"The antidote to prejudice is reality."
-- Rep. Barney Frank
Former St. Johns County Commission Chairman Ben Rich told Folio Weekly that St. Johns County was "one of the last bastions of the KKK."
St. Augustine and St. Johns County were Ku Klux Klan country.
The Klan is still here, partly merged into the Republican Party and the Tea Party, as my late friend Stetson Kennedy said it best. It is fitting that KKK-infiltrator Stetson Kennedy's KKK robes are being donated to the Smithsonian, where they will become part of the new Museum of African-American History. KKK robers belong in a museum, along with the certain former public officials who never heard of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments -- cognitive misers with antebellum attitudes.
So much progress has been made here, that we are prouder than ever to live here. As I wrote in the St. Augustine Record on Sunday,
"Thanksgiving comes at a time with much for which to be thankful.
I am proud to have lived in St. Augustine for 12 years. Our City and County Commissioners are increasing in competence and compassion, respecting diversity and equality. Riberia Street is being fixed, at last. West Augustine will soon get proper sewer and water service, finally. Decennial redistricting is now being accomplished without surrendering to illegal demands to dilute minority voting strength....We’re thankful that for the first time in 71 years, our public officials are discussing the proposed National Park and Seashore. I salute them.
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