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5 The Fuse Is Lit On June 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, accompanied by Ralph D. Abernathy , appeared on the steps of the Monson Motor Lodge in the heart of St. Augustine and made a bold move at a defining moment in the civil rights movement. James Brock,the motel manager,met them at the entrance to the lodge and told the assembled group they could not enter. “We’re segregated at this time,” he said. King, who was accompanied by eight other civil rights activists, including William England, a white chaplain from Boston University , refused to leave.1 After a short, polite exchange, Brock called the police. Sheriff L. O. Davis and Chief Virgil Stuart arrived on the scene and instructed the group to leave. When they refused to do so, they were arrested. King and the others declined to post bail and were locked up in the crowded St. Johns county jail. Each was charged with the misdemeanors of trespassing with malice, intent to breach the peace, and conspiracy . What made this act of defiance particularly timely was that a filibuster of the civil rights bill had been taking place in the Senate for almost two months, a filibuster designed by nineteen southern senators to derail the bill. Passage of the civil rights bill hung in the balance and, with it, the issue of segregated private facilities catering to the general public in interstate commerce. Much of the Senate’s debate on the civil rights bill centered on the equal opportunity section and the right to jury trials in all criminal cases of contempt except voting rights cases. Republican senator The Fuse Is Lit / 77 Thurston B. Morton of Kentucky offered the amendments, and on June 9 the Senate voted to include trial by jury in the bill.A provision to have the federal government finance training to deal with the continuing problem of school desegregation was defeated. As the debate continued, violence was rising in St. Augustine. By June 8,Senator Mansfield had formally filed a petition to invoke the Senate’s debating limit.Thirty-eight senators signed the petition:twentyseven Democrats and eleven Republicans. King’s goal was to keep the public eye on the evils of segregation until Congress passed a civil rights bill. If the bill passed, segregation would be defeated in one fell swoop. If King lost the public’s support, he could very well lose passage of the civil rights bill. On the same Thursday morning that King and Ralph Abernathy were arrested in front of the Monson Motor Lodge, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on the filibuster that had been going on for seventy-five days. Democrats voting against cloture were Bible of Nevada, Byrd and Robertson of Virginia, Byrd of West Virginia, Eastland and Stennis of Mississippi, Elender and Long of Louisiana, Ervin and Jordan of North Carolina, Fulbright and McClellan of Arkansas, Gore and Walters of Tennessee,Hayden of Arizona,Hill and Sparkman of Alabama,Holland and Smathers of Florida, Johnson and Thurmond of South Carolina, and Russell and Talmadge of Georgia. Six Republicans also voted against: Bennett of Utah,Goldwater of Arizona,Mechem of New Mexico,Simpson of Wyoming,Tower of Texas, and Young of North Dakota.2 Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois had arranged the political maneuver that finally broke the filibuster. He introduced a substitute motion , worked out by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and revised late at night, to provide for jury trials in criminal contempt cases.This had been one of the major stumbling blocks to the bill’s passage.This compromise yielded the votes necessary to invoke the Senate’s cloture rule. Victory was in sight; all King had to do was to keep up the pressure . He was confident that political leaders in St. Augustine would unwittingly cooperate by defying his efforts to seek access to private businesses and accommodations that would be covered if the bill passed. One thing was sure: the nation’s attention would be focused on the brutal actions of the Klan and the adamant stand elected officials of St. Augustine 78 / Dan R.Warren had taken to prevent demonstrators from protesting segregation of private businesses. In Peterson v. Greenville the Supreme Court failed to address the constitutionality of a state’s right to arrest demonstrators and enforce trespass laws that allowed private business establishments to choose whom to serve. In that case, Justice Harlan offered a vigorous dissent, that mere enforcement of trespass laws by states in...

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