Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), flanked by Rev. Andrew Young (left) and Dr. Robert Hayling, DDS (right) --- Dr. Hayling deserves to serve on the St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission, to be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior

King legacy lives on

St. Augustine visit by hero of civil rights sets stage for change

By ANTHONY DeMATTEO

If not for television images of blacks being brutalized in St. Augustine, and one dying U.S. senator casting his last vote, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed, according to St. Augustine historian David Nolan.

Nolan, who has studied St. Augustine's black history for more than 30 years, told those gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of St. Augustine on Sunday that the two factors were integral in one of the more important acts of modern justice becoming law.

In 1964, the U.S. Senate was abuzz with the biggest filibuster in its history. Senators, many from Southern states, read from a 60,000 page document -- drawn to block the passage of the bill integrating hotels, motels and restaurants -- until they were too weary to stand.

To break the filibuster, senators who supported the bill needed a two-thirds majority vote.

Dying from brain cancer, U.S. Sen. Clair Engle, a Democrat from California, was wheeled into Capitol Hill in his hospital bed.

"He couldn't talk anymore," Nolan said of Engle. "So he just pointed to his eye to vote yes."

One month later, Engle was dead at 52.

That the filibuster's end happened in that Shakespearian-worthy scene would not have occurred, Nolan said, if not for the protests and beatings broadcast to the nation nightly from St. Augustine.

"People were sitting down in front of their televisions across the country, watching unarmed African Americans being bloodied and beaten, and said, 'This is not the America we want,'" Nolan said.

Nolan has spent years searching out and examining documents on King's visits to St. Augustine -- FBI reports on his activities, and in the Princeton University Library, an "Adverse File" filled with hate letters and death threats similar to those black baseball slugger Hank Aaron would receive 10 years later as he approached Babe Ruth's all-time major league home run record.

St. Augustine officials were unhappy with the national coverage of rioting in St. Augustine. Record news stories of the time recall that the city was preparing for its 400th anniversary celebration in 1965 as the nation's oldest city.

The stories said officials were concerned about the impact on the 1965 events.

King came to St. Augustine at the request of Dr. Robert Hayling and others. Hayling is considered by Nolan and others as the father of the civil rights movement in St. Augustine. Hayling frequently visits St. Augustine from his home in South Florida. He was able to convince King to visit.

King's presence in St. Augustine preceded the U.S. Senate vote by weeks. During that time the national media focused their cameras and reporters on King and the nightly marches from the area's black churches to the city's Plaza de la Constitucion.

On June 11, 1964, King was arrested at the former Monson Restaurant on the bay front for attempting to integrate the restaurant. He was charged with trespassing. It was the only time, records show, that King was arrested in the state.

King himself gave the city prominence in the civil rights movement that summer of 1964. Nolan said King was asked to note America's most important places in the civil rights struggle. King named Birmingham Ala., Albany, Ga., and St. Augustine.

"A year later, I think he would have added Selma," Nolan said of the Alabama city where on March 7, 1965, members of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference tried to march the 50 miles to the Montgomery capital to draw attention to black voting rights. They failed, beaten back by police with billy clubs and seared with tear gas.

A second attempt left Unitarian Universalist Minister James Reeb dead after being beaten in Selma.

On the third attempt, backed by Federal District Judge Frank Johnson's order, the march succeeded. Approximately 8,000 Americans walked protected by thousands of U.S. Army soldiers, members of Alabama's National Guard and FBI officials. That, Nolan said, led to the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Rabbi Mark Goldman was chaplin at Texas' Fort Hood Army base when his friend Fred Shuttlesworth, then vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called to tell him of King's assassination in Tennessee, April 4, 1968.

Goldman, who spoke at St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church's service honoring King on Sunday evening, once met secretly with King and 11 black seminary schools in a south Atlanta hotel. "We caucused with Dr. King when I was just getting over acne on my face," Goldman said. "If he died as a young man only halfway up the mountain, we couldn't let his work go unfinished."

In 2004, Goldman received the Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit award in Cincinnati. "I never wept so much other than when my parents died," Goldman said of the honor.

Goldman said that in the days of civil rights turmoil, "St. Augustine, we need to admit and realize, had serious racial issues ... walking a kind of tightrope of class and struggles."