Publisher's Synopsis
This title presents an insider's record of the St. Augustine Civil Rights drama.This memoir recounts the struggle against segregation in St. Augustine, Florida, in the early and mid 1960s. In the summer of 1964, the nation's oldest city became the center of the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King Jr., encouraged by President Johnson's support of Civil Rights legislation, chose this tourism-driven community as an ideal location to demonstrate the injustice of discrimination and the complicity of southern leaders in its enforcement.St. Augustine was planning an elaborate celebration of its founding, and expected generous federal and state support. But when the kick-off dinner was announced only whites were invited, and local black leaders protested. The affair alerted the national civil rights leadership to the St. Augustine situation as well as fueling local black resentment.Ferment in the city grew, convincing King to bring his influence to the leadership of the local struggle. As King and his allies fought for the right to demonstrate, a locally powerful Ku Klux Klan counter-demonstrated. Conflict ensued between civil rights activists, local and out-of-town, and segregationists, also home-grown and imported. The intransigence of local authorities led Florida's governor to send Daytona Beach attorney Dan Warren to St. Augustine as state attorney with power to impanel grand juries and act as a representative of the state in hope of bringing about a peaceful conclusion. This is an inside view of a sympathetic middleman put in the difficult position of attempting to bring reason and dialog into a volatile situation.
