Paul Good Recordings : Transcript for Tape 7
Paul Good speaking:
…segregated facilities here in America’s oldest city. It soon became apparent that this night’s march would be different. White men, many of them members of the Ku Klux Klan, some of them with shotguns, others with axe handles, waited at the market. As the negroes neared, police chief Virgil Stuart had them stopped with police dogs, and then he warned, “We can’t protect you. Go back. If there is bloodshed, it will be on your hands.”
The Negroes retreated and prayed to God for guidance. Their leader, Reverend Andy Young, told them, “I know that if I have a cut or a bruise, in a few weeks’ time it will go away, but the scars that are placed on the minds and hearts of the Negro people throughout the South for having to live under fear and intimidation all their lives, never heal.”
The Negroes made their decision and then they came back, marching slowly in a tense silence, broken only by the shuffle of their feet, once by the clang of a crowbar dropped in the midst of the waiting white mob. Each moment it seemed the incident could trigger some awful violence to occur. Each moment somehow passed.
And finally, the demonstrators had made it around the square. The night and its threat were over, but there were other nights ahead.
Paul Good reporting from St. Augustine.
Civil Rights Library of St. Augustine - Film and Sound Recordings
