Amid the subtly changing relationships in the white community, the terrorists were now a power in their own right. At the very least, they had achieved the passive acceptance of the ruling elite. who listens to u.s. judges? At this juncture, the menace of the raiders was acknowledged by the federal judge, Bryan Simpson, in Jacksonville. On June 15, he upheld the Negroes’ right to hold demonstrations and admonished state and local police to “engage in real enforcement, arrests, and charges against these hoodlums everybody seems afraid of.” But nobody in officialdom was listening to federal judges, not even Southern-born ones. Klan organizer Stoner and his anti-Semitic comrade-in-arms, Connie Lynch of California, harangued nightly to growing white crowds at the slave market while blood continued to flow on the beaches. Harassed newsmen gave up their hopes for local police protection, and hired private bodyguards. (One newsman signed a statement to the effect that he had been beaten and had had his camera stolen by a “special” officer while regular policemen watched.) But St. Augustine’s leaders still viewed the situation differently. The St. Augustine Record, for example, praised “the brilliant leadership” of Sheriff, Davis, Chief Stuart, and the Florida Highway Patrol, and reserved a paragraph of praise for the “special deputies”: “Agitators who have called our city a place of ‘Bigotry and Hate’ must have overlooked these men who volunteered for the past weeks to protect the lives of the same individuals who have slandered them and our city.” harpers.org/archive/1965/01/anarchy-in-st-augustine/2/
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 00:57:35 +0000
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