Mayor Anton Cermak's Ill-fated Trip to Miami

Just a few feet away from the war memorial in Miami's Bayfront Park is this marker in a patch of grass.

On February 15, 1933, President-Elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke at Bayfront Park in Miami. In the crowd was Guiseppe Zangara, an Italian-born naturalized out-of-work bricklayer with anarchist tendencies. Zangara attended the rally with the intention of killing FDR, but he lost his balance at the crucial moment and ended up shooting Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and four other people instead. Zangara was quickly arrested, and soon found guilty of assault and attempted murder. When Cermak died March 6, Zangara was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death. Evidently the legal process was quite different then, as the execution took place March 20 at Raiford.

The University of Miami's Digital Library includes scanned FBI documents relating to the investigation of the assassination attempt. In a February 16, 1933, letter it is revealed that FDR was on Vincent Astor's yacht shortly before giving his speech in Bayfront Park.

President Eisenhower over Fort Jefferson

Over New Year's weekend 1956, President Eisenhower spent 10 days in Key West recovering from his heart attack the previous September. Flying back to Washington, D.C. on the Columbine III, Eisenhower asked his pilot to make a detour to the south, to fly over Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

If you were a president who had just been reminded of your own mortality, what would be going through your mind as you inspected the former prison of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, accused of conspiring to assassinate President Lincoln?

I don't know what President Eisenhower pondered, but it didn't keep him from signing a bill nearly three years later, authorizing a marker memorializing Dr. Mudd's work during a 1869 yellow fever epidemic.

Fort Jefferson is now part of the Dry Tortugas National Park. It was originally a massive brick fort built in the 1840s. As the building sank under its own weight, and as new types of weapons made the fort's defenses obsolete, the Army halted construction. However, the fort's isolation was an asset for its role as a prison.

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Sources

"Eyes on Key West" New York Times, January 1, 1956

"President Takes Detour to See Historic Fort" New York Times, January 9, 1956

"President Approves Memorial to Dr. Mudd" New York Times, September 22, 1959

Department of Corrections Timeline

The Florida Department of Corrections includes on its official website a historical timeline covering the years 1821 to the present: "Florida Corrections: Centuries of Progress."