More evidence of healing: thanks to the persistence of St. Augustine's African-American community leaders, including Greg White and Ken Bryan, last night, Dr. King's dream came alive in the St. Augustine Coy Commission meeting.
Last night, St. Augustine Coy Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E. also saw his own dream of 1998 -- equal customer service -- finally being realized.
Fifteen years ago, as the young newly appointed City of St. Augustine Utilities Director -- who moved with his wife and family to St. Augustine from Gainesville Utilities -- Regan saw massive pollution in West Augustine from septic tanks.
Why?
Rabid racists who ran the St. Augustine City government had never bothered to provide sewers, or water, for West Augustine.
Under successive generations of unenlightened leadership, the City's Jim Crow government denied equality to its citizens -- sewage Apartheid has long been a threat to public health.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called St. Augustine the "most lawless" city in America in 1964 (referring to the more publicized aspects of segregation, but he might as well have been referring to the Fourteenth Amendment violations of unequal city water and sanitary sewage systems.
Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. Meanwhile, St. Augustine continued on its course. St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley, who appeared on national television justifying Jim Crow abuses,remained on the City Commission for years. His name is among those that appear on the 1973 City Hall cornerstone in Lightner Museum Courtyard.
Despite opposition in 1998, John Regan, P.E. determined to provide equal services for his customers. That means clean water uncontaminated by e. coli.
In 2011, a majority of water wells in West Augustine were found to be contaminated by e. coli -- this was the direct and proximate of malign neglect -- willful wanton negligence and racism on the part of City officials. City officials never extended sanitary sewers to "them" (African-American residens).
These radical racists who made people get sick and die.
I did not know of these facts until I saw Flagler College graduate Jeremy Dean's 2005 film, "Dare Not Walk Alone."
From 1998 to 2013 was a long time to wait.
In waiting, John Regan reminds me of General Kutuzov's line in Tolstoy's "War and Peace": "Patience and time."
Fifteen years after Regan was harshly questioned for utility spending in West Augustine, two successive racist City Managers have retired. Regan is now the City Manager of our small (13,000 person) Oldest City, which hosts millions of visitors annually and is on many of the recent international "best" lists for everything from Christmas lighting to romance to retirement.
"We're on the world stage now," as Lincoln put it.
Equality and equal opportunity are two of the reasons why -- our City has attracted Mumford & Sons based on its being a cool, hip, tolerant place, as evidenced by our City's December 10, 2012 enactment of GLBT rights protections in our Fair Housing law.
Under new management, our City of St. Augustine last night voted to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause and Environmental Justice: Our City will provide sewers in West Augustine, approving three initial projects and county use of Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs)for unit connections.
The Ku Klux Klan will never again elect a St. Augustine City Commissioner.
KKK values have been replaced with Rainbow values.
Our City honors and respects diversity.
As a result of the West Augustine sewage vote, expect growing economic development and educational opportunities.
Expect new home and business construction along the West King Street corridor.
Expect a University branch campus here.
Florida Memorial University (formerly Florida Memorial College) is a traditionally African-American school now based in Miami Lakes. FMU's campus was in West Augustine until racists ran it out of town in 1968 because its students supported and participated in nightly mass demonstrations against segregation, led by Dr. Robert Hayling, D.D.S., the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Andrew Young, with Florida Memorial students marching from the West King Street campus to the Slave Market Square.
The land is still there. FMU still owns it. FMU is planning to come back and build a branch campus.
The dream of Dr. King, Lincoln and the framers of our Fourteenth Amendment are both alive and living in our Nation's Oldest European-founded City, St. Augustine, Florida.
On the monument to interned Japanese-Americans in Washington, D.C. are the words: "Here we right a wrong."
St. Augustine righted another wrong last night. We're on a roll.
What's next?
West King Street deserves an Interstate 95 interchange, to remedy the racist redlining of West Augustine by the State of Florida DOT in 1964.
Here, we can right another wrong.
Yes, we can!
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