- Hello, everyone.

I'm Crosby Kemper, the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and welcome Divisions of America.

All stories, all people, all places.

This episode, we're in Miami, Florida, to explore the building known as the Ellis Island of the South, Freedom Tower in the campus of Miami Dade College.

"Visions of America" is coming up next.

(gentle music) You may have never heard of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, but we are the largest federal cultural agency in the country.

We believe in the impact of libraries and museums to both preserve our cultural heritage and keep the history of every community in our country alive.

These are institutions where people come together for fun, learning, delight and enlightenment.

In a time where it feels like there is so much that divides us, an emphasis on what connects, unites and inspires us is more important than ever.

Now, on the doorstep of the 250th anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence, there is no better way to commemorate, contemplate, investigate and celebrate this milestone, and by shining a light on some of the lesser-known places and spaces that tell how America became the diverse tapestry of harrowing passages and lifelong perseverance that it is today.

Today I'm standing on the campus of Miami Dade College outside of Freedom Tower.

While this may just be another hallmark of the Miami skyline for some, for others, it will always be the symbol of their own original vision of America.

While the history of the building goes all the way back almost a century to 1925, today it is an icon of Cuban American history and celebrated for its role in welcoming Cuban exiles to Florida in the wake of that country's 1959 revolution.

The first guest I'm meeting with here is the President of Miami Dade College, Madeline Pumariega, to get a tour of this site and to begin to understand why this structure is so important to Miami and the brave refugees who settled here.

- Madeline.

- President, it's so nice to meet you, welcome.

- So great to meet you.

- Welcome to Miami, to the Freedom Tower, and especially to Miami Dade College.

- Well, it's great to be here on the campus of Miami Dade College with the president of the college and here in this magnificent building, 1925 building, Freedom Tower.

Can you tell me what makes it so special?

- So many things about the Freedom Tower make it special.

First, it's location.

It's sitting in the heart of downtown Miami and the heart of the city of Miami, just a block away from the Bay and probably just another block from everything that's happening in this metropolis that we call Miami.

I think the second part of it is what it stands for for this community.

The Freedom Tower is a beacon of hope and opportunity for all of Miami and really for all of Florida and I would say the country.

So many see this tower called the Freedom Tower as a way to access the American dream.

- So 650,000 Cubans had their first glimpse of America as they came to Freedom Tower to achieve official refugee status in the United States.

That's an extraordinary number.

And Miami, of course, is significantly a Cuban American city.

You're a Cuban American.

- I sure am.

My parents came through the Freedom Tower when they arrived from Cuba in the sixties.

They were processed here in what we call the Refugio and it's where the Cuban refugees came.

After that ended, it really was closed for many, many years.

But the Jorge Mas Canosa, an incredible leader and pillar of this community, bought the Freedom Tower.

And so, in 2005, it was entrusted to Miami Dade College to then be the steward of the Freedom Tower.

- And you've made this into a cultural center for the college and it's a pretty spectacular building.

- [Madeline] I think you've said it, it's the architecture.

If you see the detail on the ceilings, you see the archway, there's this warmth to the tower.

But I think most of all, when visitors come in from this beautiful oversized doorway, it's stunning.

No one expects it to look the way that it does inside.

And one of the things that the Moss family did was to make sure that they restored it to the original with all of the original finishes.

- It's in beautiful condition.

Would you walk up the stairs with me where you talk a little bit about the building and what happens here and what you're going to do with it?

(bright music) Is this where the refugees came?

Is this where the CRA, the Cuban Refugee Assistance actually happened?

- This is it.

They came up the steps just like we came up and this room was divided into areas, one where you register, where you would see a nurse, where you would also get the additional benefits.

And oftentimes, it's where you were going next.

Not everyone stayed in Miami.

Many of the refugees went to different places throughout the country where they might have had family or opportunities for employment.

- [Crosby] The grandeur is great and this mural is really spectacular, Ponce de Leon and a Native American.

- [Madeline] Well, it embodies, right?

I think what today still rings true, that we are one world united.

And here in this place, in the Freedom Tower, we're united by hope and by opportunity.

And if you think about the inspiration, both were united by that same of discovery, of hope of a new land and what opportunities bring by exploring into new areas and new horizons.

- [Crosby] And your ultimate goal, once you've done the renovation if I understand it, is to create a special experience in this space.

- Yes, so one of the things we've really dreamed of and if you think about the Moss family and then Pedro Martin and his family, the Martin family, that then were the stewards of the Freedom Tower.

After Jorge Moscanos, it went to Pedro Martin and then the Martin family in 2005 gave it to the college to be the steward.

It was always a vision that you could capture the experience and that is exactly what we're doing.

We've spoken to over 250 community leaders, many who've come through the doors, either they did themselves or their family, and really capturing the feeling.

And that will be displayed in its best form of art and exhibitions where we hope that when you come through and you're maybe a kindergartner coming through or a high schooler coming in, that you get that feeling.

Or you've just recently arrived, you walk in and you get the entire total immersion and experience of the Cuban exile movement, but also the movement of freedom and hope and opportunity.

(gentle music) - We can certainly understand the importance of this building by exploring it, but there's no better way to really understand the emotional symbolism of Freedom Tower than to talk to someone who's experienced it firsthand at their entry point to a new life.

Ada Ferrer is the professor of history and Latin American studies at New York University.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book, "Cuba: An American History," and was only a year old when she migrated to this country with her mother from Havana in 1963.

When she joined me to talk about the significance of this place to her story, it was the first time she had been back to this spot in 60 years.

Ada, you were a very small child a few years after the Cuban Revolution when your father left to go to New Jersey.

What was that like?

Why did your mother stay behind with you?

- Well, my father left in 1962 in April.

I was born two months actually after he left.

So I was born in June of '62 and he just had the opportunity to leave.

He had decided a year earlier that he wanted to move to the US.

The opportunity came up.

The assumption was always, as it proved to be, that he would then get my mother and me to join him.

And we did a year later in April of '63.

So I left Cuba when I was 10 months old.

- So Cuba was always a presence in your life and in Miami, to some extent, also a part of your life.

- Yes, yeah.

So I say that Cuba was an absent presence and a present absence.

That growing up, I wrote letters to my relatives in Cuba every Saturday.

My mother made me do that.

She wrote all the time, there were phone calls.

We had drawers in my bedroom that were for things to send to Cuba.

So Cuba was just everywhere.

It was this place that my parents for a long time thought that we would all return to.

And then at some point, that was no longer what they thought or what we all thought.

- We're sitting here in Freedom Tower, the 650,000 Cubans who came through this building and why it's called Freedom Tower, their perspective, those folks.

And they built a huge community- - And they built a huge community.

Yes, absolutely and I was part of that movement.

My mother was part of that, my father, many, many relatives.

So, I think part of it is that the turn to communism dismays more people and people leave.

Another major wave of people arrives from the mid sixties to the early seventies and a lot of those were people who had small businesses.

The revolution had nationalized large businesses fairly early on.

In 1960, a lot of those nationalizations happened, but in the late sixties, and undertook something called the revolutionary offensive which then nationalized things like little restaurants, even street vendors.

And so, a lot of the people whose businesses were confiscated ended up leaving in that period of the late sixties and early seventies.

And the origin of many important Miami and New Jersey businesses like the Versailles is in that period.

So that explains that other wave.

Then there's another wave during Mariel in 1980 where 125,000 Cubans take to the seas and arrive mostly in Key West.

And because I'm a historian, I always like to think about specifics and what produces a particular exodus.

That one, I mean, I think it's fascinating.

I have a brother, had a brother who came during the Mariel boat lift.

That one came shortly after the beginning of family reunification trips.

So all those Cuban exiles who came in the sixties and seventies had never been able to go back.

So they'd never seen their family, they'd never seen the place their homeland.

And in '78, '79, the two governments, the US and Cuba, allowed exiles to return to Cuba for the first time.

And many did.

And they came back to the island with all kinds of presents and money and pictures and stories and that created this kind of new desire among many to leave to experience something new.

So that accounts for that wave.

There was another huge wave during what's called the special period, which is after the Soviet Union collapsed and there was a crisis.

And all this to say is that, when you think about the Cuban exile story, it's important to remember that it's not just the story of the early 1960s, right?

That there were waves that kept coming, that have kept coming throughout.

But my mother, 'cause they moved to Miami late, I grew up in New Jersey, but they moved to Miami in 1986.

So every time we'd drive around Miami, we'd see the Freedom Tower at our car window.

And she goes, "There's the Freedom Tower.

That's where you and I arrived.

That's where I brought you when you were one year."

Yeah, so she always told that story.

- In the book, you mentioned something that's kind of a startling fact because a lot of us who are interested in history of immigration and the immigrant groups know of course, that in 1965, Lyndon Johnson of Congress passes the first really generous, if you will, liberal view of immigration.

But Johnson, you quote him saying at that ceremony in October of 1965, "I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba, that those who seek refuge here in America will find it."

That's kind of an extraordinary thing too, to think that that was what was on his mind when he did that, the special place in a sense that Cubans had in this country.

- Well, the thing is, I mean, Cuba and the US have always had this kind of unusual special relationship.

So in some sense, the story of Cuban migration is unusual really because the Cuban Adjustment Act gave people credit towards residency, which then produced faster citizenship.

And that was occurring in the same moment as the Voting Rights Act, right?

So, I mean, that's just said, if you put the Cuban story in a broader American story, it shades light on these epic stories of freedom.

But it also just really starkly illustrates these counterpoints, the limits, right?

The Cubans were getting the credit towards citizenship at the moment when African Americans were just getting the voting rights, right?

And that's part of the story too.

- Since the arrival of those first Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, the surrounding area here in Miami known as Little Havana has become a thriving and vibrant community.

And there is perhaps no better landmark outside of the Freedom Tower for the people here than Versailles, affectionately known as the world's most famous Cuban restaurant.

I decided to meet up with a few more of the leading voices in this community to delve a bit deeper into the relationship of Cuba and America, the exuberance of Miami's culture with its art, music, literature and influence.

And of course, the extraordinary gift that is Cuban cuisine.

We're here with my friend and hero, Alberto Ibargüen, the CEO of the Knight Foundation the former publisher and CEO of the Miami Herald.

He's now, among other things, on the board of the National Museum of the American Latino.

- Thank you.

- And on my left is Aida Levitan and she is the chair of US Century Bank, the first Cuban American woman chair of a US commercial bank.

AJ D'Amico who is at the Knight Foundation as director of the Center for Media and Democracy and a lawyer, having been a practicing lawyer here in Miami.

And Sam Verdeja, the editor and author of "Cubans: An Epic Journey," 800 pages of everything you want to know about Cuban Americans in Cuba.

- Second edition.

- And this is the second edition.

So thank you all for being here and being a part of this conversation.

And I wanna start out because you're all representatives of this and ask a question for all of you.

Cuban Americans, the Cuban exile community and all the Cuban Americans have been one of the great success stories in the history of American immigration.

What's the reason for that?

- Well, I think it started with the first wave of Cuban exiles which came from the upper and middle class, very educated and professional classes of Cuba.

So they came already with relationships in the United States.

They came with many of them with the ability to speak English and with a very entrepreneurial spirit.

And they established businesses and professions, that they re-validated their degrees and so on.

And I think they created a foundation for the other waves of Cuban exiles that would establish an economic foundation for them to take advantage of.

So that's one reason.

- Sometimes called the golden generation of Cuban exiles.

- No, and not just for the next few waves of Cuban immigrants and exiles, but also the next generation of Cuban Americans like myself.

I think this is the only city in the world and Cubans are some of the only immigrant and exile communities in the country where they had the blueprint from their parents.

They see success on buildings, on streets, in their communities and in their families and in their friends networks as well.

- And Miami is the only large American city which is a majority foreign-born, which makes Miami a very interesting city with Cubans as leaders in that.

And Sam, in your book, you've got a list, a long list and pictures of all the Cuban success stories, the entrepreneurs, the businessmen and women who have been so successful in this country.

- Well, in my case, I think I represent the first wave that is called the historic among ourself.

It sounds a little bit, but we call it- - The historic exile.

- The historic group of exiles which is the first 20 years.

And I came, as I say, running because I had the advantage of had an education in the United States.

My family sent me to the United States in 1956 BC, before Castro, and I had the advantage of having the language and having the know how of the United States.

And that's what Aida says.

The key year was 1965, 1966, when the period who was called the suitcase period.

We all were ready to go back to Cuba, but something happened.

Suddenly the Kennedy-Khrushchev, President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev agreement came out saying the United States will not evade Cuba, will not allow Cubans from the United States to do it and we realized that we are here to stay.

And that was, I believe in my judgment, what really put everybody to say, "Hey, whatever we know, we know we are gonna be here.

We have to do it."

- And Alberto, the Knight Foundation has been very important in funding the arts in Miami and you've been a part of that culture.

It seems that there's a huge Cuban influence and it's across all the arts, all the art forms.

- Well, there can't not be a Cuban influence.

At one point, I don't know, some 60, 65% of the county of Miami Dade is Hispanic and at least half of that is Cuban American.

So of course, there's a Cuban influence to virtually anything that you do in this town.

I think one of the things that all three of my friends have suggested, but they really ought to be highlighted, is that there's a big difference between an exile, a concept of exile and the concept of immigration.

I did not live here during that golden age, I came in the mid nineties.

Sam was one of my first friends here and Aida as well.

But one of the things I realized is that this was a community of people who had no apology.

There was no, "I've come to join the other team."

It was, "I'm here for the time being.

I'm as good as you are.

Deal with it."

And- - You're lucky to have us.

- It was a community of very proud strivers.

It was a very different kind of community from an immigrant community that has made a choice to go and stay.

That really makes a huge difference.

The other thing that made a huge difference, I think, is that after Mariel, Mas Canosa, Jorge Mas Canosa insisted on the concentration of Cubans in Miami which gave an already rising economic group the political numbers to basically run the town.

- And there's an interesting, of course, the Freedom Tower itself is kind of interesting from your point of view, Alberto, because originally, it was James Cox who created Cox Enterprises and a newspaperman and failed presidential candidate.

And the tower was built to be the tallest building in the South as headquarters of his newspaper and empire.

- And a replica of the Giralda in Seville.

- Giralda Tower in Seville.

- [Alberto] In Seville, in Spain.

- And the interesting thing about the Freedom Tower is sort of the symbol of this particular immigration in that we are so committed to freedom and to fighting against dictators.

And this is where we're devoted to the Declaration of Independence.

Freedom to us is very special because we have experienced what it's like to live in an autocratic regime that persecutes people for their beliefs and for expressing them and that puts them in jail, even to today, where there's 1000 political prisoners in Cuban jails simply because they participated in a peaceful demonstration.

So I think this whole idea of freedom is a very characteristic aspect of the Cuban exile community and the Cuban Americans also.

- And I think one of the thing that we have proven is what is the American dream.

And it is, given the opportunity, if you have the hard work, the talent and the values, you can achieve your dreams.

And I think that's very important, I think.

And that's why most Cubans that I know are very appreciative of the opportunity that this country gave us for our freedom.

And we haven't given up the struggle, the fight for even that we have been successful here, we still are struggling to see democracy and freedom in Cuba.

- And going back to the Freedom Tower, what I find somewhat poetic about the city is that you see the skyline of the city, which I think is the third largest metro skyline in the country.

And you see all these new buildings that feel like they're coming up every five or six years, there's another super tall skyscraper.

But the one thing that's not changed has been Freedom Tower in the downtown Miami skyline.

And I think that's like a really beautiful remembrance to everyone who made it possible for such a city to rise up.

(gentle music) - [Crosby] And it's clear that Freedom Tower will continue to be a beacon of hope and opportunity for generations to come.

Just to ask some of the students at Miami Dade College's Little Havana Campus, a dual language campus providing education and opportunity for today's strivers at what has become our nation's largest institution of higher education.

- I think that it's a unique place here in Miami that has a lot of significance culturally to a lot of the individuals in the society that we live in.

And I think that the younger generations should be exposed to the historical influence that the tower has had on where we live in.

- I think it's a beautiful resemblance of Miami, of freedom, of courage, of everything that Miami represents.

I don't know, I love passing by and seeing and going inside the museums and stuff, so I really like it.

- I grew up outside of Little Havana, but I did come from a Cuban household.

My whole family immigrated here from Cuba.

Whether it was watching the Miami Heat and watching the Freedom Tower in the shots or it was watching some TV shows and the Freedom Tower being there, it was always a household name.

Knowing the cultural significance of it as well, the way that it impacted many Cuban families, it's something that it's very personal for my family.

- Magda, you're the dean of the Honors College here at Miami Dade College, the Little Havana campus that we're on.

You're really an American success story and you're helping these individual kids, many of whom have immigrant backgrounds first or second generation, build their own American success story.

- So I was born in Cuba.

I'm gonna get emotional.

My family was processed in the Freedom Tower.

So that building has always been a light for my family.

Excuse me, and so, working downtown and being able to see the Freedom Tower from my window is magic.

- Spend a little time here in Miami and it's clear why the Freedom Tower belongs on the US National Register of Historical Places.

For so many Americans, this is where their story began.

And in the decades since, it has blossomed into one of the most colorful communities in our country, an enduring symbol of survival and perseverance.

I'm grateful to all of our guests for providing some unique views into the Cuban American experience and I hope that you made a few of your own discoveries along the way as well.

After all, that's what museums and libraries are for.

I'm Crosby Kemper and I'll see you next time for another episode of "Visions of America."

All stories, all people, all places.

(bright music)