Local Residents Request Investigation of Racism in Employment, Environmental and Voting Rights Practices in City of St. Augustine and St. Johns County

April 27, 2010

Hon. Gerald E. Reynolds, Chair,
Hon. Abigail Thornstrom, Vice Chair
Hon. Peter Kirsanow, Commissioner
Hon. Ashley Taylor, Jr., Commissioner
Hon. Gail Heriot, Commissioner
Hon. Todd Gaziano, Commissioner
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Washington, D.C.

RE: ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. JOHNS COUNTY, FLORIDA EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION, ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AND VOTING RIGHTS PRACTICES REQUIRE CRC INVESTIGATION, HEARINGS

Dear Chairman Reynolds and Commissioners:

We are writing to request that you investigate the City of St. Augustine, Florida; St. Johns County, Florida; and other large organizations in Our Nation’s Oldest City, which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “most lawless” city in America.
Last night, St. Augustine City Commissioners unanimously refused to post and advertise the job of City Manager, voting to negotiate a contract with the Chief Operations Manager. No other City resident or employee – and no woman, no African-American, no Asian, and no Hispanic – was even considered for the job. See enclosed April 25, 2010 column and April 27 article from the St. Augustine Record and the enclosed April 27 City newsletter. (Exhibits A,B&C).
This is not the first time that the City of St. Augustine has hired a City Manager (or other top-level employee) without posting and advertising. With your help and intervention, we hope that it will be the last time. We just read your eloquent April 20, 2010 letter to the City of Youngstown, Ohio about its employment practices. Thank you for your work!
St. Augustine residents helped make history here in 1963-64 when they protested Jim Crow segregation. St. Augustine was the last place where Dr. King was arrested before the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted. The Senate filibuster was successfully broken because of what happened here, including KKK violence and local police complicity, the beating of Rev. Andrew Young, the arrest of the mother of Massachusetts’ Governor, and the pouring of acid in a motel swimming pool to chase out African-Americans who were invited by a hotel guest during anti-discrimination protests.
The 50th anniversary in 2013-2014 provides an opportunity for CRC to view what progress has been made and what progress remains to be made. In 1964, there were some 41 African-American businesses in St. Augustine. None survive. There are no African-American department heads in the City of St. Augustine and only one in St. Johns County. A long history of nepotism and hiring political cronies may have rendered equal employment opportunity a joke here.
We request hearings be held in St. Augustine on institutional racism, to include employment practices by all large government and private sector employers, environmental racism by both governments, and voting rights issues.
Environmental racism is a subject that EPA has lollygagged at investigating since our January 19, 2009 complaint. Our City of St. Augustine dumped 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in a low-income and minority neighborhood, depositing it in West Augustine in our Old City Reservoir (a coquina pit lake that is an open sore to the aquifer and the groundwater).
Our City was fined but continues with environmental racism, rendering the Lincolnville neighborhood a “Pollution Peninsula” with 611,294 gallons of raw sewage emitted into our San Sebastian Reservoir after the City refused to investigate our complaints of visible raw sewage in the river (and after the City was subject to a consent Order involving semi-treated sewage going into our saltwater marsh).
The City of St. Augustine refused to apply for federal grants for water and sewer for West Augustine, a low-income and minority neighborhood. Our City refuses to annex unincorporated areas of West Augustine into St. Augustine in possible violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, while charging those non-city residents an extra 25% for their water.
St. Johns County government (the Road and Bridge Department) refuses to remove obstructions in ditches and canals that are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, resulting in a threat to public health in low-income and minority communities that local governments have historically disdained. The County Commission Chairman once claimed that “environmental laws” somehow required that miles of ditches be left obstructed, with stagnant water – no legal citations have been supplied and we reckon his claim is “inoperative” (as Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Zeigler, would put it).
Both St. Augustine and St. Johns County may be violating voting rights. On one Election Day, the County was resurfacing the parking lot of the African-American precinct of Lincolnville, interfering with voting. Annexations by the City of St. Augustine and the Town of Hastings may be violating the 15th Amendment.
Dr. King knew that the 400th anniversary celebration of St. Augustine (in 1965) provided leverage for change – please investigate St. Augustine and St. Johns County governments (among other large organizations), knowing that they want federal funds and should not have them if they don’t end discrimination.

We look forward to your holding hearings in St. Augustine, Florida.
Thank you.