STATEMENT
OF STAUGUSTGREENTM, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA BEFORE THE
U.S.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES IN SUPPORT OF
NOMINATION OF SALLY JEWELL FOR SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, AND
PROMPT
ACTION ON ST. AUGUSTINE 450th COMMEMORATION COMMISSION AND
ST.
AUGUSTINE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK AND NATIONAL SEASHORE
MARCH
7, 2013
Chairman Wyden, Senator
Murkowski, ENR Committee members:
StAugustGreenTM
supports the nomination of Sally Jewell to be America's 51st
Secretary of the Interior. As the businesswoman and engineer who ran
the $1.8 billion/year Recreation Equipment, Inc. (REI) Co-Op and the
Vice Chair of the National Parks and Conservation Association
(NPCA),, we know Ms. Jewell treasures the health, spiritual, wealth
and job creation values of outdoor recreation. Our National Parks are
truly “America's Best Idea,” as Ken Burns' acclaimed PBS series
established, quoting Wallace Stegner. As Secretary of the Interior,
we know that Sally Jewell will help preserve, protect and expand our
National Parks, which help create more than 6.5 million American
jobs.
StAugustGreenTM
supports the creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and
National Seashore. See www.staugustgreen.com.
StAugustGreenTM
urges you to ask Ms. Jewell about reviving the moribund St.
Augustine 450th Commemoration
Commission. The 450th
Commission was created by Congress in 2009, but it still has no
appropriation and is stalled.
We are grateful that Secretary Ken Salazar heard and heeded our July
15, 2009 call for a diverse, knowledge-based Commission as required
by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA): appointed April 15,
2011, its members are diverse people with expertise in Florida,
Hispanic, Native American, African-American and Civil Rights history,
nature and National Parks, including former Senator Bob Graham, Rev.
Andrew Young, Robert Stanton, Bruce Smathers, Gordy Wilson, Jay
Kislak, Fr. Tom Willis, Mayor Joseph Boles, Eduardo Padrơn,
professors, et al. The 450th
Commission lacks the $500,000 Congress authorized but
never appropriated – it urgently needs it to do its job. The
450th Commission must be funded, start complying with FACA, stop
holding secret telephone meetings in violation of FACA, reject the
DoI Solicitor's erroneous 2011 conclusion of non-existent FACA
exemption (as “operational committee”) and hold thoughtful
meetings on conservation and protecting our history and natural
resources, e.g. St. Augustine National Historical Park and National
Seashore.
In 1939, the St. Augustine National
Historical Park and National Seashore Act was introduced during the
76th Congress, supported by then-Mayor Walter Fraser,
introduced by then-Representative Joseph Hendricks and then-Senators
Charles Andrews and Claude Pepper to conserve this wonderfully unique
place. That was 74 years ago. What
exactly are we waiting for? St. Augustine deserves
its rightful place. St. Augustine's story is our Nation's story.
Diverse people lived, learned from each other and prospered here
since 1565. Our Nation's oldest continually-occupied,
European-founded City, St. Augustine has a rich history of cultural
diversity – America's original melting pot since 1565. Many never
learn this in schools, where British-centrism prevails. The story of
the United States began in St. Augustine on September 8, 1565: the
800 colonizers included the first Hispanic-Americans, first
African-Americans (freed and slave), first Catholics, first Jews and
first women from Europe, along with many other firsts in what is now
the United States. That was 42 years
before Jamestown,Virginia and 55 years
before Plymouth, Massachusetts. University of Florida History
Professor Michael Gannon says, “When
Jamestown was founded, St. Augustine was already up for urban
renewal.”
Chairman Wyden said
February 19, 2013 at Hanford, Washington's “B” Reactor, “there
is an old saying that those who don't remember the past are doomed to
repeat it.... My own
view is that history isn't always ideal .... it is important to look
deep into the well of history to get a clearer understanding of what
lies ahead." Sen. Wyden said Hanford and other Manhattan
Project sites “must be preserved so future generations understand
what went on here.” He said last year was the first in decades
Congress hadn't protected our “special places.”
Europe's bloody
religious wars were fought here:
Spanish, French and English forces fought for hegemony in St.
Augustine Northeast Florida. Europeans killed Europeans here, over
dogma and which empire would rule. Our Matanzas River
(“slaughters”) is named for one September 1565 event, where 270
Frenchmen were put to the sword. No monument to their memories
exists in Florida. Likewise, the “Columbian Exchange” began
here, with Native American and Europeans first interacting, sharing
and fighting for dominance. No proper interpretation or monument to
this remarkable exchange currently exists.
St. Augustine is
a very special place and deserves protection: it was
America's first in so many ways: we had the first Catholic Mass and
first Thanksgiving feast (both on September 8, 1565). St. Augustine
had America's first town plan (1586), first school, first church,
first weddings, first baptisms, first hospital, first forts, first
public square, first public market, first paved streets, first park,
first system of weights and measures, first cattle, first horses,
first pigs, first government with written records, first army and
navy, first recorded marriages (including African-Americans), first
freed slave communities, first African-American soldiers/sailors,
first African-American general and first government anti-Gay hate
crime (on Governor's orders in 1566).
St. Augustine
residents' courageous activism and litigation produced landmark
Congressional and federal court Civil Rights and First Amendment
victories (including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a
series of landmark 1963-71 federal court public accommodations and
school desegregation orders, a series of orders vindicating the
rights of artists and entertainers (buskers) in St. Augustine's
historic area, and a 2005 court order for Rainbow flags on historic
Bridge of Lions in honor of GLBT history, including the Governor's
ordering the 1566 murder of a Gay French translator of the Guale
Indian language). While the Spanish Inquisition was here to a small
degree, Spanish governors in St. Augustine never burned a single
“witch” (unlike Salem, Massachusetts counterparts). St.
Augustine was a small garrison town that beat the odds, surviving
continuously since 1565, when other European settlements were swiftly
abandoned (including the 1607 British settlement of Jamestown).
The Underground
Railroad began in St. Augustine in 1687.
Under
Spanish rule, St. Augustine grew into America's first shining bulwark
of freedom – the first Underground Railroad ran south to St.
Augustine, starting in 1687, as Spain granted freedom to any British
slaves who would become Catholics and fight for Spain. Slave revolts
resulted in several British colonies upon slaves hearing the news of
freedom in St. Augustine, Florida. The British were furious, as their
former slaves settled here in 1738 the first freed slave settlement
in America, at Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé
(Fort Mosé). The British
attacked St. Augustine in 1740, besieging it for 27 days.
Spanish-freed slaves and Spanish soldiers fought off British
invaders.
Hundreds of
British indentured servants fled to freedom in 1777.
During the 20-year British period, Menorcans, Greeks and Italians,
who were British “indentured servants” (slaves by contract), fled
to St. Augustine from the deadly failed mosquito-infested New Smyrna
indigo plantations, “voting with their feet,” walking some 70
miles to freedom in St. Augustine in 1777. Their long walk to freedom
deserves a National Historical Park, which can happen with state
donation of several current state parks along the route they walked
from New Smyrna to St. Augustine in 1777 – this should include
wonderful bird and other wildlife observation points in three
counties, already state parks. Imagine more than 130,000 acres of
NPS protected land, at the stroke of a pen, including state parks
along this freedom walk.
St. Augustine
survived genocide, wars, arson, slavery, and segregation – and is
the Oldest European-founded City in America about to observe its
450th birthday.
St. Augustine survived and outlasted slavery,
genocide of Native Americans (the Timucua tribe ceased to exist),
Jim Crow segregation, hurricanes and the British, who thrice burned
St. Augustine to the ground (1586, 1668 and 1702) and twice besieged
it (1702 and 1740). Continental America's oldest masonry fort –
Castillo de San Marcos – was started in 1672 in response to British
arson and completed in 1695. The Castillo survived two British
sieges and cannonballs with its its unique porous coquina shell
construction and artisans' nightly masonry work restoring sections
blown away by day. Great Britain owned St. Augustine for twenty years
under the two Treaties of Paris, with two peaceful transition to
British and back to Spanish rule in 1763 and 1784. Likewise, St.
Augustine survived the Civil War without a single shot – in 1861,
an Army sergeant turned over the Castillo's keys (Fort Marion),
obtaining a receipt from the Confederates. In 1862, Confederates
left peaceably when the U.S. Navy (with U.S. Marines) were sighted
offshore. The fort was used as a military prison until the
Spanish-American War in 1898 – it was a prison for selected
American Revolutionary War patriots during the British period, and
then for selected Native Americans (Osceola and fellow Seminole
warriors; Kiowa; Apaches, including members of Geronimo's band and
several of his wives) under the U.S. Army. The U.S. Government's
controversial system of Indian boarding schools began right here at
the Castillo, and was expanded to dozens of other sites around
America. These schools are rightly deserving of NPS interpretation
beyond that which was traditionally available at the Castillo.
Slavery began in St.
Augustine, Florida on September 8, 1565 – not
in Virginia in 1607, as often misreported. Jim Crow segregation
was ended by what happened here in 1964, through the courage of local
residents and visiting supporters -- the “St. Augustine Movement.”
This history deserves NPS interpretation.
In 1964, St.
Augustine's 400th
anniversary was marred by KKK segregationists, allied with local law
enforcement: their fury at peaceful Civil Rights protesters helped
President Johnson break the U.S. Senate filibuster against the 1964
Civil Rights Act. The “St.
Augustine Movement” was led by local African-American dentist Dr.
Robert B. Hayling. Dr. Hayling brought Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. and Jackie Robinson. Here. The “St. Augustine Movement” saw
the largest arrest of rabbis in American history, the Monson Motel
swim-ins, St. Augustine Beach ocean wade-ins, the beating of Rev.
Andrew Young and the arrest of Dr. King and the mother of
Massachusetts' Governor Endicott Peabody. This was all daily national
news.
White House tapes show
that in dealing with Southern Senators, President Lyndon Johnson was
empowered by the courage of “St. Augustine Movement” as much as
by the nightly revolting images and page one headlines of St.
Augustine beatings, shootings, muriatic acid poured into the
Monson Motel pool, and an iconic photo of a policeman jumping into
that pool to arrest J.T. Johnson, Al Lingo, Mamie Ford Jones, Peter
Shiras and others for swimming there. After federal court rulings,
state law enforcement (Highway Patrol and Fish and Game Commission,
supervised by courageous State's Attorney Dan Warren) finally came to
defend African-Americans, including those swimming in Atlantic Ocean
amid wade-ins. Jim Crow segregation ended because of all that had
happened in St. Augustine, Florida.
On July 2, 1964,
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Today,
women, racial and ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities and
Gay and Lesbian people are protected thanks to the courage of the St.
Augustine Movement – the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the precedent
for human rights laws worldwide. Some of our St. Augustine
neighbors who protested in 1964 survive: our elders are sharing their
wisdom with future generations and working with Rev. Andrew Young,
et. al on several different Civil Rights museums, including the
former dental office of Dr. Robert B. Hayling.
Rev. Andrew Young said it
best back in 1964: “We change history through finding the one
thing that can capture the imagination of the world. History moves
in leaps and bounds.”
Next year, in 2014,
America and St. Augustine will honor the 50th
anniversary of our1964 Civil Rights Act. We and ask that the
Committee Chair visit and advise us, and that you today urge
Secretary-designate Jewell to work with you and us to make the
anniversary meaningful, with creation of a new National Historical
Park and Seashore.
Would this be the first
National Seashore with a Civil Rights component? Under Florida laws
at the time, the Atlantic Ocean was segregated under Jim Crow
segregation. Protest wade-ins at St. Augustine Beach pier were
international news. Today, formerly segregated
African-American beaches statewide are in need of protection,
including Bethune-Volusia Beach (near New Smyrna Beach), Virginia Key
(Miami) and Bunche Beach (near Fort Myers) – may we suggest that
the Senate ENR Committee kindly address with Ms. Jewell the urgency
of preserving this history, including potential NPS status and
protection and possible sequential referral legislation denying flood
insurance to anyone destroying their historic homes?
The Secretary and the ENR
Committee must ask Ms. Jewell to commit to continue and expand
Secretary Salazar's commitments to the history of members of
long-neglected minority groups.
In particular, St.
Augustine's Native American, Hispanic, African-American and Civil
Rights history deserves greater respect from DoI. What is to be
done?
As
Admiral Hyman Rickover once said to President Jimmy Carter (then a
recent Naval Academy graduate: “Why not the best?” Why not a
public-private partnership to present St. Augustine's diverse history
to the world? How about planning with Hispanic-Americans,
Native Americans, African-Americans and other diverse groups with
NPS for the 450th? .
Could the ENR Committee
please encourage the new Secretary and the 450th
Commission to initiate immediate Town Hall discussions of the
proposed National Historical Park and National Seashore, and what it
might mean for St. Augustine?
A
much better location for an NPS Visitor Center might be the abandoned
“Sebastian Inner Harbor” project, where boat
docks have already been built before the project was abandoned. This
property is in foreclosure. Who better than Ms. Jewell, formerly WaMu
bank's chief commercial lender, to ask and get bank approval to
donate the land for a public purpose? Imagine a DOI-staffed
public-private partnership – a National Civil Rights Museum –
bordering on the San Sebastian River, site a currently bankrupt
development, symbolizing “waters that run like justice” working
waterfront, with shrimp boats (not unlike Tarpon Springs' sponge
docks), with artists and entertainers (buskers) as in Key West's
Mallory Square, with outdoor restaurants.
Currently, Native
American, Hispanic, African-American and Civil Rights history is not
given nearly enough attention in St. Augustine, either by NPS, or by
anyone else.
We treasure our wonderful
jewel of a 1672-95 Spanish fort, our Castillo de San Marcos – one
of our most-frequently visited but most interpretation-deprived
locations in the entire National Park Service. There is also the
sister fort of Fort Matanzas. There is also Fort Mosé
State Park (underfunded state park threatened with closure),
the site of first free black settlement in 1738). There is also a
lone historical marker in St. Augustine Beach for beach wade-ins.
There is a Civil Rights Foot Soldiers monument and an Andrew Young
memorial in St. Augustine's Historic Slave Market square, where
abolitionist and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson first observed
slave-selling in 1827 (with multitasking by the chair of the Bible
Society and a slave auction being conducted in the public market
across St. George Street). There is a small community history museum
in Lincolnville. That is all there is at the present time.
Like Atlanta's Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. sites, St. Augustine deserves NPS ranger
interpretation of African-American and civil Rights history at Fort
Mosé, the Slave Market
and the churches and homes of Lincolnville and West Augustine (where
Civil Rights heroes lived, worked and planned peaceful protests).
This will make history come alive, inspiring generations of future
Americans to respect equality and the people who struggled to attain
it.
The King and Queen of
Spain are coming to St. Augustine in 2014. Now, more than ever, St.
Augustine's key role in U.S. and world history deserves greater
National Park Service attention.
St. Augustine's wonderful
natural beauty likewise deserves National Park Service protection.
With all this history and
beauty, St. Augustine currently has two relatively small National
Park Service installations – Castillo de San Marco National
Monument (20.5 acres) and Fort Matanzas National Monument (some 300
acres). We can do better for future generations. With wise gifts of
state and local public lands and wise stewardship by NPS and local
residents, we will create a St. Augustine National Seashore. We will
help protect against beach erosion and flooding, protecting glorious
wetlands and beaches and private property.
We will protect the winter
calving (baby-rearing) grounds of the endangered North Atlantic Right
Whale (some 300 survive), endangered turtles' nesting grounds, and
habitats of bald eagles, beach mice, butterflies and other endangered
and threatened wildlife for future generations to enjoy. We will
rescue historic lands threatened by “Temple Destroyers” (in John
Muir's words).
Wrecking balls have
already destroyed some of our history, including a 3000-4000 year old
Native American Indian archaeological site just south of St.
Augustine (destroyed to build a strip malls and condominiums).
Florida is already blessed with some 500,000 unsold condominiums.
St. Augustine is a national treasure, which must not be destroyed by
mindless speculation and endless high rises, like South Florida.
These lands must be
protected and not neglected – state parks and forests, water
management district land, and county beaches, including Anastasia
State Park and the Guana-Tolomato-Matanzas National Estuarine
Research Reserve (GTM-NERR) – will be combined into a National
Historical Park and National Seashore in two counties, one that will
preserve at least 130,000 acres of beach and uplands, rescuing them
from threats: closing or privatizing of our parks, e.g., with golf
courses (Florida is already blessed with some 1200 golf courses,
thank you, and some of those are failing financially). Every year
since 2006, our St. Johns County Legislative Delegation has heard
us, and talked about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and
Seashore – our state legislators now know that we can save tens of
millions of dollars by giving selected state lands to the National
Park Service. Please see attached 2011 column from St.
Augustine Underground (formerly published by Milwaukee
Journal).
The St. Augustine
National Historical Park and National Seashore will help
interpret American history that is too often neglected in our
schools, including Hispanic, African-American, Native American and
Civil Rights history. We have 11,000 years of Native-American
history. NPS needs to do a better job of telling it, especially in
St. Augustine, where ethnocentrism was long on display at the
Castillo, where Native Americans were imprisoned in the 1800s.
St. Augustine has 500
years of European and African: history: a unique, multi-cultural
blend of Spanish, Roman Catholic, African-American, Jewish, Greek
Orthodox, Protestant, French, Menorcan, Greek, Italian, Irish,
Haitian, Cuban, Civil War, Flagler-era, Civil Rights, Military,
Nautical, Resort, Artistic and Musical history. Ray Charles and
Marcus Roberts learned to play music in St. Augustine, at our Florida
School for the Deaf and Blind. Many jazz musicians retire and play
here.
Our local economy is still
in the ditch, no matter what our local Chamber of Commerce says for
quotation in our local newspaper. People are hurting. Stores and
restaurants are vacant. Tourism is the engine of our economy.
Environmental and historic tourists stay twice as long and spend
twice as much, and they teach future generations of Americans to
appreciate nature and understand our history. St. Augustine is rated
as one of the best places to live, with the best schools, one of the
best places to to retire, one of the most cultured places in Florida
(Women's
Day), hosts one of the ten best
Christmas light displays in the world (National
Geographic), and is one of 20 places in the
world to see in 2013 (National
Geographic).
With National Park Service
branding, our City can recover from the Great Recession, just as
recovered in past centuries, after hurricanes, British sieges,
cannonballs and city-wide arson.
It is time for DoI to
discuss the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National
Seashore.
Our draft legislation was
called “perfect” by one of our former City Commissioners, who
worked at the CEQ and DoI under Presidents Clinton and Bush. This
was after a NPS
attorney in 2009 refused
to read our draft, while inaccurately writing that this would be
criminal, misciting 18 U.S.C. 1913.
In 2011, the DoI
Solicitor's office, in a shallow, outcome-driven letter, incorrectly
took the position that the 450th
Commission is an “operating committee,” which is not true. The
Commission is not operating anything. A junior DoI attorney wrote
the letter at the behest of Deanna Archuletta, then a DoI political
appointee, who was attempting to justify her desire for secrecy with
a slogan. Since that time, DoI has been violating the Federal
Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by having the 450th
Commission conduct h conference calls and a secret meeting in South
Florida. Enough secrecy. Enough delay. Government openness and
accountability are essential in our democracy, and DoI must
appreciate that fact.
Please ask Ms. Jewell
to agree to full FACA compliance for the 450th
Commission, including public meetings announced in advance with
meaningful public participation and court reporter transcription (as
took place at the first and only public 450th
Commission meeting in St. Augustine on July 18, 2011). During that
meeting, I requested that the Commission hear a presentation on the
St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. The
audience applauded. The presentation has not yet been scheduled.
The 450th
Commission needs to get moving. Again, what are we waiting for?
From now on, DoI staff
must open their hearts to our community, end their FACA violations
and start helping St. Augustine plan for 2014 and 2015 and beyond –
public participation is essential,
as one of our former mayors has urged. Please
ask Ms. Jewell about public participation today.
CONCLUSION
Thank
you for helping St. Augustine, Florida win the respect she deserves
from NPS and DoI. As Albert Camus said, “If you don't help us
do this, then who else in the world will help us do this?”
Secretary
of the Interior Ken Salazar, in an ad lib speech on July 18, 2011,
came close to endorsing the St. Augustine National Historical Park
and National Seashore, referring to “your National Parks here”
Let's make it a reality. Secretary Salazar said St. Augustine is
“one of our Creator's most special places,” and that its
contributions to history need to be made “known to our Nation and
the world – that history is important to tell.”
StAugustGreenTM
respectfully urges the U.S. Senate ENR Committee's support for:
A. The nomination of Sally Jewell
to be our 51st Secretary of the Interior;
B. Full funding for the St.
Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission;
and
By enacting the St.
Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore legislation,
we will conserve, preserve and protect nature, property and history,
right wrongs, promote healing and teach tolerance. Our work is
bipartisan, and will create another “public park or
pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” as
Congress wrote in establishing Yellowstone National Park on March 1,
1872 – 131 years ago. Will you please support “America's Best
Idea” – a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National
Seashore – the best “legacy project” for the 500th
anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), 450th anniversary
of St. Augustine (2015) and 50th anniversary of the 1964
Civil Rights Act (2014)?
Thank you.
Respectfully
submitted,
ED SLAVIN
StAugustGreenTM.
PO. Box 3084, St. Augustine, Florida
32085-3084
904-377-4998
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