Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The main (downtown) branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library has an extensive Florida
collection that constitutes one of the best repositories of state history anywhere. The col-
lection includes some 17,000 photos by Gleason Romer, who snapped South Florida as a
photojournalist and amateur shooter from 1925 to the 1950s.
Cuba Comes Over
During the 1950s progress seemed inexorable; in 1954 Leroy Collins became the first
Southern governor to publicly declare racial segregation 'morally wrong,' while an entire
'Space Coast' was created around Cape Canaveral (between Daytona and Miami on the
east coast) to support the development of the National Aeronautics & Space Administra-
tion (NASA).
Then, in 1959, Fidel Castro marched onto the 20th-century stage and forever changed
the destiny of Cuba and Miami.
As communists swept into Havana, huge portions of the upper and middle classes of
Cuba fled north and established a fiercely anti-Castro Cuban community, now 50 years old
and, in some ways, as angry as ever about the dictator to the south. At the time, counter-re-
volutionary politics were discussed, and a group of exiles formed the 2506th Brigade,
sanctioned by the US government, which provided weapons and Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) training for the purpose of launching a US attack on Cuba.
The resulting badly executed attack is remembered today as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The
first wave of counter-revolutionaries, left on the beach without reinforcements or supplies,
were all captured or killed. All prisoners were released by Cuba about three months later.
In the meantime, Castro attracted Soviet missiles to his country, but couldn't keep his
people. In 1965 alone some 100,000 Cubans hopped the 'freedom flight' from Havana to
Miami.
