St. Augustine Movement

Muriatic Acid Poured to get Coloreds Out of the Pool. June 1964.

Photo (Courtesy) http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/02/perceptions-2.html

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St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city founded by Europeans in the United States and a major tourist destination. In 1963 and 1964 it also played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[1][2]

Despite the 1954 Supreme Court act in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that the "separate but equal" legal status of public schools made those schools inherently unequal, St. Augustine still had only six black children admitted into white schools. The homes of two of the families of these children were burned by local segregationists while other families were forced to move out of the county because the parents were fired from their jobs.

In 1963 a sit-in protest at the local Woolworth's lunch counter ended in the arrest and imprisonment of 16 young black protesters and seven juveniles. Four of the children, two of whom were 16 year old girls, were sent to “reform” school and retained for six months. The St. Augustine Four, as they came to be known, JoeAnn Anderson, Audrey Nell Edwards, Willie Carl Singleton and Samuel White, had their case publicized as an egregious injustice by Jackie Robinson, the national NAACP, the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper and others.[3] Finally, a special action of the governor and cabinet of Florida freed them in January 1964[4]

In September 1963, the Ku Klux Klan staged a rally of several hundred Klansmen on the outskirts of town. They seized NAACP leader and local dentist Robert Hayling and three other NAACP activists (Clyde Jenkins, James Jackson and James Hauser) whom they beat with fists, chains, and clubs.[5] The four men were rescued by Highway Patrol officers. St. Johns County Sheriff L. O. Davis arrested four white men for the beating and also arrested the four unarmed blacks for "assaulting" the large crowd of armed Klansmen. Charges against the Klansmen were dismissed, but Hayling was convicted of "criminal assault" against the KKK mob.[3][6]

In the spring of 1964, Dr. Hayling put out a call to northern college students to come to St. Augustine for spring break, not to go to the beach, but to take part in civil rights activities. Accompanying them were four prominent Boston women: three wives of Episcopal bishops, and the fourth the wife of the vice president of the John Hancock Insurance Company. It was front page news on April 1, 1964 when one of them, Mrs. Mary Parkman Peabody, the 72 year old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, was arrested in an integrated group at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge, north of town.[7]

That event brought the movement in St. Augustine to international attention. Over the next few months, the city got more publicity than it ever had in its many centuries of existence. The massive non-violent direct action campaign was led by Hayling, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) staff including: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth, Willie Bolden, J. T. Johnson, Dorothy Cotton and others. Civil rights activists made St. Augustine the stage for a moral drama enacted before a world audience.[8]

From May until July 1964 protesters endured abuse, beatings, and verbal assaults without any retaliation. By absorbing the violence and hate instead of striking back the protesters gained national sympathy and were a key factor in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The movement engaged in nightly marches down King Street. The protesters were met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and incarcerated. The jail was filled, so subsequent detainees were kept in an uncovered stockade in the hot sun.[5][9]

When attempts were made to integrate the beaches of Anastasia Island, demonstrators were beaten and driven into the water by segregationists. Some of the protesters could not swim and had to be saved from possible drowning by other demonstrators. [10]

St. Augustine was the only place in Florida where Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested, on June 11, 1964 on the steps of the Monson motel restaurant. He wrote a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to his old friend, Rabbi Israel Dresner, in New Jersey, urging him to recruit rabbis to come to St. Augustine and take part in the movement. The result was the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history on June 18, 1964 at the Monson motel.[3]

The demonstrations came to a climax when a group of black and white protesters jumped into the swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge. In response to the protest the manager of the motel, James Brock, who was the president of the Florida Hotel & Motel Association, was photographed pouring acid into the pool to get the protesters out.[3] Photographs of this, and of a policeman jumping into the pool to arrest them, were broadcast around the world and became some of the most famous images of the entire civil rights movement. The motel and pool were demolished in March 2003, despite five years of protests, thus eliminating one of the nation's important landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement.[11] A Hilton Hotel was built on the site.

References
1.^ Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963". http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug.
2.^ Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1964". http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis64.htm#1964staug.
3.^ a b c d Branch, Taylor (1998). Pillar of Fire. Simon & Schuster.
4.^ United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1965. Law Enforcement: A Report on Equal Protection in the South. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 47.
5.^ a b St. Augustine Movement - M.L. King Research & Education Institute, Stanford University
6.^ Duncan, Gwendolyn (2004), "Dr. Robert B. Hayling", Civil Rights Movement Veterans, http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug1.htm
7.^ Lincolnville Historic District - National Park Service
8.^ St. Augustine FL Movement — 1964 ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
9.^ Garrow, David (1986). Bearing the Cross. Morrow.
10.^ Bryce, Shirley (2004), "St. Augustine Movement 1963-1964", Civil Rights Movement Veterans, http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug.htm
11.^ St. Augustine Record: March 18, 2003-Demolition begins on Monson Inn by Ken Lewis

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