A unique moment in civil rights history has come home to a small museum in St Augustine, Florida with the installation of a former Woolworth’s lunch counter where a historic sit-in took place in July 1963, and helped lead to the end of segregation in the city.
The Woolworth’s is gone, but the lunch counter has been installed as part of the exhibits at the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center, located in the building that once housed the county’s first black public high school.
Gayle Phillips, museum executive director, says it may appear simple, but it is a symbol of the times it comes from. “Can you imagine not being able to go to McDonald’s and order a hamburger and sit down and eat it? All of those things were not free to these people who sat at that lunch counter. They were willing to put their very freedom on the line to make it happen for us, the next generation.”
Several of the demonstrators, students at local colleges, refused a plea bargain after their arrests and spent months in juvenile detention. The museum also has mementoes of other civil rights activities in the area, including the arrest record and fingerprint cards of Dr. Martin Luther King.
