- Joined
- May 20, 2015
- Messages
- 3,221
- Age
- 61
- Location
- St. Augustine, FL.
- Gender
- Male
- Religious Affiliation
- Atheist
- Political Affiliation
- Moderate
- Marital Status
- In Relationship
For seasoned locals like me, what this means is downtown is an area I want to avoid at all costs.
All kidding aside, there is a great deal of community pride in being the nation's oldest city, and being able to celebrate 450 years of history, the good and the bad.
History of St. Augustine
In the years leading up to the 400th celebration, there were terrible incidents of racially motivated crimes:
St. Augustine movement
I was just an infant then, and living in Chicago, but I have heard that during that time members of the KKK were deputized and allowed to run rampant in the community, harassing the black community and vandalizing businesses that did not continue the legacy of racial discrimination, and burning down the house of a prominent black doctor, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
At the time, the city's most prominent businessman told reporters, "our niggras were just fine 'til you Yankees came down here and told them they should be unhappy."
I had a great uncle who proudly told us kids how they lynched a black man some time around 1915 for looking a white woman in the eye. Thankfully, a lot has changed here in the last 100 years. We are a self-described drinking village with a fishing problem.
