As St. Augustine, Florida, prepared to celebrate its 400th anniversary in 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched a massive nonviolent direct action campaign to end segregation in the nation’s oldest city. Aware of St. Augustine’s reliance on northern tourism and federal funding for the celebration, King believed that media coverage of civil rights protests would not only pressure the city to change its policies on race, but also garner the national support needed for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was stalled in a congressional filibuster.
The St. Augustine movement originated in June 1963 when Robert B. Hayling, a local dentist and advisor to the youth council of the city’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter, led a lunch counter sit-in as well as demonstrations against segregated businesses. In response, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally outside of the city and severely beat Hayling and three other NAACP members who tried to observe the rally. When the city government continued to ignore the grievances of protestors and refused to stem the escalating violence against them, local civil rights leaders called on King and the SCLC for support.
Beginning in March 1964, the SCLC helped local activists continue their push for: (1) a bi-racial committee; (2) desegregation of public accommodations; (3) hiring of black policemen, firemen, and office workers in municipal jobs; and (4) dropping of charges against persons peacefully protesting for their constitutional rights. In addition, SCLC supporters from Massachusetts arrived to demonstrate against segregation and Klan violence. Although a wave of protests (and the arrest of the elderly mother of the governor of Massachusetts ) brought heavy national publicity to St. Augustine, the city's white leaders made no move to open a dialogue with African American citizens.
On 18 May 1964 King visited St. Augustine to announce his commitment to demonstrations in the city. When he returned a week later, he was joined by SCLC Executive Director Wyatt T. Walker, who emphasized the need for better organization and discipline among protesters as well as St. Augustine's importance for the “short-term future of the entire civil rights movement.”
When nightly marches through St. Augustine’s Plaza and Slave Market began on 26 May, they were met with increasing counter-protest violence and a ban by city officials. Suspicious of connections between the Ku Klux Klan and St. Augustine law enforcement, King repeatedly asked for federal intervention. Despite a federal ruling by Judge Bryan Simpson that legalized the marches, assaults on protestors continued and hundreds of marchers were jailed.
To intensify media coverage of the campaign, King, Ralph Abernathy, and eight others submitted to arrest on 11 June after being refused service at the Monson Motor Lodge restaurant. When protestors returned the following week to desegregate the motel’s swimming pool, the manager poured acid into the water.
After King’s arrest, the governor of Florida announced the formation of a biracial committee to address St. Augustine’s racial issues. Although the committee never met, the announcement allowed King and the SCLC to redirect their focus to Alabama without the appearance of defeat in Florida. Media coverage of events in St. Augustine propelled the U.S. Senate to end their filibuster and pass federal civil rights legislation. On 2 July, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.