If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States' Rights in St. Augustine, 1964

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Introduction

In the summer of 1964, as the elected state attorney for Florida's Seventh Judicial Circuit, a huge circuit that included St. Augustine, I watched as the nation's oldest city became the final battleground in the long struggle for passage of a meaningful civil rights bill. Die-hard segregationists, who believed that the War between the States had been fought but not lost, opposed any concession to equality for black citizens. They were quickly joined in the fight by the Klan, the nation's oldest homegrown terrorist organization.

The Lost Cause myth—which proclaims that southerners fought the Civil War not to maintain the peculiar institution but to preserve the sanctity of states' rights and emphasizes battlefield glory instead of Confederate defeat—was very much alive in St. Augustine. In the previous summer, the flames of hatred and prejudice that lay smoldering in the ashes of a burned-out system of customs and beliefs suddenly burst forth and became a raging fire.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously settled city in the United States. In 1564 Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles of Spain seized Ft. Caroline, located near the mouth of the St. Johns River, from the French. A year later he founded a city some thirty-five miles to the south, which he named St. Augustine.¹ On March 11, 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was the speaker at a dinner held in St. Augustine to organize the new Quadricentennial Commission, established by Congress to plan the elaborate celebration in 1965 for the four hundredth anniversary of the city's founding. There was one flaw in plans for the dinner: it failed to include blacks.

The deliberate exclusion of a major segment of the city's citizens doomed the celebration from the start. The committee's carefully laid plans to encourage a flood of tourists, and their dollars, to attend the event would collapse in chaos. Martin Luther King Jr. and legions of his devoted followers would come as uninvited guests steeled with the determination to end segregation in the business community, the city, and the county. It would also bring the Ku Klux Klan to the nation's oldest city. The Klan would be more welcome than King.

On May 5, 1964, after a hard-fought campaign for reelection to the office of state attorney, I was drawn into the escalating crisis and faced my own moral and legal dilemma. In telling the story from my vantage point as the top law enforcement official in the circuit, I have tried to be as true to events as possible. In retelling the events that occurred in St. Augustine in 1963 and 1964, I have relied not only on my memory but also on eyewitness testimony of others who experienced these same events, and on a scrapbook of newspaper accounts of the day that my wife, Mary, kept. I had also prepared a thirty-nine-page outline of a book that I hoped to write one day and dictated two hours of my thoughts onto a cassette tape. I have cross-referenced the stories about the St. Augustine crisis published in the Daytona Beach News-Journal with those of the St. Augustine Record, as well as other newspaper accounts from around the state. I have also drawn liberally from the archives of the St. Augustine Historical Society.

The founders of this nation knew they were speaking to future generations when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Slavery was an important economic force in the new nation for both the North and South, but the founding fathers knew the issue of slavery could destroy the noble experiment in self-government. Yet they could not muster the will of the nation to address the issue. For Thomas Jefferson, the problem of slavery was a blot on the nation's character as ominous as the dangers faced by the republic during the American Revolution. This thought, which he described as a firebell in the night, filled him with foreboding. As Jefferson observed, We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other.²

The troubling question of why so many southern leaders clung to segregation for so long after the Civil War and even after the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution was still unanswered when the civil rights crisis first broke over St. Augustine in 1963. These amendments were passed to ensure full citizenship to the newly freed slaves, but despite their passage, little changed in the South. On the blood-soaked battleground of Gettysburg, President Lincoln confidently predicted that the nation would experience a new birth of freedom.³ But it would be another hundred years before the collective will of the people would finally be heard clearly enough in Congress to force passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In February 1965, shortly after the crisis had subsided, I wrote an account of my impressions in preparation for a speech I had been invited to give at Boston University. Oddly, the speech was widely publicized through the courtesy of the Citizens' Council, which paid for a full-page advertisement in the St. Augustine Record that contained most of the speech. The Council stated it was published to advise citizens of St. Johns County what their state attorney was saying about them in Boston. Meanwhile, I had already forwarded a copy of the speech to Mabel Chesley, an associate editor for the Daytona Beach News-Journal. I intended for the speech to be published on the same day I delivered it in Boston. As I spoke to the students and faculty of Boston University's College of Law and School of Theology, I wanted the citizens of St. Johns County to know exactly what I was saying.

In preparing my remarks I made a chronological list of the critical events and an outline for an account I hoped one day to write about the racial crisis. Later, I was interviewed by David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Leadership Conference, and by David R. Colburn, author of Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877–1980. It is from these various sources that I have framed the setting for my story, confident that this account accurately portrays the events as they occurred and provides a context for my emotions and thoughts at the time.

When quoting or paraphrasing from contemporary accounts, I use the racial terms of the day because they reflect the general attitude toward race that prevailed in St. Augustine at the time. In all other contexts, I use black and white" to denote race. In keeping with generally accepted practices of scholarly publishing, I have omitted courtesy titles except when they elucidate a person's profession (e.g., Judge Mathis, Sheriff Davis) or when a woman is referred to in the sources by her husband's name (e.g., Mrs. L. B. Mosley). Some of the people involved in the St. Augustine events were personal acquaintances of mine, and in those instances I have referred to them by first name (e.g., George [George Allen]).

More than forty years have passed since those tumultuous days and nights when the nation's attention was focused on the struggles in St. Augustine. The overt racism of many in the South, determined to maintain segregation at any cost, has disappeared only to mutate into newer, less obvious forms of discrimination. The new manifestations of discriminatory practices that swept the South in response to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 challenge a new generation of Americans to seek a solution to lingering racial antagonism.

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In 1967, I resigned as state attorney, gave up my quest to run for Congress, and reentered private practice. During the ensuing years I devoted all my energies to defending those charged with crimes and providing for a growing family that eventually numbered seven children. St. Augustine always remained in my mind, and as the years passed, I became convinced that racism was not dead; it was very much alive in our legal and social institutions. To me, repressive and hypocritical laws designed to fight the nation's so-called war on drugs are directly related to new forms of racism, which are evident in the disparity in the sentences given black offenders. Racism is also apparent in racial profiling by law enforcement.

History was my major at Guilford College and has always been my first love. Nonetheless, I make no pretense of being a historian, only a witness. The views expressed in this book are the ones I held at the time, buttressed, I hope, by the wisdom that comes with age. Here is a personal account of the struggle for equality that occurred in St. Augustine and a southern lawyer's view of how that struggle gave meaning to the promises of equality made more than two centuries ago.

1 Protest and Reaction

In 1964 St. Augustine became a battleground in America's unfinished Civil War. That war had been fought to preserve the Union and bring a measure of equality to millions who had been held in slavery. At the end of that great struggle, it was the fervent hope of the nation that passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments would end the nightmare of slavery. It was not to be. Instead, slavery was replaced with a degrading form of second-class citizenship: segregation.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city in the nation, and 1965 would mark the four hundredth year of its founding. In March 1963 city fathers planned an elaborate dinner to dedicate the first phase of restoring the old section of St. Augustine, called the Avero restoration area. The vice president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, had been invited to deliver the welcoming address. But no blacks were among the local luminaries and prominent citizens invited to attend the momentous occasion. This exclusion of a large portion of the community set off a series of events that ultimately brought Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to St. Augustine.

Congress had passed a resolution in 1962 authorizing the establishment of a Quadricentennial Commission to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine. The resolution called for the appointment of two members of the commission from the House, two from the Senate, and one from the Department of the Interior; the remaining members were to be appointed by the president. The House appointed Florida representatives D. R. Matthews and William C. Cramer; the Senate, Florida senators George Smathers and Spessard Holland. Conrad Wirth, director of the National Park Service, was the Interior appointee. In March 1963 President John F. Kennedy appointed the remaining members: Henry Ford II from Detroit; J. Peter Grace, from New York City; Joseph P. Hurley, from St. Augustine; Herbert E. Wolfe from St. Augustine; Edward Litchfield from Pittsburgh; and Charles Clark from Washington D.C.¹ However, Congress failed to provide funds for the commission's work.

In May 1963 Senators Holland and Smathers introduced a bill authorizing a federal appropriation of $350,000 dollars to help finance the city's four hundredth anniversary celebration.² Despite the use of state and federal funds, no one from the black community was invited to attend nor was any black appointed to the commission. Incensed over the promoters' insensitivity in ignoring one-quarter of the city's population, civil rights activists conducted a series of protests that ignited the final battle in the efforts to achieve passage of a meaningful Civil Rights Act.

At the time, the events taking place in St. Augustine had little significance for me. But for civil rights activists in St. Augustine, such as Fannie Fulwood and Elizabeth Hawthorne, president and secretary, respectively, of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the exclusion of blacks from this historical celebration was an undemocratic act unworthy of financial support from the federal government. During Vice President Lyndon Johnson's March 12 visit to St. Augustine, his chief of staff had agreed to intercede with local officials and to set up a meeting between members of the local chapter of the NAACP and the city commissioners of St. Augustine to air their complaints. That promise was not kept.

On May 7, 1963, they sent a heartfelt letter to President Kennedy. Since St. Augustine is the nation's oldest city we feel democracy should work here, they wrote. Calling the president's attention to the fact that St. Augustine still maintains segregated public facilities, public schools and that Negroes are employed as laborers or in manual jobs by the city and county, let us prove to the Communists and the entire world that America's oldest city can truly be a showcase of democracy. They also reminded the president of promises made by George Reedy, the vice president's chief of staff, to intercede with local officials, complaining that the city commission failed to keep its promise for a meeting with a Delegation of Negro Citizens the day after Mr. Johnson's visit. In closing they pleaded, our organization will await your advice and assistance in correcting these conditions.³

Their plea was in vain. The president did not respond. The city, however, was shocked that two local leaders of the NAACP would ask that federal funds be withheld from a national celebration to honor the nation's oldest city. The mayor, James E. Lindley, released their letter to the press as he and other members of the city commission left for Washington to attend the first working session of the all-white Quadricentennial Commission. He did not respond to the NAACP's request that two black members be added to the commission.

The NAACP had an active branch in St. Augustine. Two of its members, Robert B. Hayling, a local dentist, and Goldie Eubanks, a minister, were outspoken critics of the racist policies of the city. Hayling, an adviser to the Youth Council of the NAACP, had recruited members from the local black college and from the community to demonstrate against the failure of the county and city to fully desegregate its public facilities.⁴ Hayling and Eubanks strongly resented the city's segregation policies and deeply felt the snub to the black community of not being included in plans for the quadricentennial celebrations. Both were fearless, in Hayling's case, perhaps even to the point of recklessness.

They represented a more militant approach to the civil rights movement than the moderate stance usually taken by the NAACP, and not even a direct appeal from NAACP president Roy Wilkins not to disrupt the proceedings could deter Hayling from taking direct action.⁵ Along with other local NAACP members, he and Eubanks responded to the snub by threatening to organize a picket during the dinner. To emphasize their determination, they urged the president of the local chapter of the NAACP, Fannie Fulwood, to send a telegram to Vice President Johnson to alert him to the fact that the dinner was a segregated affair and members of the black community were not welcome. This had the desired effect, especially when the vice president learned that city officials were seeking federal funds for the celebration.

When the vice president announced he would not attend the dinner if blacks were not included, the committee reluctantly agreed to invite twelve, although those invited were required to sit at segregated tables.⁶ This public snub and the failure of city commissioners to meet with members of the NAACP increased the growing racial tensions in the city. City officials finally agreed to hear their grievances and set a meeting time in May. When members of the NAACP arrived, they found only the city manager on hand to meet them, with a tape recorder so they could air their complaints to the city commissioners. They did so, pouring out their recorded complaints as if the commissioners were personally present. Commissioners finally met with the committee on Sunday, June 16, 1963, but some members were abrasive and accused the demonstrators of being led by Communists or the Kennedys who, they said, were behind the civil rights drive.⁷

This further fueled Hayling's outrage and he heatedly promised to fight the practice of segregation in St. Augustine until my last dime is gone.⁸ It was not an idle threat. Ultimately segregation would be eliminated from the city's businesses, but the price Hayling paid was high. He gave up his practice in St. Augustine and in 1965 moved to Cocoa Beach. Hayling was one of a new breed of young black civil rights activists who were tired of waiting for long-overdue equality. Hayling had the courage and determination to commit all his financial resources to end segregation in the city, even at the expense of losing his practice.

In 1960, recently discharged from the air force as a lieutenant, Hayling had purchased the active and profitable practice of Rudolph Gordon, the only black dentist in St. Augustine. It was said that Gordon had as many white patients as blacks, and he was a well-respected member of the community. Hayling initially retained most of Gordon's white patients. But that changed when he took the lead in efforts to end segregation in the city. After the death of Medgar Evers, field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, Hayling issued a statement saying that passive resistance is no good in the face of violence. I and others of the NAACP have armed ourselves and we will shoot first and ask questions later.⁹ His practice began to suffer as the white power structure turned its fury on him and others in the community who advocated any means necessary to end segregation in the