Blind musician Ray Charles Robinson, a/k/a "Ray Charles," went to school in St. Augustine, at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, from 1937-1945. Ray Charles learned to play music here in St. Augustine, Florida.
Ray Charles is getting a United States postage stamp. It will be unveiled Monday, November 18, 2013, at the closed, gated, security-patrolled campus of the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, by invitation only, in a tiny hall. You will have to watch it all on streaming video, unless you are invited.
Billy Joel said Ray Charles was "more important than Elvis Presley." Ray Charles helped to desegregate the music industry. Frank Sinatra said Ray Charles was "the only true genius in show business." At Monday's stamp unveiling, blind student musicians in the acclaimed FSDB group called "Outta Sight" will perform Ray Charles' music, including "Georgia on my mind," "Hit the road Jack" and Charles' arrangement of "America the beautiful," before a nearly all-white invited audience.
Pitiful. Embarassing. What a travesty
Among the uninvited are local African-American leaders and average citizens, who were welcomed at an April 3, 2013 postage stamp unveiling for the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida. Why?
Ask African-American U.S. Representative Corinne Brown (D-Jacksonville), or Flagler College Chancellor and former FSDB Chair William L. Proctor(our former Republican State Representative), who are among those who are invited. The rest can watch on streaming video. On the Internet. In front of your computer. How heart-warming.
Unable to attend the 10 AM unveiling will be five (5) St. Augustine City Commissioners and five (5) St. Johns County Commissioners. Why? They will be, at the precise hour of the unveiling, working on the people's business at a joint city-county workshop being held in the St. Augustine City Commission chambers, 75 King Street.
This is lousy advance work on the part of the U.S. Postal Service. Utterly inept and inane. Bigoted, eltist and wrong.
The late Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert Francis Kennedy would sometimes ask his best advance man, Jerry Bruno, in the face of inept scheduling, "Who advanced this trip, Bruno?" I have called the Congressional affairs officer of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service, and asked essentially that question.
Robert Kennedy would often say to his staff, whenever he screwed up: "Don't tell me what I should have done, tell me what I should do NOW."
TO USPS: USPS must NOW schedule a second Ray Charles postage stamp unveiling here in St. Augustine, make it a public event, hold it at Flagler College Auditorium, if available, and do it on the afternoon of Monday November 18, 2013. Otherwise, a Civil Rights complaint may be filed with the U.S. Postal Service and Florida Human Relations Commission.
As you can see, the Apartheid-style unveiling of the Ray Charles postage stamp here in St. Augustinne is a Public Relations Disaster, a possible civil rights violation, and a slap in the face and a heavy-handed insult to the people and public officials of St. Augustine, Florida and St. Johns County.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once called St. Augustine "the most lawless city in America." We're recovering from that. We're trying to heal ancient wounds here. We don't need bad PR from the Postal Service to rub salt in those wounds, do we?
Postscript: Spoke to the USPS Congressional Affairs officer, who referred me to the Postmaster General's office -- working to have a second stamp unveiling Monday where our citizens and City and County Commissioners can attend.
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