Three cheers for our local civil rights heroes and sheroes. Good article by Noah Hertz, on suitable honor for Lincolnville civil rights heroes George and Ollie Smith. During 1963-64, sone one thousand diverse people were arrested here for peaceful civil rights picketing, helping lead to 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed into law on July 2, 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The victims of 1000 false arrests by St. Augustine and St. Johns County lawmen triumphed in glory, watching the Civil Rights Act enacted and seeing their false arrests vindicated. Lawyers led by the late William Kuntsler removed 1000 cases to United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jacksonville, where District Court Judge Bryan Simpson dismissed them all. Three cheers for our local civil rights heroes and sheroes. As LJB said after Selma, "And we SHALL overcome!"
New Lincolnville park honors two ‘unsung heroes’
A park opened Thursday in St. Augustine named for two of the little-known pillars of the historically Black Lincolnville community.
George and Ollie Smith are pillars of the Lincolnville community, known for their always-open door. Outside of it, even in St. Augustine, they aren’t so well known.
The couple moved to St. Augustine in the 1950s. George worked for years as a teacher at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, and Ollie operated a convenience store.
Their Lincolnville home served as a safe refuge for community members and activists during not just the tumult of the Civil Rights Movement, but long after it too.
The Smiths — and generations of their family — got their due Thursday with the opening of a new park in their name in the Lincolnville neighborhood — Lincolnville Park, in honor of Ollie and George Smith.
The ceremony to officially open the park was well attended not just by St. Augustine city officials, but by generations of the Smith family including 91-year-old patriarch George, his children, and their children and grandchildren.
For George Smith, he said it was an honor to be recognized for his family’s role in the community. He only wished his wife, Ollie, who passed away earlier this year, were around to see it.
Decades after the couple housed activists during the 1964 Freedom Summer, their children still proudly share stories of George and Ollie marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he came to St. Augustine, and opening their doors for anyone who needed it.
Sixty years later, George Smith still vividly remembers when someone opposed to integration threw a molotov cocktail at their home.
‘Helping people’ in Lincolnville
Speaking with Jacksonville Today, Smith boiled his family’s legacy down to its bare essentials: “helping people.”
That legacy is important to the Smith family.
Nyk, one of George and Ollie’s daughters, owns a local store, Corner Market, in the same Lincolnville building where her mom used to own and operate a convenience store.
Now, with a park bearing their name, the Smiths will be memorialized for decades to come. They were among the first to enjoy it once the family cut the ceremonial ribbon marking its opening.
“We’re honored,’ Nyk Smith said. “We know that it took a little effort and time, but they did a beautiful job. I’m so happy with the outcome.”
The 2,000-square-foot pocket park features benches, chess and checker boards and a custom-designed entryway made with a coquina material meant to evoke St. Augustine’s iconic fort and bridge.
The park is even filled with native plants, an environmental benefit and a nod to Ollie Smith’s love of gardening.
Details like that make the park a “labor of love,” said Jamie Perkins, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency Manager.
Perkins has been involved with the park’s planning since before a shovel even touched what used to be the vacant grassy lot at 81 Weeden Street.
“Looking at the final results, I must say, I am extremely proud to see this park included in the city’s already thriving inventory of pocket parks,” she said.
It’s all in service of acknowledging two of Lincolnville’s “unsung heroes,” City Commissioner Barbara Blonder said.
“It is my hope that when people visit Lincolnville Park, in honor of George and Ollie Smith, that they reflect on the beauty and perseverance, the people and history of this great community, and how their own contributions can truly make a difference, even when the light isn’t being shone on them,” she said.
For more about the Smith family, read Ollie Smith’s oral history about her family’s involvement with the Civil Rights Movement on the Civil Rights Movement Archive website.
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