ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – May is Jewish American Heritage Month, all month long News4JAX is highlighting our local Jewish community.
The old jail in St. Augustine will not be demolished, as St. Johns County leaders announced plans to renovate the historic site.
This decision brings relief to many who hoped to save the building, which played a significant role during the civil rights era.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there. He also called on sixteen rabbis to help with his efforts, which is a lesser known story of the movement.
“Martin Luther King knew this town as a very segregated town, a very KKK-dominated town, and he said it was always easy to get arrested at St. Augustine,” said Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, President of the St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society. “All he had to do was walk into the lunchroom of the Monson Hotel, which is where the Hilton Garden Inn Bayfront is now, and he would be arrested. And so he and Ralph Abernathy were arrested.”
King sent a letter and a telegram to Rabbi Israel Dresner, asking him to gather as many rabbis as possible to come to St. Augustine. Sixteen rabbis answered the call.
“They walked to this Monson Hotel, which is on Avenida Menendez, right on the waterfront,” Shapiro explained. “They went arm in arm with a Black teenager. They were all assigned a Black teenager from Albany, Georgia, and they walked into the segregated Monson lunchroom. They began to pray. They were immediately pushed out and arrested.”
During this protest, a group of Black teenagers jumped into the swimming pool, prompting the hotel owner and manager to pour acid into the water. Photographs of the incident made headlines across the country.
“Enough pressure was put on the senators who were filibustering the Civil Rights Act that the filibuster was ended and the Civil Rights Act passed three days later,” Shapiro noted.
While in jail, the rabbis wrote a letter that is now read annually by the St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society on June 18, the anniversary of their arrest.
“It repeats the words of Martin Luther King, injustice here is injustice everywhere. We cannot allow injustice to prevail,” Shapiro said.
Arthur Dresner was cousin’s with Rabbi Israel Dresner, whose birth name was Seymour. He shared that his cousin’s involvement in the civil rights movement was the talk of the family.
“Back then it was revolutionary. I mean, Martin Luther King was marching out of, almost reconstruction, if you will, from the Civil War and bringing us to a new place in history. And Seymour wanted to be part of that,” Dresner said.
While he was too young to appreciate what his cousin was doing at the time, the lessons he shared stuck with him.
“As I became older, I became a lawyer,” he shared. “I did participate in some pro bono matters, and I would have done more if I was older at the time.”
Concerns had arisen that St. Johns County intended to demolish the old jail. In response, the Jewish Historical Society gathered 1,000 signatures for a petition to save it. Earlier this month, County Administrator Joy Andrews announced the decision to renovate the structure instead.
“It is a very sound structure, and it is very costly to recreate a structure like that,” Andrews said. “Also, it serves the purpose of historical preservation that the community has been feeling very strong about.”
Rabbi Shapiro is grateful that the building will remain, serving as a lesson about the past.
“History is speaking to us today about what’s happening as far as racial justice and racial tension are concerned,” he said. “We want to make sure that this building and the stones and the bricks, the blocks that make up this building continue to talk to us, both today and in future generations.”
The St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society will hold its yearly reading of the letter written by the 16 rabbis on June 18 at noon outside the old jail.
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