SCOTT NAMES THREE TO FLORIDA CIVIL RIGHTS HALL
By Space Coast Daily // January 30, 2014
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – Robert Hayling, James Weldon Johnson, and Asa Philip Randolph have been selected by Gov. Rick Scott as the next class for the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame.
Hayling, 94, is considered the “father” of the civil rights movement in St. Augustine.
Johnson, who died in 1938, founded the Daily American, a newspaper focused on the black community and was the first African-American admitted to the Florida Bar since the end of Reconstruction. He was from Jacksonville.
Randolph, who died in 1979, founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black labor union. Born in 1889 in Crescent City, Randolph grew up in Jacksonville.
In 1957, he organized a prayer pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to civil rights issues in the South, and he was a principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
