In this special episode of The Florida History podcast, released early this week due to the civil disobedience and protesting going on nationally in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we look back at Florida’s history with urban racial strife in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The 1980 Miami riots were the worst urban riots in the United States between the end of the Civil Rights era and the 1992 post-Rodney King verdict LA riots.

In the second half of the podcast we review Martin Luther King’s historic campaign in America’s oldest European settlement, St Augustine and how it influenced Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.