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Audrey Nell Edwards is an African-American civil rights activist, best known for her participation in the St. Augustine movement in 1963. [1]
| The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies .(March 2020) |
Audrey Nell Edwards is an African-American civil rights activist, best known for her participation in the St. Augustine movement in 1963. [1]
Audrey Nell Edwards grew up in St. Augustine, Florida. [2]
On July 18, 1963, a group of seven teenagers — including the group of four teens who would later be known as the St. Augustine Four: Edwards, 16, JoeAnn Anderson, 15, Willie Carl Singleton, 16, and Samuel White, 14, entered a Woolworth's store in St. Augustine, Florida. The teens were members of the NAACP Youth Council and had been engaging in sit-ins at downtown St. Augustine lunch counters, advised by Dr. Robert Hayling. [3] [4]
At Woolworth's, the seven teens were arrested for attempting to order hamburgers at the segregated lunch counter. Judge Charles Mathis [5] offered release to the teens if their parents were willing to sign documentation stating that the teens would refrain from protests until their respective 21st birthdays. If the documents were not signed, then the teens would remain incarcerated and would then be sent to reform school. Three of those arrested agreed to these terms and were released. The four teens — Edwards, Anderson, Singleton, and White — urged their parents not to sign the documents, and were kept in jail with adults, as no juvenile facilities were available. [3]
Earl Johnson, a lawyer for the NAACP, attempted to secure their release, but a local judge moved the activists to reform schools. Singleton and White were sent to the infamous Florida School for Boys in Marianna, Florida; Edwards and Anderson were sent to the Florida School for Girls in Ocala, Florida. [3] [6] At the reform schools, the physical work was the norm. [7] Finally, in response to national protests, Florida governor Cecil Farris Bryant and his cabinet issued a special action for the teenagers' release January 14, 1964. [3] [6] [8]
The case of the St. Augustine Four caught the attention of other civil rights organizers across the country, including Martin Luther King Jr. When Dr. King visited St. Augustine, Edward met with the Civil Rights giant and joined him at the Monson Motor Lodge on June 11. Both King and Edwards were arrested; Edwards was charged with "breach of peace, trespassing with malicious intent, and conspiracy." [3]
Shortly after this experience, Edwards met Jackie Robinson, who invited her and Anderson to his and his wife Rachel Robinson's home in Connecticut. The two teens spent three weeks with the Robinsons, visiting New York City sites and also the 1964 New York World's Fair. [3] [6]
Edwards long believed that the arrest record resulting from her activism barred her from employment in St. Augustine. [3]
In 2004, Edwards attended a ceremony at St. Augustine's First Baptist Church in honor of the St. Augustine Four's contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. [6]
Edwards is currently the last surviving member of the St. Augustine Four. [9]
Edwards's house at 650 Julia Street in West Augustine, built for her in 2008 by Habitat for Humanity, is now a site on the ACCORD Freedom Trail. [1]
St. Augustine Civil Rights activism, including lunch counter sit-ins, was fictionalized by author Judy Lindquist in the 2018 book Forcing Change, published by the Florida Historical Society Press. [10] The story of the St. Augustine Four is also featured in the University Press of America book Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and Thereafter, edited by Dorothy M. Singleton. [11]
St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company and one of the pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, setting trends and creating the modern retail model that stores follow worldwide today.
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-in of the civil rights movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the best-known sit-ins of the civil rights movement. They are considered a catalyst to the subsequent sit-in movement, in which 70,000 people participated. This sit-in was a contributing factor in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Willie "The Wisp" Galimore was an American professional football player who was a halfback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Chicago Bears from 1957–1963. He attended Florida A&M University, working with the legendary coach Jake Gaither. Galimore is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Dare Not Walk Alone is a 2006 documentary film directed by Jeremy Dean. The film played the festival circuit in 2006 and in 2007 received the audience award at the Deep Focus Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio. It was signed by Indican Pictures for theatrical, DVD, and TV release. The film was released on DVD on November 11, 2008. In January 2009 the film was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary.
The St. Augustine movement was a part of the wider Civil Rights Movement, taking place in St. Augustine, Florida from 1963 to 1964. It was a major event in the city's long history and had a role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Ax Handle Saturday, also known as the Jacksonville riot of 1960, was a racially motivated attack in Hemming Park in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, 1960. A group of about 200 white men used baseball bats and ax handles to attack black people who were in sit-in protests opposing racial segregation.
Patricia Stephens Due was one of the leading African-American civil rights activists in the United States, especially in her home state of Florida. Along with her sister Priscilla and others trained in nonviolent protest by CORE, Due spent 49 days in one of the nation's first jail-ins, refusing to pay a fine for sitting in a Woolworth's "White only" lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida in 1960. Her eyes were damaged by tear gas used by police on students marching to protest such arrests, and she wore dark glasses for the rest of her life. She served in many leadership roles in CORE and the NAACP, fighting against segregated stores, buses, theaters, schools, restaurants, and hotels, protesting unjust laws, and leading one of the most dangerous voter registration efforts in the country in northern Florida in the 1960s.
St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument is located near the corner of King St. and Charlotte St. in the Southeast corner of the Plaza de la Constitución, a historic public park in downtown St. Augustine, Florida. It is in remembrance of the people who engaged in various forms of peaceful protest in St. Augustine in the early 1960s to advance the cause of civil rights, contributing to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The monument, commissioned by the St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Remembrance Project, Inc., was installed and unveiled in May, 2011.
The history of the 1954 to 1968 American civil rights movement has been depicted and documented in film, song, theater, television, and the visual arts. These presentations add to and maintain cultural awareness and understanding of the goals, tactics, and accomplishments of the people who organized and participated in this nonviolent movement.
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Robert Bagner Hayling was an American dentist and civil rights activist.
St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the continental United States, was founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The Spanish Crown issued an asiento to Menéndez, signed by King Philip II on March 20, 1565, granting him various titles, including that of adelantado of Florida, and expansive privileges to exploit the lands in the vast territory of Spanish Florida, called La Florida by the Spaniards. This contract directed Menéndez to explore the region's Atlantic coast and report on its features, with the object of finding a suitable location to establish a permanent colony from which the Spanish treasure fleet could be defended and Spain's claimed territories in North America protected against incursions by other European powers.
The Monson Motor Lodge, at 32 Avenida Menendez, Saint Augustine, Florida, was in 1964 the site of a landmark protest event of the Civil Rights Movement. The site was before that occupied by the Monson House, a 19th-century boarding house.
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The 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest was part of a series of events during the civil rights movement in the United States which occurred on June 18, 1964, at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. The campaign between June and July 1964 was led by Robert Hayling, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian and Fred Shuttlesworth, among others. St. Augustine was chosen to be the next battleground against racial segregation on account of it being both highly racist yet also relying heavily on the northern tourism dollar. Furthermore, the city was due to celebrate its 400th anniversary the following year, which would heighten the campaign's profile even more. Nightly marches to the slave market were organized, which were regularly attacked and saw the marchers beaten.
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