62 Years Ago Tonight, Andrew Young Was Kicked in the Head in St. Augustine — He Now Regards it as "The Most Important Day of My Life"

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 (King’s “wild man”) coerced Young into leading this risky march.

For decades afterward, Young (who would go on to become a Congressman, the mayor of Atlanta, and the United States Ambassador to the United Nations) essentially blacked out what took place that fateful night. But one day he was shown some choppy black-and-white film footage that had recently been discovered. It showed him getting thrown to the sidewalk, and kicked in the head. It changed his whole perspective on St. Augustine’s place in American history.

I spoke with Young for the first time at the Civil Rights Summit in Austin in 2014: a sprawling interview that included a comical interaction in an elevator with Mavis Staples. Ten years later, late on a steamy night in a St. Augustine bar, twirling a large olive from his vodka martini between his thumb and index finger, the then-92-year-old Young told me he had come to regard that 1964 saga as “probably the most important day of my life.”

Here, Young is pictured in 2024 with St. Augustinian civil rights workers Barbara Vickers and Cora Tyson, both 101 at the time. All three are still alive.

You can read all about this little-known chapter of American history in my forthcoming book, Original City, Original Sin: King, the Klan, and the Fight for Civil Rights in St. Augustine, Florida. Published by Cambridge University Press this fall, the book is getting great advance reception, including this from Pulitzer-Prize winning historian David J. Garrow:

Learn more or order Original City, Original Sin.