History of St. Augustine

lent protesters for participating in peaceful picket lines, sit-ins, and marches. Homes of blacks were firebombed, black leaders were assaulted and threatened with death, and others were fired from their jobs.

In the spring of 1964, St. Augustine civil rights leader Robert Hayling asked the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its leader Martin Luther King, Jr. for assistance. From May until July 1964, they carried out marches, sit-ins, and other forms of peaceful protest in St. Augustine. Hundreds of black and white civil rights supporters were arrested, and the jails were filled to overflowing. At the request of Hayling and King, white civil rights supporters from the North, including students, clergy, and well-known public figures, came to St. Augustine and were arrested together with southern activists.

The KKK responded with violent attacks that were widely reported in national and international media. Popular revulsion against the Klan violence generated national sympathy for the black protesters and became a key factor in Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which were to provide federal enforcement of constitutional rights.

In 2010, Andrew Young, who was a civil rights activist and former US ambassador to the United Nations, premiered his movie, Crossing in St. Augustine, about the 1964 struggles against Jim Crow segregation in the city. Young is working to establish a National Civil Rights Museum in the city. It could be part of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore.

Modern era

The city is a popular travel destination for its Spanish colonial-era buildings as well as