When you imagine the iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement...
Maybe, the march from Selma to Montgomery,
lunch counter sit-ins,
or bus boycotts across the country.
But...what about this?
Or this?
What happened in the waters of St. Augustine, Florida,
was one of the most critical campaigns in the movement to desegregate the US.
I still have an eerie feeling when I'm in St. Augustine.
They did not like that idea of sharing water.
The idea that something that had touched us was going to touch them.
American beaches and pools have long been flash points of racial conflict in the US.
Historically, many cities prohibited Black people from stepping into public waters.
Leisure is primarily a tool of capitalism.
Leisure is also a tool of white supremacy,
and it articulates power in society in a certain way.
Who has it? Who does not? Who has the right to wield it?
And oftentimes this plays out in public spaces.
In the North and South, white people fiercely opposed the integration of these spaces.
In some cases, separate pools and beaches for Black Americans were established,
but they were often small, faraway, and dangerous.
In New Orleans, for example, the city's designated Black beach, was an area grossly polluted with sewage from nearby fishing camps.
That unequal access to recreation is how wade-ins were born.
Wade-ins were a spin on the nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins that spread quickly across the country in the 1950s and 60s.
But instead of demanding access to businesses,
wading in to beaches and pools, demanded access to leisure.
On one hand, it's to pronounce a sense of, you see us
and you must sort of deal with us when you see us.
The other aspect or end of a wade-in is to invoke some sense of reaction.
So since you're unwanted, either by law or by social behaviors,
people are going to react to your presence.
Beaches became an important site for civil disobedience campaigns in the 1950s and early 60s.
From the shores of Biloxi to Chicago to Fort Lauderdale,
protesters gathered to demand equal access to city waters.
By the time wade-ins were organized in St. Augustine,
a local movement to end racial discrimination was already making headlines.
Soon, the campaign to desegregate these waters,
became the tipping point in a campaign to desegregate the entire nation.
The movement in St. Augustine started with a local dentist, and NAACP youth council advisor,
named Robert Hayling.
Beginning in 1963, Hayling mobilized youth in St. Augustine to take part in civil rights sit-ins, marches, and boycotts.
I feel it is incumbent upon the city officials to make St. Augustine a glaring example of democracy at work.
As the demonstrations picked up, so did violence against them.
Hundreds of protesters were beaten, and jailed.
Four teenagers who conducted a sit-in were ripped from their families and sent to reform school.
The homes of activists were also under constant threat.
A targeted shooting of Hayling's home narrowly missed his pregnant wife, and killed his dog.
So many houses were shot into. We knew that anytime we had lights on in the house at night,
we run the risk of our house being firebombed.
So my brother and I still had to keep up with our studies.
When darkness came we would take turns going into that closet,
closing the door, to study.
And we knew if we did not go into that particular area to study,
we would either be shot, or the house was going to be burned down.
"The tempo of violence increased rapidly in St. Augustine, the Klan paraded in the street, unmindful of the rain."
Ku Klux Klan rallies ramped up, too.
At one rally, Hayling, and three other activists, were captured and brutally beaten.
Later, Hayling was the one convicted for assaulting the Klansmen, after five minutes of deliberation by an all-white jury.
He was later forced to resign as an aide to the NAACP,
after a grand jury accused him and other activists of being militant.
"We white people are going to rise up 140 million strong."
Hayling and the other activists, needed a new plan and new allies.
Hayling reached out to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
a civil rights organization established by Martin Luther King Jr.
At the time, King's main focus was to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Among other measures, the bill aimed to desegregate public places.
But in the spring of '64,
the bill had been held up by the Senate, stuck in a record-long filibuster.
King knew heightened tensions back in St. Augustine made it a segregated super-bomb.
And believed high profile acts of civil disobedience, like the ones Hayling organized,
could be the push needed to get the Civil Rights Act passed.
King and several SCLC leaders, shifted focus to St. Augustine, and began a series of demonstrations that spring.
With the SCLC's help, Hayling's movement gained organizers,
a financial boost,
and high profile supporters.
Jackie Robinson, a Black baseball star who pioneered integration of the sport, came to a St. Augustine rally.
And Mary Peabody, the 72-year old mother of the governor of Massachusetts,
was jailed after a St. Augustine sit-in,
which put the movement in national and international newspapers.
Then, in a demonstration on June 11, 1964, King attempted to enter the restaurant at the Monson Motor Lodge,
a St. Augustine hotel owned by this man, James Brock.
King and 17 others were barred from entering, and arrested.
A week later, protesters shifted their focus to the swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge.
By June 18th, two white protesters checked into the hotel.
Five Black demonstrators were to be their guests in the pool that day.
They drove up to the hotel but they knew they couldn't go in the front door.
So they found a way in through the hedges around the pool.
As the group waded into the Monson swimming pool,
other organizers, including a group of 16 rabbis invited by King, formed a prayer circle around the Monson to join in the civil rights demonstration.
With the rabbis outside, King marching down the street with others,
and the wade-in at the pool,
the demonstration was designed to grab attention.
At first, James Brock, the hotel owner, tried to use a cleaning pole to get the swimmers out.
But when that didn't work, Brock tried something else.
He came out with a bottle of hydrochloric acid, a corrosive pool cleaning chemical,
and threw the acid toward the protesters in the pool to drive them out.
Mimi Jones, one of the protesters in the pool that day, recalled her experience in a 2017 interview.
And all of a sudden, the water in front of my face started to bubble up.
Like a volcanic eruption.
I could barely breathe,
it was entering my nose and my eyes.
It was just very frightening and terrifying because I really didn't see him coming.
Soon after, a fully clothed police officer jumped into the pool --
To arrest us.
To usher us out of the pool. And there were other police officers waiting for us.
And carted us off to jail.
The goal of the wade-in was to make the news.
And, photographers captured every moment.
"Our whole foreign policy and everything else will go to hell over this...
yesterday in the swimming pool in St. Augustine they started pouring acid in the pool."
The very next day, after a 60-day filibuster,
the US Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making way for it to get signed into law by the president.
As the nation waited for the bill to get signed,
the St. Augustine wade-ins continued, on the beaches.
Day after day, dozens of Black and white demonstrators showed up to the shore
and were met with brutality from white supremacists.
We went to St. Augustine Beach. And then all of a sudden they started hitting us and just punching anybody who got in the way.
And I was one of the ones who was punched.
My nose was broken.
The violence peaked on June 25th, when 75 people peacefully entered the water.
Highway Patrol was sent in to keep the peace, but violence quickly broke out, and they arrested both Black and white demonstrators.
"Notice the speed at which the action develops and the need for officers to pursue the attackers."
The demonstrations continued.
The fighting continued,
the bullying continued.
And it wasn't just about us and integrating that beach.
We knew about the bigger picture.
Later that night, hundreds of white supremacists rallied in St. Augustine, and attacked civil rights protesters on a march.
The clash led to 19 Black people being hospitalized, with many more injured.
"On the night of June 25th, 1964, the fuse burned down, and the racial bomb exploded."
"But to tell me that I don't even have the right to fight to protect the white race."
A week later, on July 2nd, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law.
"Congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to be written into the law,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed at the White House by President Johnson...
what he calls a turning point in history."
This moment was monumental.
But in the years that followed, wade-ins continued.
Cities used different strategies to keep their hold on segregation.
For public beaches and pools, that meant many whites only signs were simply replaced with private club signs, and high fees to enter.
And as white people started fleeing cities for the suburbs, local governments neglected many urban pools,
and eventually shut them down.
As for St. Augustine, the passing of the Civil Rights Act didn't change the minds of white residents there, either.
In the years that followed, Dr. Hayling left St. Augustine.
He could no longer make a living in the city, or feel safe there.
St. Augustine is still, roughly,
the St. Augustine that I remember from the 60s.
US beaches and pools remain battlegrounds today.
In Pennsylvania, black and brown children were kicked out of their rented pool space
because management feared it could "change the complexion" of the private club.
In Texas, white residents called the police on black teens trying to enjoy the neighborhood pool.
And in North Carolina, a white hotel employee called the police on a Black family using the pool during their stay.
All of what happened the 60s,
you see some of it coming back,
it's like deja vu.
"I asked you to leave politely. Simple as that."
"And I heard this lady she was like, 'what are all these Black kids doing?' and she was like,
'I'm scared they might do something to my child.'
"You're not having any prayer here. You're on private property. I'm ordering you to leave this place here."
Hi everyone, thanks for watching this episode of Missing Chapter.
If you want to know more about St. Augustine and the wade-ins,
we have something special for you:
the first ever Missing Chapter in podcast form.
We dive deeper into Cynthia's experience as a local activist,
and speak to a protester who was at the Monson Motor Lodge pool.
You can find a link to that podcast in the description below.