Martin Luther King has visited Florida many times. Why was he imprisoned?

This story was originally released on January 17th, 2021.

Many newcomers are surprised to learn that in Florida, the modern pot and the place that was most of the 20th century, was ruled by Jim Crow.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew.

King, whose birthday is a national holiday, has come to Florida dozens of times.

As early as February 1958, King gave an awakened speech at Bethel Ame Church in Miami, launching a campaign to double the number of registered black voters. Three months later, he told the American Jewish Congress in Miami Beach that was gathering, “As the tensions and confusion in economic issues become more severe, the scapegoats of history, new scapegoats for Jews and black people have joined us. “I’ll do that.”

Details: Could the old St. John’s County jail, where MLK and some rabbis were incarcerated in 1964, be demolished?

Slaves were once sold at St. Augustine

Six years later, King aimed for America’s oldest city.

The fact that slaves were sold at St. Augustine is not contested. In 1827, young New England writer Ralph Waldo Emerson passed through and the slave auction was in earnest. When King came in 1964, he called it America’s most segregated city.

Florida was seeking a big tourism push, using the 400th anniversary of St. Augustine, set in 1965. And King wanted to throw a wrench inside it.

Tensions simmered in the segregated cities as black people were largely removed from the city’s 400th anniversary plans.

But it got deeper than that.

Sit down, boycott

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has begun to support the protests of local activists. King arrived in May 1964 to rally with them.

He was arrested on June 11th with the civil rights leader of Pastor Ralph Abernathy when he called for service in a quarantined restaurant.

He was then moved to Duval County Jail, where he told an African-American employee: “Hello, sisters. I was in 15 prisons and this is the first time I’ve been treated like a pig.”

That year and the previous year, a Florida Memorial University student was arrested for a sit-in at a department store in Woolworths, and blacks began to boycott financially. They went on a sea “swimming” to protest the isolated beach. The man’s house was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan as he sent his sons to an all-white school. And the homes of dentists and Air Force veterans were plagued by gunfire.

King spoke at the church on June 11, 1964, before marching there. Down the street, the decommissioned Monson Motor Lodge, King, Abernathy and other black people came to the front door of the hotel’s white-only restaurant. James Brock, the manager of the motel, said they had to leave. When they refused, King and Abernathy were arrested.

Some jumped rebelliously into the motel pool. Owners poured acid into the pool and ran out of them, and images shown nationwide became part of an increase in the indictment of separation. King himself was booked at St. John’s County Jail.

“Let’s realize that violence is not the answer,” he said. “Hate is not our weapon either. I’m talking about very strong love, so it becomes tough love. I’m talking about very strong love, so it sorts out into a mass movement and some form In saying, “I am my brother’s keeper and he is so wrong that I am willing to suffer and die to get him right when necessary.”

Holly Valtz, an editor of the Palm Beach Post Research, who has a passion for history, contributed to this story.

Elliot Kleinberg is a prominent history and former history columnist of the Palm Beach Post.