Martin Luther King Jr. led many of the local blacks in …show more content…
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) unleashed an enormous campaign in St. Augustine, Florida to support the local movement to end racial injustices. King wanted the non-violence protest to lead to local desegregation thus capturing the media attention to help gain nation support for the Civil Right movement. Before Martin Luther King and SCLC reach St. Augustine to help fight in the movement, Robert B. Hayling from National Association of the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) led boycott, sit-ins, and demonstrations against segregated businesses. Kingencyclopedia stated (n.d) the Ku Klux Klan and other whites responded with violence against demonstrators, which escalated through the fall of 1963, when Hayling and three other NAACP members were severely beaten at a Klan rally, then arrested and convicted of assaulting their attackers. Therefore, the NAACP asks SCLC for reinforcement. King spoke at a Baptist church the first day he arrive St. Augustine to give encouragement to black locals. White locals retaliated the next morning by shooting up King rental