Overview of St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement
The city of St. Augustine, Florida, drew national attention in the spring of 1964. The St. Augustine movement, part of the greater civil rights movement across the nation, gained prominence from 1963-1964, with major events in the city’s long history aiding in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
At the heart of the St. Augustine movement were the city’s foot soldiers: citizens who, in the face of physical violence, economic oppression, and unnumerable dangers, persisted against racial discrimination. Through marching, picketing, sitting-in at restaurants, wading-in at beaches, swimming-in at pools, and more, residents participated in one of the most trivial and significant eras of St. Augustine’s past.
Four years before St. Augustine’s Flagler College was founded, the then-segregated Hotel Ponce de Leon was the scene for one of the city’s infamous protests. In March 1964, over 100 students from the all-Black Richard J. Murray High School walked out of classes and entered the hotel. It was St. Augustine’s first attempt at a mass sit-in during its civil rights campaign.
In the summer of 1964. Dr. Martin Luther King’s presence in St. Augustine resulted in increased resistance and heightened media attention. He was arrested in June on the steps of the Monson Motor Lodge for trying to eat in the motel’s whites-only restaurant: the only place in Florida where King was arrested.
The Monson Motor Lodge was also host to the nationally-known swim-in demonstration on June 18, 1964, in which the motel owner poured muriatic acid onto black and white demonstrators swimming together in the motel’s whites-only pool. A day later, the Civil Rights Act was passed after a 54-day filibuster in the Senate.
Through beach wade-ins, the integration of the Monson pool, the Murray High School walkout, and the dual presence of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Ku Klux Klan, the St. Augustine campaign was among the most influential and historically significant of the civil rights movements in the United States.
Written by Casey Niebuhr, Digital Humanities Intern 2021.