About the Exhibit

During a six-month period in 1980, approximately 125,000 Cuban refugees left Cuba in a mass exodus. Many left willingly to escape the Castro regime but others were forced out, deemed socially undesirable by the Cuban government. The majority of the “Marielitos” as they would become known, left through the port of Mariel and crossed the Straits of Florida to start their new lives in the United States. Almost immediately after refugees arrived, the Jimmy Carter administration opened federal detention centers at Fort Eglin, Florida, Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas to process and resettle refugees.

This web exhibit explores the people, politics, and events around the Fort Chaffee detention center as the last step to freedom for so many.