Yesterday, I wrote and asked SAPD and SJSO to work together to solve three theft crimes -- last week's theft of the new lynching marker at the Shands fishing pier on SR13, and two historic markers in West Augustine and Lincolnville, reported in the newspaper as stolen in August. At least the Sheriff's office took a police report and is investigating. But on this one occasion, the St. Augustine Police Department, headed by Chief Barry Fox, makes the St. Johns County Sheriff's office look like Seal Team Six.
SAPD has NO record of anyone ever calling them to report the two stolen markers in Lincolnville.
St. Augustine City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E. told me after the October 22, 2018 City Commission meeting that he recently drove a visitor by Dr. Hayling's house and could not find the marker, but did not ask, and did not know that the makers had been stolen.
The City of St. Augustine has some 350 full time employees, including 60 police.
With or without a complaint, the SAPD was on notice from newspaper accounts in St. Augustine and Jacksonville papers about the theft of the civil rights monuments in Lincolnville and West Augustine -- it should have opened an investigation.
If there were articles in local newspapers about a theft of other historic markers, SAPD would have opened an investigation, sua sponte, in a pair of seconds, in a NYC minute.
If it were a marker to Fr. Camp at the Cathedral Basilica? Or to Pedro Menendez de Aviles? SAPD would have acted. But two historic markers to African-American civil rights heroes in Lincolnville and West Augustine were stolen, and no one gave a fig. That's pitiful.
Had SAPD solved those two crimes, a third might not have taken place with the lynching marker.
Part of having a welcoming spirit to diversity is community policing.
Not stop-and-frisk.
Not illegal annexations.
Not 15th Amendment violations.
On the three sign thefts, KKK suspects need to be scrutinized. Historic markers need small surveillance cams.
The thieves may have been at recent City meetings.
They may be on camera.
SAPD and SJSO must work together and solve these crimes.
Part of the problem is the culture of racism, in which racist Sheriff LAWRENCE O. DAVIS is still praised on Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's website, despite my taking SHOAR to task for it on August 28, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.
Chief Fox, Sheriff Shoar: Get to work on these three hate crimes. Report them to FBI.
Let justice be done.
Update: The Lincolnville Museum was stolen, also. That's four.
By the way, the number of lynchings in St. Johns County is understated. First, St. Johns County's boundaries once embraced almost half the state -- looks like EJI is basing its data on what current county the lynching took place in. Second, local folklore tells of more lynchings, including at least one in West Augustine. Further research is required.
From St. Augustine Record, with predicable dupey, understated headline:
St. Johns County marker remembering lynching victims missing; vandalism suspected
A marker remembering a lynching victim in St. Johns County has gone missing, officials said Friday afternoon.
The Equal Justice Initiative, which has documented lynchings in the South, had arranged for the marker to be placed near the St. Johns River off State Road 13 in northwest St. Johns County. That’s where a white mob lynched African-American farmer Isaac Barrett in 1897, according to a press release from the group. A ceremony was, and still is, planned for Saturday to dedicate the marker.
St. Johns County crews placed the marker a couple of days ago in county right of way, County Administrator Michael Wanchick said. Wanchick learned today that the marker was missing after crews checked on the site to make sure it was ready for the event.
“Just collectively, we feel rather embarrassed this happened in our community,” Wanchick said.
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Chuck Mulligan said Friday evening that a dive team planned to search for the marker.
Floyd and Regina Phillips run the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center, a black history museum that is part of the project. The Saturday event will still go on as planned, they said.
“The show will go on. We’re not going to allow this negative thing to impact (the event),” Floyd Phillips said.
The event will still begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at 10000 Shands Pier Road in St. Johns. Wanchick said the county was making a temporary marker for the event.
Despite their decision to press on, Floyd and Regina Phillips expressed their dismay at the apparent vandalism.
“We thought we were moving toward some kind of reconciliation. ... Now (the marker) has been destroyed,” Regina Phillips said.
Floyd Phillips said, “It just goes to show how things are in this country right now. They were bad back in the 1800s when he was lynched. ... It seems that to some extent things aren’t a whole lot better today in St. Johns County for African-Americans.”
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, officers detained Barrett after he was accused of assaulting his white employer’s family during an argument over money they owed to Barrett.
“While officers were transporting Mr. Barrett to the local magistrate, a mob of [12] armed, masked white men abducted him in the Orangedale area (in St. Johns County) and hanged him from an oak tree along the riverbank in a nearby wooded area,” according to the release.
Press reports indicated that Barrett had confessed. But “black people who questioned or challenged their employers about unfair treatment were often subject to violent responses. Moreover, accusations against black people were rarely subject to scrutiny; therefore, in many cases the mere suggestion of black-on-white misconduct provoked mob violence and lynchings before the judicial system could or would act.”
The Equal Justice Initiative has documented thousands of lynchings in the South from 1877 to 1950, according to the release.
“Of the group, at least 313 of these women, men, and children were lynched in the state of Florida and [one] was lynched in St. Johns County, Isaac Barrett.”
From The Times Union and St. Augustine Record:
Historic markers stolen from St. Augustine civil rights sites
Historic markers memorializing two sites important to St. Augustine’s civil rights movement of the 1960s were ripped off their buildings over the past few weeks.
Members of the historic city’s black community are searching for the markers and whoever took them as someone offered to “gladly donate $$” on St. Augustine’s ACCORD (Anniversary to Commemorate the Civil Rights Demonstrations) Freedom Trail Facebook page to replace them quickly.
The markers, two of 31 along the Freedom Trail, commemorate significant sites where people fought for racial equality. ACCORD was begun in 2003 after discussions on ways to honor the anniversary of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 visit to St. Augustine to lead a nonviolent campaign against segregation and discrimination. A few months later the Civil Rights Act was enacted to outlaw discrimination.
One of the missing markers was at 64 Washington St. in Lincolnville, once headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the civil rights movement. The other marked the home of dentist R.B. Hayling, a major civil rights leader.
ACCORD Civil Rights Museum project manager Gwen Duncan, also the group’s president emeritus, said it is unknown what happened to the markers and that others are being checked to make sure nothing has happened to them. But she is bluntly honest about the community reaction to their theft, feeling they were deliberately taken only a year or so after someone tried to set the museum on fire and damaged another marker at a Bridge Street Freedom Trail site.
“I know we are living in some turbulent times and there are people who are very angry, even about these Confederate markers,” Duncan said. “It has all come to the forefront: the anger and the hatred. ... This has reared its ugly head, and those who felt this way before feel free to bring that to the forefront again. I believe segregationists are behind it.”
The Washington Street address also was the home of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s first executive director, John Tilley. It also housed the barber shop of city civil rights pioneer Ernest Wells and a grocery store operated by Chris Lightburn, co-founder of the annual Lincolnville Festival in 1979, Freedom Trail officials said.
Duncan said it looks like someone “ripped it off the building,” although no one who works there remembers when it was taken, only that someone noticed it missing more than a week ago.
The other marker was standing in the front yard of a green house at 8 Dr. R.B. Hayling Place, which has been under renovation recently, Duncan said. Hayling became the leader of the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, even inviting King to visit the city. The home was targeted for racist attacks that saw the family dog killed and his wife shot at. The street was renamed for the civil rights leader in 2003, proclaiming him “Father of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Duncan said a neighbor noticed the front lawn marker missing a few weeks ago after asking contractors remodeling the home to be careful about it.
Duncan said the Facebook posting offering to pay for the missing markers’ replacement is gratefully appreciated.
“There are people who are concerned and are sympathetic to our cause,” Duncan said. “All we were doing was trying to bring awareness to what happened in the 1960s. Our mission was to remember all those who risked their lives and celebrate our role in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Dan Scanlan: (904) 359-4549
No comments:
Post a Comment