Riberia Street Project a Great Victory for Civil Rights and Environmental Activists and Open, Accountable Government

Riberia Street Project a Great Victory for Civil Rights and Environmental Activists and Open, Accountable Government

Lincolnville residents have overcome enormous obstacles, again.

Rabid racists ruled this town and our City government was not worthy of the name.

The dirty little secret of our Nation’s Oldest City is that the very worst street in St. Johns County is Riberia Street, one of two main north-south roads serving the historic African-American community of Lincolnville.

Riberia Street NEVER had proper paving, drainage, bulkheads or sidewalks – it is as dangerous a place to walk or drive as I have ever seen in this Nation. Check it out if you've never seen it before.

It was quite intentional – like FDOT’s failure to build an I-95 interchange serving the African-American community of West Augustine and Lincolnville.

Bitter partisan segregationists, including St. Johns County then-Sheriff L.O. Davis, continued to perturb and pester African-Americans here after 1964. Employment blacklisting and denial of equal services was a backdoor way of encouraging African-Americans to leave town. Many did. There were 41 African-American owned businesses in Lincolnville in 1964 -- none survive.

The National Park Service states on its website (see below): “The end of segregation in St. Augustine demonstrated that even the most closed communities could not uphold segregation in the face of determined resistance.”

However, de facto segregation continued here for more than four decades, including denial of equal city services and denial of equal employment opportunities in City and state owned historic properties. We shall overcome.

Since 1964, our City of St. Augustine had several City Managers who were (at best) limited individuals, who were (at best) deeply insensitive to issues of equality.

One unreconstructed City Manager said of West Augustine in 1998, “They don’t vote” in response to efforts to fix infrastructure there. His predecessor City Manager joked that same year to a then- Commissioner (who told me the story) that he wanted to have twelve bulldozers tear down Lincolnville, a National Historic District. How's that for unadulterated racism, emitted by the City Manager of our Nation's Oldest European-founded City.

Under the tender mercies of unreconstructed racists and their enablers, Riberia Street remained unconstructed, a mess of patchy asphalt hot mix and perennial lakes that formed in the lightest rainfall, damaging cars and risking pedestrians’ lives (there are no sidewalks).

Local activists organized and energized our community over Environmental Justice issues, including our prior City Manager’s illegal dumping of solid waste and illegal emissions of sewage and semi-treated sewage effluents. Our City was fined, and rightfully so (although the prior City Manager should have paid those fines).

Last year, community activist Judith Seraphin had buttons stating “Riberia Street – Fix It ALL OR NONE.”

Judith Seraphin, now the chair of the Lincolnville Neighborhood Association, other community residents and I told City officials that it would violate the Fourteentth Amendment (Equal Protection) to stop Riberia Street construction at Bridge Street (a/k/a “Division Street America,” to borrow Studs Terkel’s words), with the idea of waiting until money could be found, in the sweet-bye-and-bye. One City official once asked me "What's the Fourteenth Amendment." I told him. Our City now "gets it."

People of Lincolnville, help is on the way!

At last we have a City Manager, Mayor and City Commissioners who respect Lincolnville.

That is why I have publicly thanked City Manager John Regan, Mayor Joseph Boles, Vice Mayor Leanna Freeman, and Commissioners Errol Jones, Nancy Sikes-Kline and William Leary. Six cheers for them.

Our leaders are listening to the people of Lincolnville, at last. As ex-Mayor Gardner wrote in our City’s newsletter (excerpt below): “Responding [to] the pleas from Lincolnville residents, the city has set aside bond money to complete the entire length of Riberia Street, rather than seeking funds for a series of phases."

Justice is being done.

This construction project is a prime example of healing. Our City has floated a bond issue, about half of which will go for Riberia Street construction.

Riberia Street Construction starts on April 18^th.

In the words of the monument to the Japanese internment camp victims, “Here we right a wrong.”

Today, we have a fair-minded City Manager, (John Regan) who proposes to "Lift Up Lincolnville."

Activists rejected the City’s notion of fixing Riberia Street in five segments, as funding allowed, in the sweet-bye-and-bye.

We told the City that the Fourteenth Amendment requires equal government services and that ALL of Riberia Street must be fixed (or else the City could face a civil rights lawsuit in federal court).

I am proud of the growth that I have seen in our City government since April 2005, when I attended my first City Commission meeting. In playwright Tony Kushner’s words, in Angels in America, “only in politics does the miraculous occur.”

I am prouder than ever to live in St. Augustine, Florida today.

Riberia Street construction evidences the continuing vitality of our American Founders vision. In the words of Alexander Hamilton, "Here sir, the people govern." ALEXANDER HAMILTON, remarks at the New York convention on the adoption of the federal Constitution, Poughkeepsie, New York, June 27, 1788.—Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution…, vol. 2, p. 348 (1836, reprinted 1937).

Next stop – Congress and DOT need to order an Interstate 95 (I-95) interchange serving West Augustine, West King Street and downtown St. Augustine, thereby relieving traffic congestion. There we will right another wrong. That can be done as part of the St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway Act, an earlier draft of which may be read here: www.staugustgreen.com.

We shall overcome.

Riberia Street (courtesy of City of St. Augustine, Florida)



Photo credit: Marie Bermudez-Phillip