Category Florida History
Thursday Bookshelf: The History of the GOP
Purchase Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans from Amazon.com Professor Lewis Gould wrote this concise history of The Republican Party right in the middle of the Bush Administration as the US was embroiled in two wars of choice in the Middle East. Gould’s work takes the party from its inception as a vehicle […]
Flashback Friday: The 1970s and the Askew legacy on Florida Democrats
As we’ve said time and again on this website the 1970s were sort of an era of enchanted enlightenment in Florida’s political system. Reubin Askew who passed on yesterday was not only Florida’s greatest modern Governor, he was arguably the greatest ever from the southern United States and perhaps the best 20th Century Governor anywhere […]
Flashback Friday: The Cross Florida Barge Canal
A subject we’ve discussed a little bit in the past but never on its own, the Cross Florida Barge Canal and the movement to stop it are among the biggest environmental issues in the history of a state that is marked by huge environmental issues. Promoters of the canal sought to bisect Florida from Fernandina to Cedar […]
Flashback Friday: Florida Delegation and Civil Rights in the 1960s
Let’s focus today on the two items of momentous congressional legislation pushed in the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson and passed over the objection over the vast majority of the Florida Delegation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 received zero votes from members from the Deep South and very few from the peripheral south. The […]
Thursday Bookshelf – The New Deal and the birth of the modern liberal Democratic Party
Happy Days Are Here Again: The 1932 Democratic Convention, the Emergence of FDR–and How America Was Changed Forever and American Experience: FDR Being a Democrat today inevitably leads back to the New Deal and how the party structure in the United States essentially changed at that point in time. The definitive event was the 1932 Democratic National […]
National Historical Register by Florida County – Where does your county rank?
The above map (from Wikipedia commons) shows the distribution of officially designated National Historical sites by Florida county. Not surprisingly, Miami-Dade which has been home to Florida’s most metropolitan city for a hundred years has by far the most with 172. However, somewhat surprisingly Volusia County has the second most designated sites with 101 and […]
Flashback Friday: The Beatles meet Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) on Miami Beach
This week, fifty years ago the Fab Four met Muhammad Ali on Miami Beach days before his famous world title fight with Sonny Liston. Here is a full article from the Beatles Bible on the meeting.
Thursday Bookshelf: Claude Pepper, George Smathers, Ed Ball and the 1950 US Senate Democratic Primary
Review of Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary (Florida Government and Politics) and Claude Pepper and Ed Ball: Politics, Purpose, and Power (Florida History and Culture) While most modern historians and political activists would point to November 7, 2000 as the most significant election in Florida’s history as far […]
Flashback Friday: James Bond and Florida
This month marks the 50th Anniversary of the filming of large portions of the third 007 movie, Goldfinger in Miami. While much of the opening of the film featuring Sean Connery as Bond takes place at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, many of the scenes later in the movie that were based in Kentucky were […]
February 10th: Anniversary of Florida being ceded by the Spanish to the British
The Seven Years War/French and Indian War ended formally on this day in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris. With this treaty Florida changed hands from the Spanish to the French. The Seven Years War was the first truly world war which had battles in Europe, the Middle East and India as well as North […]
The Florida Squeeze 