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Today would have been the 100th birthday of one of the most remarkable people I ever met. Irv Cheney just missed the milestone, dying in October 2024 at the age of 98. He was already 91 when we met in early 2018. By then, I had been researching the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, Florida, for several years. I had become convinced that what happened in the nation’s oldest city in 1963 and 1964 was a vitally important and shockingly under-told part of American history.

“We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., Springfield College, June 14, 1964) The New England Peace Pagoda in Leverett, Massachusetts: one of my favorite spots on the planet. Today is August 5, the day of relative innocence. I’m going to team up with a couple of my favorite namesakes once again, the unforgettable Dr. King and Marty McFly of “Back to the Future” fame. Today our good friend, Mr. McFly, i

In 2019, I traveled with an amazing group of students from Springfield College to St. Augustine, Florida, and met with veterans of the local civil rights movement like Janie Price. In 1964, Price and her husband hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. as he moved from house to house for his protection. I am no longer a young person. But in the best sense, young people keep me young. I am about to enter my 33rd year of full-time teaching: five at the high school level, and heading into

The story behind the book began 21,286 days ago. Math wizards on Substack can tell you that this was Thursday, April 4, 1968. It is a day I will never forget. Even though, it’s true: I remember almost none of it. I was 7 years old, a first grader at Grace Avenue Elementary School in Great Neck, New York. I remember that my teacher was named Mrs. Jackowski. But I have no recollection of the school day. I don’t remember the weather, but a quick look back in The New York Times i

Dr. Robert Hayling: the father of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I spoke with Dr. Robert Hayling only once, but I will never forget it. A former dentist, Dr. Hayling became the de facto leader of the civil rights movement in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida, from 1963-65. It was an incredibly dramatic and violent time that is a fundamentally important part of the American story. We would be wise to incorporate it into our observance of the nation’s 250th birthd

In America’s almost 250-year history, you would be hard-pressed to find a more double-edged period than the ten months and five days between August 28, 1963 and July 2, 1964. Those bookends are moments of shimmering hope: the March on Washington and the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, times when a multiracial democracy really seemed possible. In between was an avalanche of anguish. There was the assassination of President Kennedy, of course, on November 22, 1963. Al

Martin Dobrow with David Nolan in July 2024. Photo by Lenny Foster Four score. Those are the first two words of perhaps the most famous speech in American history: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, on November 19, 1863. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Right in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln reached back 87 years (“four score

I’m a basketball guy. I played for my high school team a million years ago, back in the Paleolithic Era: the time of short shorts, high socks, and no 3-point shots. My late father, Alan Dobrow, took this photo of his most fashionable son. I covered college basketball for years and wrote my first book about it (Going Bigtime: The Spectacular Rise of UMass Basketball). At Madison Square Garden on the night in November 1993, when UMass knocked off top-ranked North Carolina. [Pho

Happy Juneteenth, America! This is something to celebrate, the end of legalized slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865: a day when we came closer to being a country that matches the wonderful words in our founding documents. Created Equal. We the People. Before we were even a country in 1711, Alexander Pope crafted the line, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Indeed, nothing is more human than the erring. Making mistakes comes with the territory. Granted, not all m

Today is a big, patriotic day: a time to celebrate the very best of America. For now, let's put to the side the 80th birthday of our President and his decision to stage “UFC Freedom 250” on the grounds of the White House. It's also Flag Day, an invitation to celebrate the stars and stripes and all they are supposed to stand for. Like so many Americans, I grew up standing in the front of my elementary school classroom with my hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to the flag

Sixty-two years ago today, June 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in the nation’s oldest city—St. Augustine, Florida—for having the audacity to order food at a whites-only establishment. Here, he and his close friend Ralph Abernathy are confronted by James Brock, the General Manager of the Monson Motor Lodge. Sometimes the most interesting parts of history, though, are off in the shadows. See that young woman in the print dress behind Abernathy’s left shoulder?

Sixty-two years ago tonight, on June 9, 1964, Andrew Young was essentially tricked into leading a nonviolent march right into the teeth of white supremacy. It happened just outside the Plaza de la Constitución—near the Slave Market—in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida. Young was just 32 at the time, the youngest and most level-headed of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “lieutenants” with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Fellow SCLC member Hosea Williams (

Springfield College is an independent, nonprofit, coeducational institution founded in 1885. The College serves undergraduate and graduate students at its main campus in Springfield, Massachusetts and online. Springfield College inspires students through the guiding principles of its Humanics philosophy – educating in spirit, mind, and body for leadership in service to others.

Three veterans of the civil rights movement fought segregation in St. Augustine, Fla., enduring violence and racism in America’s oldest city — The Washington Post Phelan M. Ebenhack/For The Washington Post Cora Tyson, 99, stands in front of her home in St. Augustine, Fla., on July 15. The plaque commemorates the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stay at her home while he pushed for the racial desegregation of dining and lodging amid Ku Klux Klan violence. Read more ...

60 years after 1963 Klan rally in St. Augustine, Fla., White pastor and Black activist speak — The Washington Post Harold Valentine/AP St. Augustine Police Chief Virgil Stuart, right, watches a group of sign-carrying African American demonstrators as they march in front of the old slave market in the center of the city, May 30, 1964, St. Augustine, Fla. Read more ...

Podcast interview on campus social justice

Audrey Nell Edwards Hamilton with Martin Luther King III in 2011. She was arrested with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Fla., in June 1964. They were taken to the St. Johns County Jail, where she had already spent time after her arrest in 1963 for a lunch counter sit-in. (David Nolan) Audrey Nell Edwards was still a baby when Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947. In 1963, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that it was

From the driver’s seat of his red 2014 Volvo, Dan Smith looked in on the huge protest thronging Sixteenth Street in the Northwest quadrant of Washington D.C. on Friday evening, June 5. Through the windows, he basked in all of the energy, all of the caring, all of the great messages — like the “Black and White Lives Together” sign held by his wife, Loretta Neumann. The protest, of course, had grown out of the killing of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. The gruesome eigh

An interview on public television, WGBY’s “Connecting Point”