Local author, journalist and Springfield College Professor Marty Dobrow joined Executive Editor Chris Maza and Managing Editor Ryan Feyre for an upcoming episode of “So That Reminds Me.”
Reminder Publishing photo by Tyler Garnet
Local author, journalist and Springfield College professor Marty Dobrow joined “So That Reminds Me” to talk about his latest book, “Original City, Original Sin: King, the Klan, and the Fight for Civil Rights in St. Augustine, Florida.”
Sitting down with Executive Editor Chris Maza and Managing Editor Ryan Feyre, Dobrow said the idea for pursuing the story of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Civil Rights Movement came about after coming across a list of former commencement speakers at Springfield College, including Martin Luther King Jr.
“It was an astounding story on a couple of fronts. One, was that there was all of this pressure brought to bear on then college president Glenn Olds to step away from Martin Luther King, pressure from the FBI,” he said.
Dobrow explained that he then found unredacted FBI documents in the University of Massachusetts Library that pointed conclusively that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was pressuring Olds to not have King speak at the college’s commencement.
“Really, what happened in St. Augustine is one of the great undertold stories of American Civil Rights, in fact, I think one of the great under told stories in American history,” he said. “I just passionately had this quest to just find that story, find characters to tell that story around … I think some pretty remarkable things happen then that have huge resonance to our world right now.”
Dobrow explained that despite the book largely being set in St. Augustine, it has local ties between Marshall Bloom’s time at Amherst College and a plane crash involving former U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy in Southampton.
Despite initially writing about King’s commencement speech at Springfield College in 2004, Dobrow said it wasn’t until 2013 that he made his first visit to St. Augustine.
“It just wouldn’t relent, it wouldn’t release its grip on me. I just knew that it was such a great story; it felt like it was a story that had to be told,” he said. “From the beginning, it was just an electric interest when I was there, it’s such a fascinating place, it’s so many different things.”
Dobrow explained that St. Augustine was one of the earliest European settlements in what would become the United States in 1565. The community also advertises itself as “America’s Oldest City,” and he added that the city has a deep history with race, as it was named after St. Augustine, an African man. “That is significant that this is the origin of the country,” he said.
Dobrow said that St. Augustine fought on both sides of the Civil War and slaves were freed there, something that did not happen in other parts of the South, before it briefly became “the epicenter of American Civil Rights” in 1963 and 1964. He also said that the city’s history in the Civil Rights movement has largely been omitted. “There is lots of evidence that is just a story that has not been sufficiently told.”
While writing the book, Dobrow said it was challenging to earn people’s trust in the community as a white person from the North coming to tell a Black story.
“It was no guarantee that at the finish line this was going to work, there were obstacles, I had a lot of help along the way,” he said.
Dobrow said that the book tells a story of people connected to King.
“What makes this book, in my opinion, really interesting, yes, Martin Luther King’s in the title, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff about him that I think hasn’t been told before,” he said. “But it’s not fundamentally a book about him, it’s fundamentally about the people who connected to him, little known people, Black and white, young and old, gay and straight, who just got wrapped up in this pivotal moment in American history, put themselves on the line for a cause that’s much bigger than themselves.”
Dobrow explained that the story was suppressed over the years.
“Part of the reason that this story has been so under told for so long, is that there was this sort of complicity of the population. The Black population in St. Augustine, which has been diminished significantly as it’s become gentrified … By and large, Black people did not want to be retraumatized, they were treated so badly, and then white people didn’t want the shame of looking at this, so it was like this convenient thing for decades, ‘let’s not really look at this.’”
Dobrow said he hopes the book inspires people to come together and work toward positive change.
“The long story of American history does suggest that when people bond together and take responsibility for their society, and work hard to do it, that positive change can happen. And that’s one of the hopes for me in this book,” he said. “I think we need people leaning in and inspiring young people, tapping into their strength, their wisdom, their passions, to help lead us forward to a better country and a better world.”
“Original City, Original Sin: King, the Klan, and the Fight for Civil Rights in St. Augustine, Florida” releases on Oct. 15, and for more information, head to civilwriter.com. Dobrow will be hosting a launch event for the book on Oct. 17 at Springfield College at 9:30 a.m.
To listen to hear the full conversation, head to thereminder.com/our-podcast or search for “So That Reminds Me” on your favorite podcasting platform.
