Editorial: City tour guide test lacks pivotal partof city's history

Editorial: City tour guide test lacks pivotal partof city's history



Publication Date: 02/23/07


St. Augustine's official tour guide manual ignores a key part of St. Augustine's history: black history.

The manual, which is sold to prospective tour guides, encompasses a dress code, ethics, tour routes, basic historical information, historic sites, modern facts and figures and suggested readings about the city's history. Prospective guides are expected to study it and then be tested on its contents in order to become a licensed tour guide for hire.

The licensing was developed years ago after city officials heard numerous complaints about the lack of uniform tour information. Guides were not licensed and almost every tour was different depending on who told the story.

The city's past often was told through family histories, folk lore, and many times, half truths about St. Augustine's five centuries. For example, in years past, some guides would comment that Napoleon Bonaparte had visited St. Augustine's Prince Murat house on St. George Street. In truth, Murat was a nephew of Bonaparte.

It is not clear how the guide missed on the city's black history. It was last revised in 2002.

Examples of black history missing from the tour guide are:


Fort Mose de Gracia de Santa Teresa, the first free black settlement in what is now the United States. Mose was a fort and a town run by runaway slaves from the British colonies. Fort Mose protected the northern defense of Spanish St. Augustine from 1738 until 1763 when Spanish rule gave way to British rule. The fort itself is non-existent but the site is a state park, north of the city off U.S. 1.


Lincolnville, the city's oldest black business and residential section. It was established by freed slaves after the Civil War. It is one of the city's historic districts. Famed singer Ray Charles is said to have performed at clubs in Lincolnville while he was a student at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind.


St. Augustine's role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, including the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 for trying to integrate the Monson Motor Lodge Restaurant. St. Augustine was the only city in Florida where King was arrested. Numerous sites have recently been marked by the Civil Rights Memorial Projects Committee.

The St. Augustine City Commission must take charge of the problem and fix it because the study guide and test are part of the city's licensing requirement. It's time for St. Augustine City Commissioner Errol Jones to take the lead on getting the tour guide and test revised. He will find no shortage of black heritage groups in the city ready to help. We encourage him to move on this project soon.

St. Augustine's prospective tour guides deserve the most accurate information possible about the city's history. It's disgraceful that the city's official tour guide and test ignores black history.


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