The white man approached with a strange, unmarked bottle. But when he poured it into the pool, they realized it was an extremely dangerous ACID!
The activist swimmers quickly escaped. But this wasn’t the first or last time white supremacists would resort to violence that summer in St. Augustine, FL.
On June 26, 1964, over 200 segregationists violently attacked civil rights protesters in downtown St. Augustine.
Fed up with the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Dr. Robert Hayling, and the SCLC who'd organized several protests, marches, and wade-ins, the mob attacked the activists with bricks and stones!
Civil rights marchers had spent that afternoon at St. Augustine’s Slave Market Square, a former site where enslaved Black people had been bought and sold.
As the protest began, a mob gathered nearby – along with St. Augustine police, who refused to intervene when the locals violently attacked the activists.
A slew of violent, gun-toting, acid-pouring anti-civil rights protests by the KKK-heavy community had popped off for months.
Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was being filibustered in Congress – but would be signed into law July 2nd.
The law meant little, however, if it wasn’t enforced. Our people continued the marches, rallies, sit-ins, and “wade-ins” of St. Augustine’s pools and beaches despite the violent opposition.
That’s always what it’s taken to achieve liberation – dogged persistence and determination to fight for our human rights!