Zion Baptist Church, with its distinctive double towers, was built in 1921 to house a congregation originally organized in 1886. It is the last house of worship passed by many funerals on their way to several nearby cemeteries, including the one from which the street takes its name: Evergreen.
It was one of the churches where civil rights rallies were held in the 1960's when St. Augustine was the site of a major campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Robert B. Hayling that resulted in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
One of those who spoke at a rally here was the famous attorney William Kunstler (1919-1995). He was already familiar with St. Augustine, having represented local Freedom Rider Henry Thomas in a 1961 Mississippi case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a poem he wrote later, Kunstler paid tribute to the role played by St. Augustinians in bringing "an evil era to an end," and concluded: "Sometimes it takes the courage of a few, to teach the rest of us just what to do."
This Historic Marker Presented this 2nd Day of July, 2007 by: Northrop Grumman
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