Tourism Creates a "Slave Market"

Florida did not join the American Revolution and only briefly joined the Confederacy. It was an exotic curiosity to northerners - especially Spanish St. Augustine. Once they could easily travel here, many of these visitors were willing to pay money for answers to their questions. Stories of our past have been a vital source income ever since.

Henry Flagler began his transformation of St. Augustine in 1884, twenty years after slavery was abolished in Florida. By then, the public market had lost its commercial purpose to individual stores along city streets. With picnic tables added, it was a nice place to lounge and mingle. But it was more valuable as a structure to boast some history for. Entrepreneurial locals awed tourists with stories of slave auctions in what they now called the Old Slave Market, or the Slave Pen. The stories quickly made it into print.

In 1884, Bloomfield's Historical Guide listed the market as a point of interest. Bloomfield did not want to claim accuracy of his description:

The Slave Market.

East of the Confederate monument stands the old, old market. A queer-looking structure it is. 'Tis hard to name its style of architecture, therefore we will call it a piece of Augustinian mechanism. Four years ago it was used as a meat market, but since, the Council and a private gentleman have rescued it from what must have been degrading to this proud piece of Spanish antiquity, of which very little is known. We have been told that before the war it was used as a slave market. Whenever a sale was to take place the bell in the cupola would be rung to notify the public. The reader will please understand that the compiler of this Guide does not hold himself responsible for the slave-market story, but, in the words of the old sergeant at the fort, will say: 'I'm only giving it to ye as it was given to me, d'ye moind now?'" (30-31).

That same year, Lady Duffus Hardy wrote about the market in her book Down South (1884). She doesn't mention the source of her information, but paints a vivid picture of a typical slave auction. First, she dramatizes the local Loyalists' ceremonial destruction of dolls which represented American Revolution leaders.

There is the "Plaza de la Constitution," where the good Christians burnt their brethren a century ago... In the centre stands the curious old market-place, roofed in at the top, but open on all sides; this was the ancient slave mart, where "God's image, carved in ebony," was bought and sold in most ungodly fashion; there is the place where they stood, ranged in rows like cattle in a pen, so that their purchasers might walk to and fro examining them from all points to see that they had their money's worth (171-2).

The largest promotion of St. Augustine's public market as a "Slave Market" came when the famous photographer W.J. Harris depicted it on this mass-produced post card.

The caption on the back says,

OLD SLAVE MARKET
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.

The old market in the east end of the Plaza is an interesting landmark of antebellum days.

Old slave in foreground.

Not only was Harris interested in selling his post cards, he was also the business manager for St. Augustine's historical society. He embodied the Ancient City's struggle between historical accuracy and economic survival. Harris' biggest adversary was Charles B. Reynolds, who published an article in Mr. Foster's Travel Magazine in 1921 refuting Duffus, Harris, and all of the historical embellishing that went on in St. Augustine. Harris defended himself and the historical society by saying Reynolds was bad for the town's economic backbone, tourism. Nevertheless, Harris eventually distributed a revised version of the Slave Market post card. The newer version reads,

OLD SLAVE MARKET
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.

The old slave market in the east end of the Plaza is an interesting landmark of antebellum days. Built in 1840 for a public market. Called "slave market" by an enterprising photographer to make his pictures sell.

Civil Rights Movement

Regardless of the volume of slave auctions held there, the tradition of St. Augustine's public market as a "slave market" gives the city a valuable memorial to the fact of slavery. That fact came to a second war on the 100th anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves. America was finally acknowledging that freedom was still not available to all its citizens; "white only" signs were still enforced by federal law. In 1964, St. Augustine's market became a focal point of America's civil rights movement.

Previously, in June of 1963, a local black dentist, Dr. Robert Hayling, had organized a youth chapter of the NAACP. The group conducted sit-ins at local segregated restaurants, which kicked off St. Augustine's civil rights uproar. Youth activists were jailed; Hayling and others were beaten by the Ku Klux Klan. Masses of local residents joined in public outcry on both sides of the controversy, which escalated for a year.

Meanwhile in Washington, the proposed Civil Rights Act was blockaded by a filibuster in the United States Senate. In March of 1964, local activists including Dr. Hayling and Henry and Katherine Twine persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King to come to St. Augustine. Dr. King's presence brought the local civil rights movement into the same national news coverage as the Senate proceedings.

Marches 'Round the Slave Market

With Dr. King in St. Augustine, demonstrators continued various challenges to segregated venues. By day, they sat at white-only lunch counters and swam in white-only pools and beaches. Each night, the demonstrators announced their magnitude and purpose by marching in absolute silence, down King Street, around the "Slave Market," and back up King Street.

If you sat in the market on an evening in May or June of 1964, you would see black and white activists following Dr. King's advice - staring straight ahead while crazy mobs screamed insults, threw bottles, and swung bats and fists. Elderly marchers were called names they'd never imagined being called. Some parents walked with their teenagers; others forbid their children to leave the house.

Dr. King's arrest on June 11, 1964.

City officials tried to control the chaos by banning the marches, and therefore arrested marchers for violated the ban. Those who assaulted the marchers were not arrested. During the nightly loops around the "Slave Market," so many marchers were arrested that the city jail overflowed into an outdoor stockade. The prisoners were left out there the following summer days with no shade until bail was met or the officials sent the marchers home.

If you sat in the market night after night, you would begin to spot a familiar large-brimmed hat in the stream of silent people. The hat had "Freedom Now" embroidered on it and a button from the 1963 civil rights march on Washington. It belonged to Kat Twine, the "Rosa Parks of St. Augustine." Mrs. Twine was arrested so many times that she came prepared. She carried her "Freedom Hat" whenever she thought she would be arrested because she knew she'd need it in the sunny jail stockade the next day. Her hat is now on display at the Excelsior Museum and Cultural Center in Lincolnville.

Spirit-boosters like Kat Twine and Dr. Hayling helped local activists persevere, and it paid off. Graphic images of the demonstrations in St. Augustine dominated national news coverage too much for the Senate to continue the filibuster. On July 2, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in all public facilities.

St. Augustine segregationists did not immediately adhere to the new laws, and so the marches and demonstrations continued for some time afterward. "Many of the demonstrators lost their jobs because they asked for their basic human rights, many were physically assaulted, some lost their homes. Each night they had to face their fears and agree to once again march down King Street" (Bryce).

When the demonstration dust finally settled, the public market once again became a nice place to lounge and mingle.

Further Reading

• Dan Warren's If It Takes All Summer, 2008.
• Daniel L. Schafer's "US Territory and State," in The New History of Florida, ed. Michael Gannon, 1996.
• Daniel L. Schafer's "Yellow Silk Ferret Tied Round Their Wrists" in The New History of Florida, ed. Michael Gannon, 1996.
• Michael Gannon's Florida: A Short History, 1993.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson's Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1909.
• Lady Duffus Hardy's Down South, 1883.
• Robert R. Goller's "North and South With W.J. Harris, Photographer" in El Escribano, 1991.
• Max Bloomfield's Bloomfield's Historical Guide, 1884.
• Charles B. Reynolds' The 1892 Standard Guide to St. Augustine, 1892.
• Shirley Bryce's "St. Augustine Movement," in Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, 2004.
• Jeremy Dean's Dare Not Walk Alone (documentary), 2007.

By Amy Howard. Last modified 2-5-09.

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