Miami Gardens, Florida

• 1. Introduction

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  Miami Gardens sits 16 miles north of downtown Miami, and yet most people outside Florida have never heard of it. It is the most populous city in Florida with a majority African American population, home to a 64,767-capacity stadium that hosts the Miami Dolphins, a Formula One grand prix, and an Oscar-winning film's origin story. It was incorporated on the 13th of May 2003, making it one of the younger cities in South Florida. What shaped this city in just two decades, how it became a place of national sporting spectacle alongside serious civic tensions, and why the name itself traces back to a road rather than a founding family, are the threads this documentary will follow.

• 2. How the City Came to Be

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  When construction crews finished building Interstate 95 in the late 1960s, the highway did something unintended. Middle- and upper-income African American and West Indian American families, who had been living in Miami neighborhoods like Liberty City, began moving northward into the unincorporated areas that would eventually become Miami Gardens. Race-based covenants had just been outlawed under the Fair Housing Act, opening the door to that migration. The communities that formed there carried names like Carol City, Norland, and Norwood, all of them unincorporated patches of Miami-Dade County with no city government of their own. Incorporation came decades later, on the 13th of May 2003. The neighborhoods of Andover, Bunche Park, Carol City, Lake Lucerne, Norland, Opa-locka North, and Scott Lake were folded together into a single municipality. The city's name itself came from Florida State Road 860, a major roadway through the area known locally as Miami Gardens Drive. Shirley Gibson became Miami Gardens' first mayor and served from 2003 to 2012.

• 3. Who Lives Here

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  The 2020 census counted 111,640 people in Miami Gardens. African Americans made up 66.97 percent of the population, the largest share of any city in Florida according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanic and Latino residents represented roughly 32.88 percent of the population by 2020, a notable jump from 22.03 percent recorded in 2010. Within that Hispanic population, Cubans formed the largest single group at 43.94 percent, followed by Central Americans at 17.78 percent, Puerto Ricans at 11.96 percent, and South Americans at 8.25 percent. The city covered 20 square miles, and the average household held 3.52 members. Families made up 72 percent of all households, pointing to a community built around extended kinship networks. By 2016, people aged 65 and older made up 12.7 percent of residents, nearly matching the 15.5 percent who were between the ages of 15 and 24.

• 4. Hard Rock Stadium

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  Hard Rock Stadium stands on land that was once part of the Lake Lucerne community, and its 64,767 seats make it one of the largest sporting venues in the southeastern United States. The Miami Dolphins of the National Football League call it home, and so does the University of Miami Hurricanes football team. The annual Orange Bowl college football game is played there. The Miami Open tennis tournament occupies the stadium grounds as well. The Florida Marlins of Major League Baseball shared the facility with the Dolphins for almost two decades before relocating in 2012 and renaming themselves the Miami Marlins. Formula One arrived at the Miami International Autodrome, adjacent to the stadium complex, in 2022 for what became the Miami Grand Prix. Calder Race Course, another sporting landmark in the area, opened in 1971. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Hard Rock Stadium is scheduled to host multiple tournament matches.

• 5. The Earl Sampson Case

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  Earl Sampson worked at a convenience store in Miami Gardens, and between 2008 and 2013 he was arrested 27 times for trespassing at the very premises where he was employed. The store's owner, Ali Saleh, gathered video evidence that showed Miami Gardens police repeatedly stopping, questioning, and arresting customers and employees who had every right to be on the property. Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown described the footage as showing cops arresting people for trespassing when they had permission to be on the premises. Sampson almost always pleaded guilty so he would be released quickly. On the one occasion he pleaded not guilty, he spent 20 days in jail. Those guilty pleas were useful to officers because they validated the arrests and counted toward departmental quotas, giving police an incentive to keep targeting Sampson. Over five years, Sampson was arrested a total of 288 times. The broader data was striking: between 2008 and 2013, police logged 99,980 stops in Miami Gardens, involving 56,922 people, a figure that exceeded half the city's entire population. In the City of Miami, over that same period, only 3,753 stops occurred despite a population four times larger. More than 1,000 stops involved children between the ages of 5 and 7. After news of these abuses became public in 2013, the police chief resigned. Civil rights lawsuits followed, filed by Saleh and others who had been illegally detained.

• 6. Government and Growing Pains

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  Miami Gardens is governed by a seven-member city council, with the mayor and six council members serving alongside a City Manager, City Attorney, and City Clerk. In 2007, Mayor Shirley Gibson announced the city would no longer permit new low-income housing developments. Residents had blamed those developments for contributing to crime and drug problems. Around the same time, the city's tax revenues ranked third-lowest in Miami-Dade County. Oliver Gilbert, only the second mayor in the city's history, took office in 2012 and proposed creating a community redevelopment agency. Such agencies are funded through property tax increases and are designed to address physical blight and stimulate private investment. The city's 2017-2018 budget allocations show where priorities lay: the Public Safety Police Administration Division received just over $30.8 million, the largest single departmental allocation. Parks and Recreation came in at roughly $2.3 million. Rodney Harris became the third mayor in 2020. The Miami Gardens Police Department, which became operational on the 16th of December 2007 with 159 sworn officers, had grown to 259 total members, including 201 sworn positions, by a later count.

• 7. Arts, Schools, and Notable Voices

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  Norland Middle School, located in the Miami Gardens area, has run a magnet program in dance, music, theatre, and art since 1985. Two of its alumni, Alex R. Hibbert and Jaden Piner, were cast in Moonlight, the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Miami Norland Senior High School posted an 89 percent graduation rate as of 2012 school grades, while Miami Carol City Senior High School received a grade of F with a 62 percent graduation rate in the same assessment. St. Thomas University and Florida Memorial University both operate within the city. The North Dade Regional Library, part of the Miami-Dade Public Library System, opened in September 1979. Among the city's notable residents are rappers Flo Rida, Rick Ross, Lil Pump, Denzel Curry, and Smokepurpp, along with NFL wide receiver Andre Johnson, actress Jo Marie Payton, and Frederica Wilson, who served as a U.S. representative, a Florida senator, and a Florida state representative. Trayvon Martin, whose shooting became a nationally significant civil rights case, also grew up in Miami Gardens.