland Rolle of Suarez's peace offering. "It's
hypocrisy."
Willie Sims, of the county's Community Relations Board, said Suarez's
efforts to draft a statement acceptable to black, Jewish and Hispanic leaders
were doomed by his intemperate comments Monday.
"He should have thought about that before opening his big mouth, " said
Sims. "He proved what an idiot he is."
Tuesday's events began with a noon press conference at Miami City Hall
when half a dozen black activists issued Miami commissioners an ultimatum:
Proclaim Thursday Nelson Mandela Day or face a backlash from black voters.
They called commissioners ' treatment of Mandela a "litmus test" of their
respect for the black community.
Commissioners have balked at issuing a resolution honoring Mandela.
The three Cubans on the commission -- Suarez and commissioners Victor De Yurre
and Miriam Alonso -- all oppose the idea because of Mandela's support for
Castro.
Dawkins, the only black member of the commission, drew sharp criticism
Tuesday from several black leaders who said he should be doing more to prod
his colleagues into action.
Former City Commissioner Athalie Range, the first black woman on the
Miami commission, said Dawkins' hands should not be tied by his colleagues'
reluctance.
"If I were in his place, I'd at least give a proclamation to Mr. Mandela,
signing it alone, independent of my fellow commissioners, " she said.
"His silence is almost criminal, " said Billy Hardemon of People United
for Justice. "This is a litmus test in my opinion. They're all political
animals and the majority of voters in Miami are Cuban. "
Dawkins did not return repeated telephone calls to his office Tuesday.
Suarez was criticized by black leaders for signing a statement Monday,
which read in part: "We, Cuban Americans, find it beyond reasonable
comprehension that Mr. Nelson Mandela, a victim of oppression by his own
government, not only fails to condemn the Cuban government for its human
rights violations, but rather praises virtues of the tyrannical Castro
regime. "
Suarez late Tuesday called a Miami Herald story and headline saying he
had "denounced" Mandela a "twisting of his statement. "
At her press conference, Carey read another statement -- similar to the
one read at the NAACP meeting -- which Suarez said he supports.
Suarez said Mandela "is welcome in Miami as so demonstrated by my
presence here today. " But the mayor said he's not prepared to issue a
proclamation officially welcoming Mandela because of his stand on Castro.
Afterward, Curry said Suarez needed to choose on this issue between
the black and Cuban communities and not try to sit on the fence.
"We need some officials who have convictions, " said Curry. "You have to
take a stand. You have to be courageous. You have to be a man like Mandela's a
man. "
Members of the black and Cuban groups plan to hold rallies Thursday.
•
Black groups are going to rally in Gwen Cherry Park and also at the convention
center to honor Mandela. Exile groups announced plans Tuesday to picket
Mandela's appearance in Miami Beach on Thursday.
Herald staff writer David Hancock contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: MI BLACK DISPUTE MANDELA TRIP SUAREZ
TAG: 9002110625
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