Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, 1964

Commemorative holidays such as yesterday's Martin Luther King, Jr. day, promote awareness and remembrance of past events. It was not until many years after I moved to Florida, when I began studying history, that I learned that in the summer of 1964, St. Augustine was the site of heated civil rights protests, and that Martin Luther King Jr. had been jailed there. A sense of the summer's events can be found in the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee's 1965 report, Racial and Civil Disorders in St. Augustine, and 26 minutes of original footage of wade-ins, speeches, and Florida troopers, available through the Florida Memory Project.

One of the summer's focal points became the Monson Lodge, a whites-only motel. First, Rev. King was arrested for "trespassing" at the motel. Then, when some white and black civil rights supporters went for a swim together at the Monson, the motel's owner sought to intimidate the swimmers by pouring muriatic acid into the pool.

Forty years later, the Monson Motor Lodge was an aging establishment on the Avenida Menendez, which had become a trendy street in St. Augustine. In 2003, the Monson was demolished to make way for a new Hilton Garden Inn. The concrete steps where Rev. King was standing when arrested were preserved, but the rest of the building and swimming pool are gone.

St. Augustine is a very old city, with literally layers of history. Underneath the Monson, where the Hilton hotel's underground garage is now, were the "the remains of 25 or so historic buildings and hundreds of archaeological features." The archaeologists actually started their excavations before the motel was torn down, chipping through the guest room floors.

So, should the Monson have been preserved in place, kept as it was in the 1960s, or is the Hilton simply the latest in a long chain of events in America's oldest city?

Tampa Streetcars

The Tampa Historic Streetcar Association and TECO's Streetcar System were recently highlighted in a USA Today article.

For continuing updates on light rail, streetcars, and transportation in the Tampa area, check out the informative Tampa Rail.

The 2005 issue of the Sunland Tribune, published by the Tampa Historical Society, included an article examining the factors leading to the day in 1946 when Tampa's streetcars rolled to a stop ("Tampa's Trolleys: Innovation, Demise, and Rediscovery," by Meeghan Kane). The Sunland Tribune is a benefit of membership in the Tampa Historical Society -- copies and backissues are available from THS, or at the downtown Tampa public library.

Other Blogs on Florida History Topics

From Ephemera (Exploring the World of Old Paper): Interview with Citrus Label Collector Tom Spellman

From The 26th Parallel (From South Florida, a Beacon of Freedom and Hope): Industrial Archaeology -- Aerojet's Everglades Rocket Factory

From Abandoned Places: Weekend Exploration (the ruins of the Glenn Curtiss house in Miami Springs)

From Invasive Species Weblog: History Trumps Ecology, Again (Australian pines in Gulf Stream, Florida)

Deco and Doors

For you Florida architecture fans, a nice article in the Miami Herald on screen doors with tropical themes -- "Screen Gems: Once Common in S. Florida, Screen Doors are Now Rare" (Jan. 7, 2007).

And a note that the 30th Annual Art Deco Weekend Festival starts tomorrow in Miami Beach, sponsored by the Miami Design Preservation League.

The Power of the Blog: SquanderedHeritage.com

A grass-roots effort led by an art dealer and a law librarian, Squandered Heritage highlights the unintended consequences of post-hurricane demolitions -- this time in New Orleans, but next time in Tampa or Pensacola or Key West?

After Hurricane Katrina, several New Orleans bloggers noted that buildings were being torn down when perhaps they didn't need to be. In some cases, these demolitions were funded by FEMA. In other cases, the overwhelmed city government simply wasn't following the proper notification and review procedures. With input from an active blogger community and concerned citizens, Squandered Heritage became a clearinghouse of information and an advocate for historic structures at risk of being demolished.

Squandered Heritage is Preservation Online's Story of the Week. A sample quote from the blog's co-founder Karen Gadbois: "People are using Katrina as a cover to do whatever they wanted to do. There was a lot of opportunistic demolition."

Florida's State Song

Why didn't Gov. Charlie Crist play the official state song at his inauguration? Well, the state song is "Old Folks at Home," by Stephen Collins Foster. Most people sing the first line -- "Way down upon the Swanee River..." -- then just hum the rest. It's not the misspelling of the Suwannee River that causes the fuss, it's the part that everyone hums. The song's lyrics include gems like the first chorus: All de world am sad and dreary / Ebry where I roam / Oh! darkeys how my heart grows weary / Far from de old folks at home.

"Old Folks at Home" became the Florida state song in 1935, and implies a connection to the Old South. While northern Florida has a historical, social, and political connection to the southern United States, the same does not hold for southern Florida. As Florida's population and political centers drift further south, the song becomes less and less relevant (although we should not forget that slavery and plantations are very definitely part of our state's heritage).

But if the state song isn't to be played at inaugurations, what should take its place? Crist opted for "The Florida Song" (links to mp3 file) by blues musician Charles Atkins. Atkins is black, a native of Daytona Beach, a former student of the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, and most of all, a talented artist.

Up in north Florida is the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park on the Suwannee River. Stephen Foster never even visited Florida, and chose the name Suwannee because it fit the cadence of the music. The song originally refered to the PeeDee River in South Carolina. So why does Foster get all this attention from Florida? On the state park's website, we read that the idea of the park came from Josiah K. Lilly, an Indiana pharmaceutical manufacturer (perhaps you've heard of his family's business, Eli Lilly and Company). Lilly was a scholar and collector of Foster's music. The Florida park was not the only memorial to Foster instigated by Lilly -- he was also directly responsible for establishing the Foster Hall Collection (the largest collection of Stephen Foster's work), housed in the Stephen Foster Memorial building on the University of Pittsburgh campus. (Foster was born in Pittsburgh, and wrote many of his songs there, including "Old Folks at Home.")
The Stephen Foster Folk Cultural Center State Park hosts the Florida Folk Festival each year, where Charles Atkins has been a featured artist.

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Update on State Song

Preserve America Reports

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is seeking public review and comment for historic preservation issue area reports drafted at the Oct. 2006 Preserve America summit, which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act.

Reports available for review are:

Building a Preservation Ethic and Public Appreciation for History,
Coordinating the Stewardship and Use of Our Cultural Patrimony,
Determining What's Important,
Protecting Places that Matter,
Improving the Preservation Program Infrastructure,
Dealing with the Unexpected,
Addressing Security,
Using Historic Properties as Economic Assets,
Involving All Cultures,
Fostering Innovation, and
Participating in the Global Preservation Community.

Brooker Creek Preserve

Today it stopped raining and became springlike. So we headed out to Brooker Creek Preserve . This is an 8,500-acre wilderness area in northern Pinellas County, with several miles of hiking trails and a wonderful education center, classrooms, and auditorium. The center is very kid friendly, but has exhibits for everyone (it is a popular birding spot). And a good gift shop with amusing squirrel-proof bird feeders.

On a short hike we saw a hawk, a catbird, an egret, a (an?) anhinga, cardinals, warblers, tadpoles, spiders, ants, ant lions, deer tracks, a vulture (in the distance), colorful mushrooms, and a turtle.

(Then we had dinner at Outback Steakhouse, which has its own Florida connection -- headquarters in Tampa, where the first Outback restaurant opened in 1988. You can still visit the original on Henderson Blvd. in South Tampa.)

Taking Your Heritage

A headline story in today's St. Petersburg Times, "Ancient Tools, Modern Crime," reports the arrest of several men caught illegally digging up an archaeological site in Hillsborough County. They were caught through the good work of Cpl. Don Balabau of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, and Florida Fish and Wildlife officers Steve Delacure and Alton Still. This is not an isolated incident, nor is it particularly a secret that it happens. Eastern Hillsborough County is very popular with looters, who travel hundreds miles to get some of the artifacts created by Native Americans thousands of years ago. The men in today's story were arrested for tresspassing and outstanding warrants, but they may be charged with additional offenses related to disturbing archaeological sites.

I'd love to hear what you think of this.

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Additional information:

"What do I do if I see damage or looting of archaeological sites?"

"An Overview of Anti-Looting Efforts in Florida" (.pdf)

"Should Finders Be Keepers?" (St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 2006)

Suburban Pilgrimages

In Irving, Texas, city officials are considering a historic marker for Ruth Paine’s former home, where Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald stayed in 1963. It’s a modest suburban home, certainly nothing out of the ordinary architecturally, yet it is associated with significant people and events in our nation’s history. The current owner evidently wasn’t impressed by the house’s history when she moved in, but then she noticed all the people driving by, stopping to look or take pictures. There’s a book: Mrs. Paine’s Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy by Thomas Mallon (Pantheon, 2002). (Ruth Paine now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida).

Paralleling the Paine house, the Jack Kerouac house on 10th Ave N in St. Petersburg is a local pilgrimage destination. This is the beat poet’s last home, his address when he died in 1969. In the late 1950s, he lived in Orlando’s College Park Neighborhood. (In 2004, the Sun-Sentinel ran this story about Kerouac’s Orlando home, and the St. Petersburg Times ran this story about Kerouac’s last years in St. Pete and subsequent struggles over his estate.)

Another unassuming suburban Florida house noted for its connection to a famous writer is 1734 Avenue L, where Zora Neale Hurston lived in the late 1950s.

Can you add to this list?