Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 131

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL RIGHTS.) Just a day at the beach: 7 press photos of the St. Augustine "wade-in." Wire photos, 8 x 10 inches or smaller, most with Associated Press captions in negative; all without press agency stamps, but with typed captions on verso with some variant of "Negroes--St. Augustine," some with date stamps and two with news clippings from unidentified newspapers; two with crop marks and retouching. St. Augustine Beach, FL, June 1964
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Northern activists joined local organizers in St. Augustine for a series of protests of segregation, including this series of June 1964 "wade-ins" on Anastasia Island just east of St. Augustine. Although local police had been aggressive in arresting activists elsewhere in St. Augustine (most famously in the swimming pool of the Monson Motor Lodge), their role here at the beach seemed to be defending the activists from attacks by violent segregationists. In the earliest photo in this series, on 19 June, an officer patrols the beach in swimming trunks with his police dog on a leash, with an integrated crowd of swimmers behind him. As tensions flared, police hit the scene in full uniform, standing guard and breaking up fights in the chest-deep water. Three images show violent confrontations, including one with baton-wielding policemen clubbing a segregationist who had attacked the swimmers. Not what we expect to see in these civil rights demonstration photos, but it is a welcome twist.

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