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"Times were hard before and they're going to get harder. The man downtown is still going to sit behind his desk and make his money. He's gonna get paid and the ghetto still gonna be the ghetto."
"IT JUST BROKE MY HEART"
Alma Parks is a handsome woman of 40 who is a good advertisement for her beauty parlor. Early Sunday morning one of her customers called her at home to tell her that her shop had been ransacked by looters.
"It just broke my heart," says Parks. "I saved my money for three years to have my own business and work for myself." She rushed down to the shop to check on the damage. "I was really worried about the big hair dryer — that's the most expensive thing I've got." That was saved, but the business is in limbo because there are few buildings left in the area to house it.
Fortunately for Parks, her husband, who is a Government employee, can support both of them. "I'll be all right," she says, "but my partner is the head of her household. You can't help from being angry. The looting didn't solve anything. I believe all of this didn't come just from McDuffie. It's just something that set off the anger that's been here a long time. It's a shame, just a shame."
"YOU GUYS HAD YOUR SHOT"
Marvin Dunn, 39, has achieved success by any standard. He has a Ph.D. in psychology, a comfortable home in Coconut Grove, a good job as a community psychologist, and he is running for a seat in the Florida state legislature. He was at home when he heard about trouble in Liberty City. "Ten minutes after I got there," he says, "I saw my first dead person. He was white. I saw other people lying in the street. One had his ear cut off, his tongue cut out and a rose stuck down his throat. I have kids, and I hope none of them ever have to see something like that in their lifetime."
He says that there is a big difference between Miami's latest disturbance and the riots of the '60s. "White people who got hurt or killed in the riots in '68 got hurt or killed because of a stray bullet or an individual confrontation. In this riot, black people who participated did so with the express desire to kill white people because of the outrageous insult of the McDuffie case."
Also unlike 1968, there were no black leaders who could calm down the violence. Says Dunn: "Black people said to me out there Saturday night: 'You guys had your shot at this. We waited, let the system take its course. Now if you guys would step out of the way, we'll take care of it.' The tragedy of it is they're right."