Civil rights activists reunite in St. Augustine 60 years after staged protests

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - America celebrated a breakthrough in civil rights in the nation’s oldest city. 

Tuesday, July 2, is the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Activists who compelled Congress to pass it held a reunion in St. Augustine – because that’s where they staged the protests that convinced federal lawmakers to pass the landmark law, which bans discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 

Segregationist Senators led by Georgia’s Richard Russell had blocked the bill in the Senate and could have defeated it. 

Dr. King and his top Lieutenant Andrew Young responded by taking their non-violent battle to Florida. They joined St. Augustine’s civil rights leader Dr. Robert Hayling. He had already organized marches, sit-ins, and wade-ins on the beaches where black and white integrationists had been beaten. 

"I saw individuals running in fear of their life," said James Jackson who joined the wade-ins 60 years ago along with others like Al Lingo.  

"And while you’re watching somebody with a club, somebody strikes you from your blindside," Lingo recalled. 

RELATED: America celebrating anniversary in path to equality

In June 1964, Andrew Young led a march into downtown, where the Ku Klux Klan attacked him. 

"When I got beat up, the only television camera there was held by the policemen. I really didn’t know what happened. I was out," he said. 

Dr. King tried to get seated in a segregated restaurant at the Monson Motor Lodge Motel and got arrested for trespassing.  And when he got out of jail on June 18, he and many others returned to the Monson. 

Lingo and other white civil rights activists checked into the Monson motel. Then, after they got their keys, revealed they had black guests. And they jumped in the pool together.

"We jumped out of the car over the hedges and into the pool and stayed in there," said JT Johnson who agreed to jump in the pool when a fellow activist who could not swim well offered his swimsuit. 

The motel owner rushed over with a bottle of muriatic acid and terrorized some of the swimmers by pouring acid in the pool. It repulsed people across the nation and sent shockwaves through Congress—breaking the segregationists' blockade of the Civil Rights Act. The Senate passed it the next day on June 19 (Juneteenth) and President Johnson signed it two weeks later on July 2, 1964.

Andrew Young, and others who joined the peaceful marches, and were in the pool, and on the beach that summer, returned to St. Augustine to remember and celebrate their campaign that changed the course of history.  

"Well it means we survived 60 more years," said Young. "I think of that as the most important day of my life."