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Rendezvous With Danger
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Published: February 3, 2008
Seventy-five years ago this month in Miami, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was nearly assassinated.
We can only guess what the future might have wrought with no FDR. What if ...?
Nominated to run for president by the Democratic Party in 1932, Roosevelt had pledged to Americans a New Deal. By February 1933, a quarter of American workers were unemployed. In Florida, steel skeletons, symbols of the land boom, were rusted. The fortunes of John Ringling, David P. Davis and Carl Fisher had been dashed on the rocks of the state land bust and national Depression.
Billboards appeared in many Florida cities announcing: "Warning: Do Not Come Here!" Police escorted transients to the nearest county and state lines in "hobo expresses."
The president-elect arrived in Miami en route to a Caribbean vacation. He planned to board a yacht owned by his millionaire friend Vincent Astor.
Ever the politician, Roosevelt had promised Miami officials that he would make a public appearance at Bayfront Park. A crowd of 20,000 awaited. Hoisting himself up from the back seat of a green Buick convertible, Roosevelt addressed the crowd for five minutes.
Among the guests was the popular Czech-American mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak.
Suddenly, a series of shots brushed history.
A 5-foot, 100-pound unemployed bricklayer, already resentful of the rich, had been radicalized by the dire straits of the Depression.
Born in the Calabria region of Italy, Giuseppe Zangara had immigrated to the United States in 1923. He had already plotted to kill Italian King Victor Emmanuel II.
He arrived in Miami in early 1933 and, hearing that the president-elect would appear at Bayfront Park on Feb. 15, planned to inspire a revolution by assassinating the man.
After unsuccessfully attempting to buy a sawed-off shotgun, he purchased a hammerless, .32-caliber, five-shot revolver. The gun and 10 bullets cost $8.
He walked to crowded Bayfront Park, worked his way close to Roosevelt's convertible, climbed atop a chair and fired five shots. The shots hit Cermak and four spectators. One bullet hit 22-year-old Russell Caldwell between his eyes. Miraculously, the man survived.
Wrestled to the ground, the assassin was hustled to the Dade County jail, where he swore, "I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists."
Cermak - who told a grief-stricken Roosevelt, "I'm glad it was me instead of you" - died 19 days later of peritonitis.
A jury quickly assembled and sentenced Zangara to death.
On March 20, 1933, only 33 days after his infamous rampage, Zangara was electrocuted at Raiford State Prison.
Gary R. Mormino will speak on "The Florida Dream" at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 at the SouthShore Regional Library, 15816 Shields Way, Ruskin. Mormino directs the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and can be reached at gmor min
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