Didnt realize at the time that they were really part of a transformative struggle. That in essence their work in st. Augustine was part of a bigger strategy that really transformed america. The america of today in terms of race, in terms of the legal restrictions on namericans is fundamentally different, and that is because of actions like these two young girls in st. Augustine, florida. Lonnie bunch, thank you. My pleasure. I thought i might start with inviting you just to share some reflections of coming up in st. Augustine and maybe a little bit about family and schooling and that will sort of help us set the stage for how you emerged as activists in your teenage years. Well, coming up in st. Augustine, st. Augustine to me was a very, very nice, nice town to live in, to grow up in. We had a lot of black businesses at the time that i grew up. Washington street was our main street that had a lot of black businesses. When we started in the movement we didnt start off picketing or demonstrating. We would go down to the st. Pauls a. M. E. Church and sit around and just talk about what we were going to do. You know, that was when school was out. And when we found out that we had someone a leader that would back us in a way that we never would have dreamed of because most of the leaders would tell us no, you cant do that, thats not the way you do i it, youve got to wait, but dr. R. B. Hailing, he was our adviser, youth adviser, and he just motivated us to want to go and make a difference in st. Augustine because for me i didnt too much care about my mom having to come and buy my School Supplies at woolworth because at that time there was not no walmarts. It was just the downtown area with woolworth and mccrorys. And they would buy our School Supplies there. And there was a lunch counter over there. And she would go in, from walking in the park, have to pass the fountain in the park because it had white only on it. And she would go over there and buy my School Supplies and she would also buy the accessories you needed for school. But she couldnt go over and get a drink of water. I had a problem with that. And i said to myself, you know, theres something wrong with this picture. So when i seen the young people gathering up at this church down the street from me i said im going to go down there, see what theyre doing. But all they were doing was just gathering. Then mr. Clyde jenkins, dr. Halen, miss Lucille Plummer and miss fanny wood, they started bringing supplies to make picket signs. So we made our little picket signs and we would go downtown every day. Every day, every morning we would meet at st. Paul and get our picket signs and some would go to mccrorys, and some would go to woolworth. Some would go to the local drugstores that was down in the area and picket. It may be two or three at one place, four or five at another. You know. And thats how we did it. Until one day we gathered at the st. Paul church. It was in july. And we said 1963. 1963. July of 1963. July the 18th. And we said we were sitting around, and we had some older like their name was Jimmy Jackson, Francis Floyd, and older people. Older, older ones. And we were just sitting there. Carl williams. And we were just sitting there. And Francis Floyd said its time for us to do something. Weve got to talk to doc. Weve got to go and do something. We need to go set in. So big Jimmy Jackson, theres a difference between theres a little Jimmy Jackson and theres a big Jimmy Jackson. Theres a difference between them. And the big Jimmy Jackson said, well, were going downtown to set in. And he said how are we going to go downtown and set in . Dr. Halen didnt say we can do that. Well, were going anyway. So we put the signs up against the wall and walked downtown. We went down st. Francis street, turned down washington street. And as we was going down in the little we were in twos. As we were walking down the street mr. Ernest wells had a barbershop, and he came out because he was very involved in the naacp. And he came by. He said where do you all think youre going . We said were going to set in. He said who told you all to go set in . Wheres those picket signs . We said we left them at the church, were going to set in. Welld doctor no, he didnt. He said, well, do you have any money . And we said no. And he went back in his barbershop. He said you cant buy nothing if you dont have no money. So he gave i think it was goldie, goldie some money. And he gave big Jimmy Jackson some money. So we walked on down. We never left off king street that day. There was what, one, two, three. It was a service drugstore, mccartneys drugstore, and then woodward. And we went in, goldie and francis. Francis and jean and goldie went in the service drugstore. Goldie and Harold Jenkins and several more went into mccartneys. Joeann, myself, with carl and sam and dolores and rosemary and horace went to woolworth. And thats where we set in at. Would it be okay . I dont mean to stop you. But youve set the stage so beautifully. Can i bring in miss ulmer and well weave your stories together . Yes. Things started for me i lived on the north side of town, i lived on the west side. That mean across the track. And there werent anything for black children to do because we didnt have any activities. None whatsoever. So i had to get permission because i had a sister live on the north side where the church was, two streets behind. And my mother said i asked permission, could i go and participate. And they of course said yes. So i went every day over to my sisters house, and thats how i got hooked up with them. I would go and say, well, i want to be involved. So i went and i joined, and thats what happened. There was nothing for any of us to do. I was going to ask, can you tell me a little bit about those early meetings of Youth Council that you joined . Well, dot eubanks, the one that played the piano. No, no. Janelle. Janelle eubanks played the piano. We would have singing, and we had our little president , which was jared. Wasnt it jared . He was the president . At that time. For a little while. For a little while. He was our president. Mmhmm. For not long. And we would meet every day and we would go picket. It was only a few of us, a handful of people that participated. And did it every day. And after we decided that we wanted to go, i guess we was tired of just going with the signs. We wanted to make a difference and just go in and sit down and ask for service. When you made that decision to young people made the decision to go out and do the sitin, you alluded to some frustration with older leaders who werent quite so ready to take more aggressive steps. Can you talk a little about that difference in perspective between the young folks and older . Our perspective was i guess we just wanted to go on and sit down. And i guess they wanted a little more time. Maybe they werent ready to make that plunge. But for tuesday was like we need to go and sit in and ask for service. So thats what we did. And when we did, we met our adversary, who said they do not serve niggers here, you will have to leave or be arrested. We continued to sit. At the counter at at the counter. And they said, we told you if you dont leave, because we dont serve niggers here, you will be arrested. So they called in l. O. Davis, which was the shefrks a big old man. He showed up and told us the same thing, we was unlawful guests, we was undesirable guests. We was trespassing. And if we didnt leave, we would be carried to jail. And thats what happened. They carried us to jail. Yes. And we was also arrested by a black deputy whose name d. J. Johnson. To me when he put us in that car i think that really was the hurting part of the whole day, was when he came in and snatched us and told us that we were under arrest. I would imagine he would have been one of the first black deputies. And i just because i grew up knowing him. Knowing him. And went to school with his son. And i looked at him. Im like, are you really doing this to us . And he actually not just he kind of pushed us in the car. Because l. O. Was there. And l. O. Was i guess he was showing off in front of his boss. And they took us to jail. And we thought we was going to get out. We just in there singing and oh, we had they hadnt put us in a cell yet. The group has how many . 16. And we were just sitting around in the hall. And we were singing. And like i say, i meant we all depending on Francis Floyd and jimmy, the oldest ones. We was kind of leaning on them. You know. And they were like dont worry about, it were going to get out, dr. Halen not going to leave us in here, and so on and so on. They came and took joeann, myself, and dolores and rosemary and horace, with carl and sam and locked us up in the mens part of the jail. And i said oh, my goodness, we wasnt with the other ones. I said why arent we with the others . And the other ones were downstairs, locked up downstairs. So we was like, i think were leaving. Because they were singing. I said joeann, theyre leaving. I said why are we still in here . And i said rosemary, i said, yall, whats going on . I said francis and them leaving. Oh, they was clapping and singing and going out the jail. And there we was up there locked up until the next morning. Can i ask how the experience of actually finally being arrested, spending that first night in the jail, compared to you were young. Compared to how you had maybe imagined it might be . Thats a pretty big thing to have happen. At first it was fun to us. We was up there singing. We had all seven of us. And we were just aclapping and asinging because we just knew we was fitting to leave. We just knew that we was fitting to get out. But that didnt happen. We went to court the next morning. And thats when everything started to turn. Spiraled out of control. Howd it feel for you . Well, just like she said, we was all excited about being locked up. We had no sense of fear because we was all together as a group. It was four girls and three boys. It was seven of us. So when the judge got us to court, he had a petition stating that our parents would sign we wouldnt demonstrate anymore until we got to the age of 21. And we said no, dont sign. But the other two young ladies parents signed. So they carried them home. And another young man, he went home. So that left sam, carl, janelle and myself. Now its trickling down because were spending more than two days in jail. It gets to be one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks i think the young men was taken in the middle of the morning. They carried them to mary andrews school. Why do you think what was how did you work things out with your parents so they didnt sign those forms . This is what happened here. When we were in court and the judge approached us and he said to us, he said i do not want you all participating in any more demonstrations of any kind, and we said, no. Youre not going to do this to us. And he said he turned to our parents, and he said to our parents i want you to sign a paper stating that your juvenile kids will not participate in any more demonstrations of any kind because if our brothers had signed that paper they were going to arrest dr. Halen. They were fitting to put him in jail. They was fitting to put a felony on him. But what happened was the four of us, it was a higher power that came upon us for us to do what we did. Because this judge was very evil. He showed it in his voice. He showed it in the way he acted. He looked at us as we said no to him, he turned red as a beet. And said to l. O. You take those commoner niggers out of here, lock them away, and throw away the key. So thats when the naacp, mr. Shore stood up in front of him because he didnt have a lawyer at the time. He had a representative of the naacp representing us that day. And he said to l. A davis i mean, excuse me, judge matthew, i dont care where you take it. He said im going to take it to a higher court. He said i dont care where you take it. He said we make the law here and we break it. And guess what. We made that time. We made it. He gave us a year. Im going to take you back for just a second because were going to talk about the experience of being in prison for so long, Reformatory School context. Mr. Halens a young man now, but he was a very young man then. And youth chapter leader. And i wonder if you could talk a little about his leadership style and how he interacted with the young people in the group and how you came to know him in that experience. I met dr. Halen being involved with the demonstration. And he always encouraged us to do good, find somebody that would encourage us to motivated us to do good things and think good thoughts about ourselves. So by being there with him he had a great influence on us so that we wouldnt just fool around. There was nothing to do. So i thought that was a great thing to do because we wanted a change. We didnt want to go to the back door all the time. You wanted to be able to sit in the front seat like everybody else. You wanted to be able to sit to the counter and not go to the window. You wanted to sit at the front of the bus and not at the back. So he encouraged us in that way, that we could deserve more. Everybody deserved. The constitution. He was a good leader. He motivated all of us. He didnt he didnt say look, we dont want you know good people dont want yall doing this, this and that. He motivated he made us feel he made us feel like we were doing something right, that we were doing something right. And he backed us up 100 in that. Regardless of whether he gave us his permission to do it, he still came and stuck by us and said im with you all, regardless. Im going to be with you all to the end. Dr. Halen was just like john. I tell everybody this. Like john with jesus. He never left our side. And i love him to this day for that. I will love him to this day for that. And i love him for being our leader. Because he was a great leader. He was a good leader. And i love him to this day for that. Because he made a change in our life. Even though we went to Reform School it still made a difference in our life. It made a difference in our life because we can say to the world, i am somebody. Even though that happened to us when we was 15 and 16, 14, now were just like two little old ladies, but we still have that drive and passion in our heart for dr. Halen and for what we did. We know what we did was right. Thats right. There was nothing wrong about that. Its just people with hatred within their heart. I always say because god created me brown and you a different color it doesnt require for you to have something i cant have. Were all here and all deserve the same thing. And another thing that i want to that has not been said, doctor when we got out of jail january 1964, we were out of jail at least three months before dr. King ever came to st. Augustine. Thats what ive been trying to tell dr. Halen was our everything. He was our leader. Even to bring dr. King in. Because dr. King movement did not start until three months after we were out of jail. And we got out of jail january the 23rd, 1964. It was very much a homegrown movement. Yes, it was. And he to me, he is the inspiration and the father of st. Augustine and a little beyond because really to tell you the truth if it wasnt for his knowledge and his knowhow and his sacrifice, because he sacrificed a lot, i mean a lot for us. How did the two of you make sense of, as best you can recall, thinking back on this, your adolescence, youre 15, 16 years old, how did you make sense of all of the violence and hatred that was exhibited in the community . How did you think your way through that . How did you explain that to yourself . I made sense of it because see, we had god in our life and we had spiritual songs that we sung to uplift us. The songs that we sung, it it was uplifting songs. And we bypassed the hatred. Because before dr. King came we were singing i love everybody before he even got here. You know. So we was caught by our parents and dr. Halen that we can overcome. Without the violence. The violence was afflicted on us, but we did not inflict violence back. Being locked up for so long in isolation, once we arrived at that Reformatory School, we were 77 days in the county jail. We were 52 days in isolation at the Reformatory School. We didnt have nobody but each other to talk to and we had a bible they gave us. But spiritually we were already anointed by the lord. Thats why i tell people i learned to pray at an early age. While you were out doing whatever thats all i could do because i was locked up, confined, and with janelle for 52 days. The lady just opened the door early in the morning to get her bible verse. And she used to just sit and look at me. I would sit in the window and make up songs. You know, thats why i say, you know, i spent all of my time with audrey locked up. Nobody needs to claim with i was with no, you werent. I know who i was with for 72 days, then for 52 days just locked up. You know. People dont realize im sorry if i said this. I dont mean no harm. This is the way i feel. If we would have been white children, we would have never my parents would have never had to suffer me being taken in the middle of the morning to a Reformatory School. They never would have had us suffer 72 days in the county jail. They would never have told my mother you had to sign a petition for your child because shes radical. What shes doing is unconstitutional. Thats what the judge told us. But i always say its all right, we weathered the storm with the help of the lord. And what we were doing was right. So i just tell people all the time, whatever you do, do whats right because youll always come out in the end right. Willie carmother. And i have to put this in here. Willie carmother, she was had a bad heart. A bad heart. And when the judge sentenced us, she fainted inside the court. And no matter and i think about miss nora all the time now. No matter how hard it was on r her, she never signed that paper, and it broke her heart. She never got over that. But she never would sign that. Her son told her mama, dont sign it. She stuck with that. But it was killing her inside. And when they took willacar and sam away and they came up that morning to bring us our breakfast, the pain we heard in miss nora and miss whites voice was unbelievable. Like i told my mother and miss white, we heard your pain, miss white and miss noras pain. But joeann and myself, weve seen our mother pain. When they came up to their school and seen our bloody knees. Bloody knees from . Scrubbing the floors. We had to scrub floors on our knees. We had the wet floors on our knees. And buff them until you see your face in them. If theyre not right, you got to go back over it and do it all over again. That was the state punishment. How well do you think each of you emerged from all of this in the short term . Did you feel when you finally were released in january that how did you feel in terms of what that experience had cost you or shown you or what it did it showed us that we needed to do more. So thats what happened. Thats why i was back in jail with dr. King. Three months later. That we still had a lot of work to do. We couldnt have all the st. Augustine four today because we only have two. Their experience, it seems, was harder still while they were incarcerated. They did not share their experience with us. Well, im going to tell you, me and willie carl stayed he stayed well, i had moved out west, and his mother stayed around the corner from and when he came home from the service because he joined the army and when he came home his mother told him audrey around the corner you better go see her. He said i had to come around to see you because if i didnt come see you mama would have had a seizure. And i said you know, we talked. And then i asked him, i said what you know, sit around, i said williecar, you never talked about mariana. I said you never told us the story of what happened to you and sam when you left in the jail. And this is what he said to me, god rest his sole. Audrey, dont ask me about mariana. If you ask me about mariana, ill never come see you again. I said, are you serious, willie carl . He said im serious. Dont ask me about mariana anymore. So me and joeann, we took it upon ourselves to ask sam we thought we were fit fitting to get us a story in st. Pete. We said he going to have to tell us up here. He practically told us the same thing. And i was like i told joeann, i said joeann, i wonder what happened to williecarl and sam. What did they do to him . Like they had a really, really bad, bad experience that was unbelievable. Hurting. That they could not talk about. And they would not talk about it. They took whatever happened to them to their grave. And i think to this day i think that had a lot to do with things that happened that they was going too soon, that they was carrying a lot of pain, that they didnt want to talk about like me and joeann, me and joeann talked about it because our experience was bad but it wasnt as bad as we can imagine that we have found out from other people that mariana was doing some terrible things up there to the young boys. So we put two and two together and said our friends suffered for freedom. Suffered for freedom. Just for something that they were born with anyway. They suffered. They suffered. Youve said a moment ago, and we know that soon after you go right back into into the movement . Jail. Tell me about how you fought your way back into more direct participation, direct action. Dr. Hayling had in june 1964. And we went right on back into demonstrating and participating. First dr. Hayling, this is what dr. Hayling sent for the four of us. And we to meet dr. King. Tell me that story if you would, please. To meet dr. King. And we came, willie carl, sam, joeann and myself, and met dr. King that night. He was sitting on the couch. It was a little plastic couch. I remember it was a little red couch. He was leaning back. And Ralph Abernathy was sitting over in the corner and dr. King was kind of sitting in the corner kind of leaning. He had a little hat kicked to the side. He had his little hat kicked to the side. And when we came in, he got up. And dr. Hayling told him. And he said oh, i know about these four young people. He said, i want to tell you, i want to hug you all and tell you you all went beyond the call of duty. He said job well done, i am so proud of you. I am so proud. Even though whatever happened to sam and willie carl, they still went back to jail. They still went back to jail with dr. Martin luther king sclc because we went to jail under the naacp in 1963 but went back to jail in 1964 under the southern christian leadership conference, dr. Kings organization. Can you tell me the story of that arrest with dr. King, that protest . Were pretty much on the spot where it happened. I was the one who went to jail with dr. King. She went to jail with dr. King. Not me. Seemed like i was already always in the mix of everything for some reason. I was always in the mix. But what happened was dr. King was at the st. Marys church, and he spoke that night. And miss peabody and dr. Hayling, we was in groups. They all was in groups. And i was standing up against the i had no intention of going to jail. Im not going to lie to you. I was standing up against the church. And he turned, and he seen me. And he looked me me, and he said, i want my little hero to come with me in my group. And i was saying to myself, oh, no. Ill be honest with you. I said no, not tonight. You cant say no to dr. King. So i went to jail. It was me, dr. King, reverend shellworth, and dthere was Ralph Abernathy. There was a young white woman. I cant recall her name. But we all went we all went in i dont know who car it was. But anyway, we all pull up and went up there. And i was standing there, i had my little purse. Ooh. At that time i was dressed, boy, i tell you. And a young lady named diane mitchell