May 19th 9th Stop on the Civil Rights Tour 120 De Haven Street, The Ayers Home, and another great story.....

120 DeHaven Street

Inscription. This house was built in the 1920s and purchased a decade later by Jutson Ayers, who worked as an alligator wrestler for a quarter of a century at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm before his death in 1958. His widow, Mrs. Rena Ayers, gave important support to the civil rights movement of the 1960s by providing lodging for out-of-towners who came here to support the movement. In March 2005, when she was 100 years old, Mrs. Ayers had a visit from one of those she had hosted 41 years before. He was Alvin J. Bronstein, an attorney who had come to St. Augustine in August 1964 with the idea of spending his two week summer vacation aiding the movement with his legal skills. Instead, he wound up spending the next four years as staff counsel for the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC), handling important civil rights cases in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (including getting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail in Mississippi). He was one of many people whose lives were deeply influenced by their time in St. Augustine. On his 2005 return, he walked through the front door of this house pointed to the left and said, "That's my room". When the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps, commemorating the Freedom Movement in August 2005, Mrs. Ayers was honored as one of the legendary "Housemothers of the Civil Rights Movement" in St. Augustine. This Historical Marker Presented this 2nd day of July, 2008 by Northrop Grumman Corporation. Erected 2008 by The 40th Anniversary to Commemorate the Civil Rights Demonstrations, Inc.   Marker series. This marker is included in the Florida, St. Augustine Freedom Trail marker series.  Location. 29° 53.162′ N, 81° 18.971′ W. Marker is in St. Augustine, Florida, in Saint Johns County. Marker is on De Haven Street, on the right when traveling west