A little known chapter of Martin Luther King's activism took place in St. Augustine, not normally a locale that comes to mind when discussing the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
But not only did King come to St. Augustine in 1964, it was a key moment in building momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Clennon King knows the story firsthand.
His father was an attorney for (and not related to) the civil rights icon.
"I grew up with death threats," Clennon King said. "We’d get late night phone calls from people."
Those sorts of threats were commonplace for politically active blacks in St. Augustine in the 1960s.
"You saw acid being poured in swimming pools where demonstrators were," Clennon King said. "You saw beatings at the beaches. You saw attacks with dogs and night marches."
He felt compelled to tell that story and spent parts of the past 13 years putting together the documentary "Passage at St. Augustine," which was recently shown at Hillsborough Community College's Ybor City campus.
In 1964, Dr. King and other Southern Christian Leadership Conference members were looking for a community with an active civil rights movement.
In the wake of demonstrations and brutality in Birmingham, Ala., there was some talk that King would go to Washington, D.C. His concern was about violence erupting there and the possibility of disrupting legislators. That would be counterproductive to the goal.
Filmmaker Clennon King (no relation) created the documentary "Passage at St. Augustine." It recently was shown at HCC's Ybor campus.
So when Robert Hayling, a leader of the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, reached out to the SCLC for help in response to violence, officials responded. What met them was brutal violence, and what they found was a town ripe for change.
Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine was where most of the reporters stayed. In June 1964, demonstrators jumped into the pool, and the motel’s manager poured muriatic acid into it in response.
In the events that followed, Dr. King was arrested with demonstrators.
“They’d throw rocks at us and bricks at us and everything downtown,” said J.T. Johnson of Atlanta, an SCLC member who in 1964 jumped into the whites-only pool at the Monson Motor Lodge.
“People were very cruel in St. Augustine,” he said.
Why St. Augustine was the focal point of leaders in a crucial time was partly strategy. Leaders found an active movement here and knew what took place would grab the attention of the national media.
While St. Augustine wasn’t initially on the schedule for the SCLC, what happened in St. Augustine played a role in pushing the act along.
Clennon King said the little-known piece of civil rights history in St. Augustine may be brief but played a large role in the civil rights movement.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.