Posted 4/16/2010 11:18:00 AM Crossing in Saint Augustine" director CB Hackworth had one question for Andrew Young after watching the raw, recently unearthed footage of the civil rights icon being beaten by Klansmen 45 years ago.
I asked him, 'Why do you ever talk to white people at all?' " Hackworth recalled to Intel Friday morning.
"He just told me, 'I don't live in the past. There's plenty to work on right now.' "
As painful as it is to watch the future United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor being beaten, knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked, Young recognizes the importance of getting the story of that hot summer in 1964 in Saint Augustine, Florida out there.
The two-hour documentary will have its Atlanta premiere Friday afternoon at 4:15 as part of the Atlanta Film Festival at the Landmark Theatre in Midtown.
Young will oversee a post-screening panel discussion.
In what is perhaps his most deeply personal documentary, Young returns to Saint Augustine to chronicle that forgotten but pivotal intersection of the civil rights movement in the summer of 1964.
"Crossing St. Augustine" is a fascinating, three-dimensional and frightening account of how Young, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and an unbowed group of blacks and whites working together made history in Washington D.C. by crossing a Klan-lined street and requesting a cup of coffee in Florida.
But Dr. King had not sent Young to Florida to be beaten. Quite the opposite. With the Civil Rights Bill being filibustered in Congress, King had sent his aide to use his negotiating skills "to cool things off."
As Young recalls in the film: "By the grace of God, I failed."
In one of the doc's more comical moments, Young remembers walking into a Baptist Church on the night of June 9, 1964 to be greeted by fellow King aide Hosea Williams whipping the crowd into a frenzy, inspiring them to march toward the small army of Klansmen who had been deputized by the local sheriff.
"Hosea had gone rogue," Young recalls in the film.
Even as they approached King and St. George streets, Young was convinced he could reason with the mob.
Until he found himself dazed and on the ground.
Young had never seen the footage of his beating until 2006 when St. Augustine filmmaker Jeremy Dean showed him the frames that would become the centerpiece of his doc, "Dare Not Walk Alone."
"I had never seen how I got stomped," Young recalls in "Crossing."
"And then I got mad."
Things in Saint Augustine finally boiled over when black and white protesters together attempted to integrate the swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge and the motel's owner James Brock went berserk, throwing acid-containing pool cleaner on the movement members.
When photos of the incident hit President Lyndon Johnson's desk, the momentum to get the Civil Rights Act passed became overwhelming.
Even now, "Crossing Saint Augustine" is helping to inspire change in the Florida city that remains largely segregated.
"City leaders now see the need to acknowledge their role in history," Hackworth says. "Through this film, we're hoping for a modern-day happy ending. A happy ending 45 years overdue."
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