MIAMI — They arrived 50 years ago, fleeing dictatorship and death. Along the treacherous, three-week ocean journey, the seafaring Haitian asylum seekers traded their shoes for food and water in Cuba, and were briefly jailed in the Bahamas before being asked their final destination.
“Miami,” they all said.
When their leaking, 56-foot wooden sailboat finally made landfall 40 miles north of Miami in Pompano Beach on Dec. 12, 1972, there was no family or Haitian community to welcome them, or protesters lining the shorelines demanding their freedom.
