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Two Days in the Life of USF

1979 murder still leaves a mark on USF campus

Posted by Robert Scime ⋅ November 29, 2011 ⋅ Leave a Comment

African American Marine Vet and insurance salesman Arthur McDuffie was allegedly beaten to death by five white police officers during a routine traffic stop in Miami in 1979. The officers tried to cover up their crime by making it look like a motorcycle accident. At the time, the civil rights activists took note and demanded that the men be punished. When four of the men who were tried were acquitted by an all-white jury the next year in Tampa, riots and protests erupted throughout the city.

USF’s Tampa campus was home to one of the many demonstrations and the rioters showed their frustration by painting an unknown number of lines on some of the campus buildings. McDuffie’s Revenge is reportedly the only one that can still be seen from a left-angle really late at night outside of Subway on the northeast corner of Cooper Hall.