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Home > Florida News > CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL
CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL
In Dare Not Walk Alone, the city's beaches, streets, and businesses are the battlefields for this epic struggle. However, the swimming pool of one small motel, at the center of town, proved to be the tuning point in the conflict. The battle over whom this motel would serve became the primary objective for both sides of the racial divide. In the face of repeated integration attempts, its’ segregationists policies represented the South's unwillingness to give any ground on racial equality. The motel was owned by James Brock. Throughout the summer of 1964 Brock found himself in a one on one show down with Dr. Martin Luther King. The drama was a daily skirmish on the steps of his motel which resulted in the violent arrest of many including Dr. King.
But the defining moment was when James Brock poured acid into the motel's swimming pool that was filled with young black and white demonstrators. Photographs taken of this horrific incident made front-page news around the world and helped break the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Known as the Open Accommodations Act, it was the first piece of civil rights legislation. Dare Not Walk Alone is a film that highlights St. Augustine, Florida's role in the civil rights movement and it’s pivotal part in helping get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 pushed through Congress, but also shows that forty years later there are 1,000,000 African Americans in the criminal justice system nationally, and 1/3 of St. Augustine's African Americans live below the poverty line. So was the war of ideas won? Have we arrived? At a time when most Americans feel like issues of race and equality were solved in the 1960’s, Dare Not Walk Alone reminds us that the war of poverty, education and justice, is still ours to win. In this post Katrina world in which we now live this film says: We are not there yet but there is hope. The goal of the event is to connect young people who are not from the civil rights generation to those monumental times, while still being a contemporary voice for the concerns of our generation to come. This is not your grandmother’s civil rights film. This film will challenge Black and White America, as well as Hispanic, Asian, and Muslim citizens equally.
With Never Seen Before Footage of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a first and only interview with, then motel owner, James Brock!!!
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