ACCORD’S FREEDOM TRAIL OPENS IN ST. AUGUSTINE

By Shirley Bryce (Retired History Teacher and Senior Advisor for ACCORD, Inc.)

The sign above the doors at 31 King Street in downtown St. Augustine, Florida, reads Atlantis Resort Wear and Gifts, but the door handles still carry the legend Woolworth’s, thus continuing to mark one of the most significant sites in the long struggle for civil rights in the nation’s oldest European town. Here, on July 18th, 1963, a group of black teen-agers, including 7 juveniles, staged a sit-in at the lunch counter of this popular store. It was a store that was happy to accept their money for purchases of goods, but would not allow them to eat a hamburger at the counter. When they refused to leave they were arrested and jailed. When four of the juveniles refused to promise never to demonstrate for their civil rights again until they were 21, they were sent to reform schools where they remained for six months. The anger of the black community of St. Augustine at this treatment of their children was the catalyst that galvanized the community into the determined actions that brought the civil rights demonstrations in the town to national prominence. Their efforts and sacrifices provided the final impetus to securing the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

On June 29, 2007, David Nolan and George Smith fastened a handsome marker to the coquina rock pillar beside those doors. The marker told the story of those youngsters. It was the last of 10 markers Nolan and Smith had installed that day, each one telling of a significant place or event in the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s in this town. George Smith is a veteran of those demonstrations. David Nolan is a prominent local historian who has agitated and advocated for more than a decade to have these important historical sites recognized. He is a founding member of 40th ACCORD (40th Anniversary to Commemorate the Civil Rights Demonstrations), the organization responsible for bringing this latest acknowledgment of the debt owed to the veterans of those demonstrations. He served as Co-Chairman along with Priscilla Duncan of the Freedom Trail Project. For the next three days, Nolan led trolley train tours of the sites to inaugurate the Freedom Trail of Historical Civil Rights Landmarks. Now, visitors to the city can take a self-guided tour of this first phase of The Freedom Trail with the use of brochures and maps provided by ACCORD and available at the visitor center and Chamber of Commerce building.

The elegant markers, made of a weatherproof laminate, each contains a relevant photo. They were made possible through a very generous grant from Northrup Grumman, the aircraft manufacturer. Northrup Grumman has been a supporter and friend of ACCORD’s goals since the organization was founded in 2003.

In addition to the marker installed beside the doors of the old Woolworth’s store, markers are now on view at such spots as what was then the home of Dr. Robert Hayling, leader of the St. Augustine movement, as well as at his office which became the local headquarters. Martin Luther King wrote to Robert Hayling after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “Our nation responded in humble compliance to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 largely because of the movement which you headed in our nation’s oldest city.” A marker is at the Washington Street headquarters of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and there is one at Zion Baptist, one of many churches where rallies were held prior to the marches to the downtown plaza. William Kuntzler, civil rights attorney, spoke there. Later, in a poem, he congratulated St. Augustinians for their role in bringing ‘an end to an evil era’. “Sometimes,” he wrote, “it takes the courage of a few to teach the rest of us what to do.”

Other markers are at the homes of the ordinary citizens of St. Augustine who provided shelter to the leaders and demonstrators, at great risk to their homes and their lives. The three day celebration of the opening of Phase One of the Freedom Trail culminated on July 2nd, 2007 with a luncheon “Honoring True American Heroes” at the Casa Monica Hotel in downtown St. Augustine. It was an appropriate date, as it was on July 2, 1964, that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination in all places open to the public. Over 100 guests helped to honor civil rights veterans Cora Tyson, Dr. Charles McIntosh, and George Conway and family.

Gwen Duncan, President of ACCORD, introduced the keynote speaker, Attorney Dan Warren, of Daytona Beach, Florida. Warren was the State Attorney, 7th Judicial Circuit, from 1962 to 1968. He was assigned by Governor Ferris Bryant to “handle the St. Augustine racial crisis in 1964”. Working closely with Dr. King and SCLC and moderate white city leaders, Warren was instrumental in getting a Grand Jury convened to start an interracial dialogue to stop the violence. In the forward to Warren’s soon to be released book, If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States Rights in St. Augustine, 1964, civil rights attorney, Morris Dees, states:

For the first time in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, a political insider reveals an eye witness account of the relationship between money, law, and a white power structure that virtually shut Blacks out of the social and economic life of the nation’s oldest city….Warren’s innovative use of the grand Jury to start a dialogue between the Black community and moderates in the White community is a gratifying account of moral and political courage.

Warren began his address referring to the fact that 43 years ago, the nation’s “oldest terrorist organization, the KU Klux Klan”, gathered across the street, only 300 feet from where he now stood, and with impunity declared their intention to secure ‘white supremacy’ by any means necessary. He described the development of a coordinated movement by the blacks of this city to challenge the Klan and secure their rights and how he became involved in the struggle. He gave a vivid account of his memory of the night of June 19th, 1964, when he stood, "... in the darkness of a side street with a state policeman, listening to the soft sounds of hundreds of feet coming from the west, heading toward the slave market on the plaza. Then they came into sight - young people and children, walking in silence, two by two, holding hands. They walked knowing that danger and pain awaited them at the hands of a raging mob of Klansmen, armed with bricks, chains and wooden cudgels. And still they walked on. It was an inspiring and heroic act and that scene will be forever etched in my memory,“ Warren said.

After an in depth description of the political and legal maneuverings that culminated in the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, Warren concluded by declaring that the struggle is not over, the debt of 300 years of slavery and segregation unpaid. He proposed that “the only way we as a nation can honestly atone for the brutal acts of degradation that we as a society have inflicted upon Blacks is to enact an equal opportunity education bill. A bill that would recognize the effects that segregation has had on young Blacks, such as the Congress did for veterans after World War II.”

The celebration ended with the leaders of ACCORD reminding the audience that the ten markers now in place are only Phase One of a planned Three-Phase project. They intend to install thirty markers to make St. Augustine’s Freedom Trail an important destination for any who would honor those people who changed the very nature of American society. They are actively seeking sponsors for the next twenty signs.