Abstract
Drawing from the coverage in the Black-owned Miami Times newspaper, this article examines the 1980 Mariel Boatlift through the eyes of the Miami Black community. Previous research has centered on the African American view that the United States government’s acceptance of Cubans and denial of the asylum claims of Haitians was a case of white vs. Black racism on an international scale. The current research explores another angle of analysis, focusing on themes in the Times that began to challenge the mutual exclusivity in Cuban/Haitian allegiance. Hearkening back to the historical prominence of both Cuba and Haiti in the African American fight for Black justice, this research finds that the Times also recognized that the federal government’s treatment of both black Cubans and Haitians highlighted its failures in the area of human rights. Moreover, the newspaper criticized the treatment of these “Black refugees coming on our shores” in the local community, where they, like native-born Blacks, were subject to discrimination, surveillance, and detention. Such scrutiny within the Times’ coverage of Mariel and the Haitian migration amplifies themes circulating among Black Americans in Miami, which linked local experiences to internationalist concerns about Black unity across the globe.