by Sally Denton
The president-elect was blissfully uninvolved with the spiraling events on shore, basking in what he rightly sensed would be “the last holiday for many months.” He penned a letter to his mother from aboard the Nourmahal, stating that he was “getting a marvelous rest—lots of air and sun” and looking forward to returning “full of health and vigor.”
Chapter Thirteen
Magic City
Miami was a notorious trouble spot with a long-standing history of political violence and searing racism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism. The least populous of its Confederate counterparts, Florida had been controlled since Reconstruction by a Democratic machine that governed with an iron fist. (The only Republican presidential candidate to carry the state had been Herbert Hoover, who walloped Catholic Al Smith in 1928.) Nearly 40 percent of the state’s inhabitants were African Americans, who, along with the large population of poor whites, were systematically disenfranchised through poll taxes and literacy exams, along with the more manifest brutality of lynching.
A hotbed of race-based conservatism, South Florida had been hit hard by the Depression, which had slammed the area several years earlier than it had the rest of the country. Flying high during the economic prosperity of the 1920s, Miami was the epicenter of the modern real estate boom, with thousands of middle-class Americans moving into what was nicknamed “Magic City” for its supernatural growth. In a five-year period, Miami’s population had doubled. New York speculators invested in hotels and retirement communities, luring Northerners to the tropical paradise on Biscayne Bay. Creating a classic bubble, thriving commercial banks loaned easy money collateralized with inflated property values. By 1925, potential investors were already starting to steer clear of what seemed to be a shady land grab, and federal revenue agents were inspecting the “orgy of speculation.” Then, in 1926, the Category 4 “Great Miami Hurricane”—at the time, the most destructive hurricane to ever hit the United States—was dubbed “the blow that broke the boom.” By the time of the 1929 stock market crash, Miami was already on the skids.
What followed during the next four years of the Depression was a level of insolvency, unemployment, and foreclosures to rival the country’s poorest locales. There were few Jews or Hispanics in Miami; “Gentiles Only” signs were ubiquitous at the resort city’s many hotels, and the large black population was relegated to second-class citizenry. The Ku Klux Klan—with thirty thousand members throughout Florida—was a visible and powerful presence in Miami and openly colluded with local police against Catholics, immigrants, and labor leaders, and intimidated Jews and African Americans. They were especially on the lookout for “radicals”—the all-inclusive word that captured Socialists, Communists, and anarchists.
“Columns of hooded, robed Klansmen marched for blocks during parades, funerals and other public displays in the city,” wrote a former Florida prosecutor. In the winter of 1933, the Klan was very much in evidence in Miami, with local and state government officials and prominent figures in the community among its members.
It was into this atmosphere of xenophobia and hatred, fear and want, that the gleaming Nourmahal and its happy-go-lucky passengers glided gracefully into Biscayne Bay on the evening of February 15. Roosevelt had initially intended to disembark from the yacht and travel immediately by train to New York to prepare for his swearing-in on March 4. But his grand reception in Jacksonville two weeks earlier, where thousands of well-wishers had turned out to see him, gave Miami’s boosters an idea for a “welcome home” celebration in their benighted city.
While the Nourmahal had been idly skirting the coastline, Robert H. Gore, the publisher of the Fort Lauderdale Daily News, was promoting a massive rally. Gore conceived of the plan with the goal of raising the morale of a dejected populace while also providing local political leaders and influential Miami businessmen an opportunity to meet and greet the president-elect. He had contacted the ship by radio and proposed the event, which Roosevelt embraced. Louis Howe had insisted that Moley’s negotiations with prospective cabinet appointees were too delicate to be set forth in a letter to Roosevelt, transmitted by radio to the ship, or delivered by an intermediary. The rally would provide Moley with the opportunity to meet Roosevelt in Miami, report his findings personally, and accompany him on the train back to New York, and Roosevelt could simultaneously use the event to gin up support for his new administration.
Gore and his cohorts lost no time in planning the historic event—an official visit by a U.S. president-elect. The local newspapers promoted the upcoming rally, explicitly detailing plans for the presidential motorcade route and a parade with several bands, honor guards, and drum and bugle corps, culminating with Roosevelt’s speech from the bandstand at Bayfront Park. Roosevelt would ride in an open car from the pier to the park, snaking through streets lined with people, to the amphitheater, where he would make a few remarks and then proceed several blocks west to the train station for his departure. A parade would follow him to the station, and from the platform of his railway car he would wave to the crowd as his train pulled away.
Upon learning of the celebration, several local and national notables decided to attend. Anton Cermak, Chicago’s mayor and the Democratic Party boss of Illinois, who was hoping to mend fences with Roosevelt after opposing his nomination, owned a vacation home in Miami Beach. He decided to travel to Miami on a “begging expedition” for patronage for friends and financial aid for his city, which owed its teachers twenty million dollars in back pay, according to Alex Gottfried, author of Boss Cermak of Chicago. Along with national political figures and presidential advisers, according to the newspapers, mayors and judges from nearby communities and the governor of Florida would also appear.
As the yacht docked at seven P.M., the men on board were relishing a lavish farewell dinner. Roosevelt’s vacation with what his wife, Eleanor, called “those people” was apparently beneficial. He looked tan, fit, and well rested. “I didn’t even open the briefcase,” he boasted to the newsmen who rushed on board to interview him, hoping to glean the identities of the incoming cabinet. “We fished and swam … We went to a different place each day. Usually we fished in the morning and came back to the yacht for lunch. One day we had an all-day trip to the middle bight of Andros Island after bone-fish. The only difficulty is that you can’t talk and fish for bone-fish. It’s silent fishing and that put an awful crimp in it.” He refused to discuss presidential business—doggedly speaking only of the laid-back days at sea filled with swimming and fishing and more swimming and fishing—and the frustrated reporters left him alone with Moley.
Moley, by now his chief economic adviser, quickly summarized the confidential cabinet negotiations, and the group left the yacht for three automobiles that were lined up on the pier. They were running ten minutes late for the nine P.M. gathering, and thousands had congregated in the streets, at the park, and at the train station to see him. Roosevelt, wearing a gray suit selected by his appointments secretary, Marvin H. McIntyre, ten-pound leg braces, and no hat, was helped down the gangplank and into the backseat of the lead car—a green Buick convertible. Seated next to him was his official host, Miami mayor Redmond Gautier. McIntyre, Augustus “Gus” Gennerich, his personal bodyguard and aide, and Robert Clark, a Secret Service agent, got into the front seat. Fitzhugh Lee, a Miami policeman, drove the convertible.
The second automobile, also with its top down, carried five more Secret Service operatives. In the third convertible were Moley, Vincent Astor, Kermit Roosevelt, and William Rhinelander Stewart.
Ever since the assassination by an anarchist of President William McKinley in 1901, the Secret Service—a division of the U.S. Treasury—had become the full-time security detail for American presidents. Traditionally, the Secret Service relied heavily on assistance from local law enforcement officers, and Miami was no exception. Close to two hundred police officers had been pooled from nearby communities—one hundred patrolled Bayfront Park, sixty were stationed along the route, and twenty motorcycle
police escorted Roosevelt’s car.
The caravan crawled through the throngs of people—the largest crowd ever assembled in Miami history. Estimated at over twenty-five thousand, the mass cheered and applauded, yelled out and thrust toward Roosevelt’s car. The police tried to maintain control, but the unexpected swarm created chaos that was exacerbated by the murky darkness. The bands were blaring, cheers filled the warm air, and red, white, and blue floodlights bathed the stage. Rows of palm trees presented a path, their fronds waving gently in the breeze. Thousands lined the roads, and the seven thousand seats in front of the brightly lit stage were filled. On the garish, ocher-colored three-story bandstand were the dignitaries, including Cermak. Several in the motorcade found the situation unnerving.
“It would be easy,” Astor said to Moley and the others in his car, “for an assassin to do his work and escape.” Night was falling, and an assassin could slip into the darkness. Astor was so edgy that he made a second remark about how risky it was to subject Roosevelt to such a crowd. Moley would later remember Astor’s comments as “one of those improbable coincidences that never seem believable after.” Moley assured him that they had passed through many such crowds before on the campaign trail when they had only one personal bodyguard and were forced to rely solely on the assistance of the local police. At least now they had the Secret Service.
Roosevelt’s vice president–elect, John Nance Garner, had recently warned him of the danger of assassination, especially in times of such national anxiety. Roosevelt had dismissed the concern. “I remember T.R. [Teddy Roosevelt] saying to me ‘The only real danger from an assassin is from one who does not care whether he loses his own life in the act or not. Most of the crazy ones can be spotted first.’ ” Naturally, Roosevelt understood that the presidency carried inherent danger. “Sono gli incerti del mestiere”—“These are the risks of the job,” King Umberto of Italy famously remarked in 1897 after escaping the knife of a would-be assassin. Indeed, it was a newspaper clipping of that attack that had inspired McKinley’s assassin.
For his part, Roosevelt was buoyed by the turnout, smiling and waving exuberantly with no apprehension. In just seventeen days, he would finally become president.
Twenty minutes after disembarking from the Nourmahal, the lead car arrived at a paved area in front of the bandstand. The crowd erupted with cheers and then became respectfully silent as Gennerich stealthily hoisted Roosevelt onto the top of the Buick’s backseat.
“We welcome him to Miami,” Mayor Gautier spoke into the microphone. “We wish him success and are promising him cooperation and support, and we bid him Godspeed. Ladies and gentlemen, the president-elect of the United States of America.”
Chapter Fourteen
I’m All Right
A scraggy man wearing casual white trousers and a long-sleeve print shirt pushed his way to the front of the crowd, shoving two women aside.
“Where do you think you’re going?” an annoyed tourist snapped at him.
H. L. Edmunds, a visitor from Ottumwa, Iowa, had been waiting for more than two hours to see Roosevelt, and he wasn’t going to let some little punk elbow his way through.
“I go right down to front.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t go down there. It’s full,” Edmunds replied.
“It no look to me like it full,” the slight, dark-skinned man said.
“There are many people sitting on the ground, ladies and children sitting on the ground, and it isn’t proper, it isn’t right for you to go and stand out and push yourself in front of someone else,” Edmunds continued.
The man, barely five feet tall, accepted Edmunds’s explanation and seemed satisfied with his current positioning. He had made his way to the second row and was now about twenty-five feet from Roosevelt. In his pocket was a five-shot, .32 caliber, pearl-handed, nickel-plated revolver that he had bought at a downtown pawnshop for eight dollars a few days earlier. Folded next to the gun was a newspaper clipping with the headline ROOSEVELT TO SPEAK BRIEFLY IN PARK HERE, a story about the McKinley assassination, and five more bullets.
Just before he began speaking, Roosevelt noticed “Tony” Cermak, the Chicago mayor, on the stage and motioned for him to come down to the car. “After the speech, Mr. President,” Cermak responded. Then, in perhaps the most trite presentation of his life, Roosevelt merrily entertained the crowd with anecdotes of his cruise, perched on the back of his car and bathed in floodlights. “I have had a very wonderful twelve days fishing in these Florida and Bahama waters. It has been a wonderful rest and we have caught a great many fish.”
He spoke for a mere two minutes—162 words—and just as he uttered his last word, a man clambered onto the back of his car, somehow eluding the Secret Service. One of “the talking picture people,” as Roosevelt later described him, the man presumptuously told him to turn around and repeat for the camera the remarks that he had just made. When Roosevelt refused, the man rudely accosted him: “But you’ve got to. We’ve come one thousand miles.”
“I’m sorry, it’s impossible,” Roosevelt responded icily, and as he glided back into his seat, he saw Cermak advancing with his arm outstretched.
It was nine thirty-five P.M. when Cermak and Roosevelt shook hands. They spoke briefly and agreed to meet in Roosevelt’s railroad car for a private conversation. Then Cermak moved to the back of the car, where he stood next to Secret Service Agent Robert Clark. A man carrying a six-foot-long welcoming telegram containing the names of 2,800 residents of Miami approached Roosevelt. Before he could receive it, five shots rang out in rapid succession.
Screams and shouts filled the air, and pandemonium ensued. Roosevelt, immobilized by his paralysis, and after some initial confusion in which he thought the “pops” were firecrackers, was eerily calm. He saw someone grab the man with the telegram, and at the same moment, his driver, Fitzhugh Lee, started the car and shifted it into drive. He turned to the back and saw blood on one of Clark’s hands. Then he saw Cermak, white-faced, doubled over, and bleeding from the chest, being held upright by Clark. “The President: get him out!” Cermak instinctively shouted. A woman next to Cermak collapsed. Gennerich leaped from the front of the car, pushed Roosevelt down onto the seat, and sat on him.
Lee gunned the car for a getaway and was moving forward when Roosevelt ordered him to stop and have Cermak loaded onto the seat next to him. The chief Secret Service agent, George Broadnax, yelled at Lee to “get him the hell out of here,” and Roosevelt ordered him once again to stop. “It was providential” that the car had moved thirty feet beyond where he had spoken, Roosevelt later said, for “it would have been difficult to … get out” since the agitated crowd was filling the empty space.
“I saw Mayor Cermak being carried. I motioned to have him put in the back of the car, which would be the first out,” Roosevelt told reporters the next day. “He was alive, but I didn’t think he was going to last.” With the decisiveness of a commander in chief, he barked out orders to the chauffeur to depart for the hospital. As the convertible finally began to pull away, escorted by the motorcycle policemen with sirens blaring, Roosevelt raised his right arm to the crowd and yelled, “I’m all right. Tell them I’m all right.”
As the car sped off, Roosevelt put his left arm around his onetime political rival and felt for a pulse. Cermak slumped forward and Roosevelt thought he was dead. Sitting on the rear mudguard of the car was Miami’s chief detective, who said, “I don’t think he is going to last.”
After they had driven another block, Cermak suddenly sat up and Roosevelt felt a pulse. “It was surprising,” Roosevelt recalled to the New York Times. “For three blocks I believed his heart had stopped. I held him all the way to the hospital and his pulse constantly improved.” He talked continually to Cermak, trying to reassure him and keep him conscious. “Tony, keep quiet—don’t move,” he said repeatedly. “It won’t hurt you if you keep quiet.” He told him that they were on the way to the hospital and that he would be fine: Cermak’s surgeons would l
ater say that Roosevelt had saved his life by preventing him from going into shock. When they arrived at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Cermak was rushed into the emergency room. An X-ray showed that a bullet had entered his right side just below the ninth rib, collapsing the right lung, clipping the diaphragm and liver, and lodging against the spine. His doctors determined that the injury was not life-threatening—listing him in “serious” rather than “critical” condition—and decided to leave the bullet embedded until he recovered from the trauma.
Meanwhile, back at the waterfront park, four others had been shot and several more had been wounded by glances and in ensuing struggles. Three policemen and two beefy Legionnaires had subdued the gunman. Astor, Moley, Kernochan, and Kermit Roosevelt were crammed in their sedan, along with a young man who had a superficial head wound, whom Astor held in his lap. But the crowd prevented them from moving forward. Once two police officers slammed the assassin onto the luggage rack, handcuffed him to the trunk, and then sat on him, the crowd dispersed to let the car leave. His clothes had been ripped off during the melee, and he had been beaten with a blackjack and almost strangled, prompting a spectator to intervene, lest the angry mob crush him to death. When they placed him on the rear of the car, he was silent. Two more cops hopped onto the running board, and Moley held one of them by the belt as the car edged through the hysterical mass of people yelling, “Kill him, kill him!” and “Lynch him!” Finally the car cleared the crowd and sped to the hospital in what seemed to Moley an interminable time period, especially since he assumed that Roosevelt had been shot. When they careened around a sharp corner, one of the officers on the running board lost his balance and flew onto the pavement. The driver stopped briefly to retrieve the uninjured man, and the vehicle—carrying at least ten people, possibly eleven—raced on to the small community hospital.