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MIAMI - A city street has been named after a black insurance salesman whose beating death sparked a riot in 1980 after four white police officers were acquitted of killing him.
Several street signs were put up Friday, proclaiming a 22-block stretch of 17th Avenue as Arthur Lee McDuffie Avenue.
McDuffie was riding his motorcycle Dec. 17, 1979, when Miami-Dade County police officers attempted to stop him. He led them on a chase. When he stopped, he was beaten into a coma with police clubs, although he was unarmed. Days later, he died.
The officers initially said his injuries came from crashing his motorcycle. Then one of the officers confessed and testified against the other four.
An all-white jury in Tampa acquitted them, sparking riots that lasted three days and two nights. Eighteen died in the mayhem.
On the street that now bears his name, people say the community is no longer the angry cauldron it was two decades ago.
"It's a calm place now," said Shirley Pitts, a 59-year-old grandmother and owner of Shirley's Boutique. "People used to be scared to come here. They're not scared anymore."