Harry Truman said, "The only thing new under the sun is the history you don't know." When we moved to St. Augustine in 1999 (and first visited here in 1992), we had no idea there was a rich African-American and Civil Rights history here. Why?
For openers, the all-white St. Johns County Tourist Development Council and all-white Visitor and Convention Board -- both tax funded to the tune of millions of dollars annually -- do not honor that history and do not respect our diversity. They are a stench in the nostrils of our Nation's Oldest City.
We are making progress. There are two civil rights monuments in our Slave Market Square.
And there are two excellent articles on the front page of the st. Augustine Record today on civil rights issues, marking the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream speech" at the Lincoln Memorial.
One, by Peter Guinta, profiles Irvin L. Brunson, Tallahassee artist writing his book about St. Augustine desegregation struggles, which say his parents' car and next door neighbor's home firebombed in retaliation for First Amendment protected activity in speaking out against Jim Crow segregation (and their African-American children attending previously all-white schools).
The second, by Marcia Lane, describes Flagler College's online civil rights archive, the Civil Rights Archive of St. Augustine, Florida, coordinated by Emmy-winning journalist J.B. Hackworth and four Flagler College students. The collection will debut on September 18th at a reception from 4-7 pm at Ponce de Leon dining room at Flagler College.
Today's article describes the thrill of discovery of Hackworth's students finding archival and video materials, including Andrew Kustodowicz uncovering a documenting evidencing what we would today call a "push-poll": distributed by St. George Street Pharmacy, then a local drug store, the document asked customers, "If we integrate, will you continue to eat here?"
Much remains to be uncovered about this era, but the Flagler College archive is a treasure trove, and deserves our support.
Reading original materials is food for thought. Consider the 1976 University of Florida oral history interview with longtime St. Johns County Sheriff Lawrence O. Davis, in which he describes being present at the Ku Klux Klan rally where Dr. Robert B. Hayling, D.D.S. and two other African-American were caught watching the proceedings, severely beaten and nearly burned to death because "they got injured because they went to a place where they shouldn't have gone."
In the 1976 UF interview, Davis (a convicted felon) described said of segregationists, "All they wanted was to have a good time, and beat the tar out of people, that's all." (page 43).
Sheriff L.O. Davis described his friend, segregationist "Hoss" Manucy, whom he made a special deputy (page 69), as never expressing the desire to kill anyone: "he--himself is not a violent peson, you know. And uh, so he'd tell anybody, 'I don't believe in killing anybody. I think we ought to keep them here. We ought to beat them up here..." (page 58).
Davis described Hoss Manucy's local street toughs, who beat Rev. Andrew Young into unconsciousness here: "they weren't bad kids. It was just the idea that, uh, they'd found something they could have a lot of fun in." (page 75).
Davis admitted using the "sweat box" on civil rights protestor-prisoners, then "a legal deal." (page 60).
Davis described how Jacksonville Times-Union reporter Hank Drain hated Dr. King: Davis said Drain "often said, 'The best thing in the world we could do is to put that guy underneath the jail -- that Martin Luther King -- forever.' He hated him. He was the worst buzzard he'd ever seen -- a rattlesnake in disguise and everything....He despised him." (page 46). Davis said that after Dr. King was murdered, he called the St. Augustine Police Chief and said he was "going to burn him up" and was "sick and tired of making a hero out of him." Davis said that Drain instead wrote a "beautiful article" about Dr. King for the Times-Union.
Davis told the University of Florida oral history interviewer that Dr. King was a "communist," (page 47) and didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (pages 47-48).
Davis blamed outsiders -- black and white -- for what happened in here, claiming that only 20% of the segregationist "rabble rousers" were local residents, and that others drove from KKK country -- Palatka, Ocala and other northern Florida towns.
Take a gander at the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department website today, and the SJCSO's 2012 Annual Report -- it claims "federal agents" arrested Dr. King in St. Augustine. That never happened. It also expresses fawning, uncritical admiration for the criminal Ku Klux Klan Sheriff L.O. Davis (1949-1970).
This makes one wonder about the true beliefs of controversial St. Johns County Sheriff David B. Shoar (2005-date). No mention of Davis' material support for the KKK, Atlanta bomber-lawywer J.B. Stoner, and other hate groups. Why?
I'm writing Sheriff Shoar and will publish his answers to my questions.
To be continued....
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