Beach Wade Ins

In the summer of 1964—one year after Martin Luther King Jr. declared his dream of equality for all—that dream seemed far out of reach in St. Augustine, Florida. Businesses and beaches remained segregated by Jim Crow Laws, excluding African Americans from many places in town.

Robert B. Hayling, a local dentist and advisor for the city’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council coordinated with King to organize repeated sit ins and civil rights marches in protest of community segregation. These peaceful demonstrations took place at local restaurants, hotels, and pools, and spread quickly to nearby beaches, which were frequently separated on the basis of race.

These “wade ins” occurred throughout the South in the months leading up to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964--and even after the act's passage as cities continued to entertain the idea of racial segregation. 

The wade in depicted here took place at St. Augustine Beach on June 23, 1964. A group of integrationists--demonstrators who supported integration--walked onto a whites-only beach.

White segregationists, supportive of Jim Crow laws, met them at the tide line. Violence erupted.

Local integrationist Purcell Conway said he and his group of friends were surrounded by white segregationists after only five minutes of stepping foot onto the beach. Many threats were directed at Conway and his companions and one white individual punched Conway in the face with what seemed to be brass knuckles. A white woman integrationist had her nose broken and acid was thrown in the face of a teenage girl. Another said her home was surrounded afterwards and she was called a "traitor to her white race." When asked why she joined protests amid this intimidation, she stated: "because I don't want my children to grow up and be bigots."

Another integrationist whom Dr. King had personally invited to the event, Reverend Elizabeth J. Miller, was pushed into the ocean by white women demonstrators and promptly beaten with rubber clogs. The women, she said, shouted "unprintable obscenities" at her. She, like many others, rose above such hatred. "[T]he white klansmen were in their own chain of hatred," she said, "only the Negroes are free."

Miller reported that police did not intervene until other demonstrators began to throw their bodies on top of hers in order to protect her from the blows. Local law enforcement was often ineffective at curbing the violence that broke out at demonstrations. On some occasions, they intentionally allowed white segregationists the opportunity to hurt African American protestors.

St. Augustine’s local police force had strong ties to the city’s Ku Klux Klan which influenced their reaction to civil rights demonstrations. After violence had repeatedly broken out due to increasing racial tensions in St. Augustine and officers began to grow significantly overwhelmed, Florida State Troopers were sent out to the coastal city. These troopers assisted demonstrators in successfully entering the water by fighting off many white segregationists and effectively clearing the beach before allowing demonstrators to enter the surf.