James Brock, the manager of the motel, was photographed pouring muriatic acid into the pool to get the protesters out.
This famous photograph by Horace Cort shows a group of white and black integrationists in the former Monson Motor Lodge swimming pool on June 18, 1964.
The photo was connected to the St. Augustine Movement, named for the town in Florida where it took place.
Lots of peaceful protests and demonstrations were responded to with violence, which led to more and more complicated protests.
On June 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr was arrested for trespassing at the Monson Motor Lodge after being asked to leave its segregated restaurant.
This (and other things) helped spur on a group of protesters, black and white, to jump into the pool as a strategically planned event to end segregation at motel pools.
The pool at this motel was designated “white only”. Whites who paid for motel rooms invited blacks to join them in the motel pool as their guests.
This swim-in was planned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and two associates.
The motel manager, Jimmy Brock, in an effort to break up the party, poured a bottle of muriatic acid into the pool, hoping the swimmers would become scared and leave.
One swimmer, who knew that the ratio of acid to pool water was so great that the acid was no longer a threat, drank some of the pool water to calm the other swimmers’ fears.
Many people from that time remember Brock as more the victim in the incident.
Muriatic acid is undiluted hydrochloric acid and is used in the cleaning of masonry surfaces such as pools. But what people heard was the word “acid”.
It did not scare the swimmers, though it seems like it was effective in making the protesters at least nervous — the amount of acid to the amount of water being so small it was mostly safe—and so a cop jumped in to arrest people.
Many people from that time remember Brock as more the victim in the incident.
James Brock Pours Acid into Monson Pool.
One moment of temper led to an unwanted legacy. “Jimmy kind of caught the brunt of it. He was a nice guy”. said Eddy Mussallem, a fellow hotelier and longtime friend.
“They had to pick a motel, so they picked Jimmy’s motel. I always told him he did a foolish thing”.
Brock’s attempt to force the protesters out did not work, and, impatient at the slow progress the swimmers were making in leaving the pool, Officer James Hewitt announced that they were all under arrest.
An off-duty policeman, Officer Henry Billitz, jumped in—except for his shoes still fully clothed—in an attempt at dragging them out himself; he beat them up as well.
The protests at the Monson Motor Lodge drew national attention to the issue of segregation in St. Augustine and helped to galvanize support for the civil rights movement.
The demonstrations also led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations and employment.
Eventually the courts forced Brock and his colleagues to integrate their businesses, and soon after he did, the Monson was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), who violently opposed desegregation.
The state judge was unsympathetic to his predicament, however, feeling that Brock and his colleagues had brought the violence of the KKK upon themselves; they had taken advantage of it while it was in their favor, and could not stop it now that it was not.
On June 30, Florida Governor Farris Bryant announced the formation of a biracial committee to restore interracial communication in St. Augustine.
Although the Civil Rights Act had passed, there were further problems for both Brock personally and Florida particularly.
He had been repeatedly refused bank loans to pay for the damage caused by the protests, and declared himself bankrupt the following year.
Also in 1965, although the city celebrated its quadricentennial, there was still a palpable underlying racial tension.
The tourist trade had been badly damaged and it has been estimated that St. Augustine lost millions of dollars in tourism. Hotel, motels, and restaurants were especially badly hit.
In 2007, aged 85, Jimmy Brock died at his St. Augustine home.
The motel and pool were demolished in March 2003, despite five years of protests, thus eliminating one of the nation’s important landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement. A Hilton Hotel was built on the site.
(Photo credit: Horace Cort / Wikimedia Commons / AP / Civil Rights Library of St. Agustine).