Larger buoy to warn inlet boaters

    St. Augustine General Services Director Jim Piggott assured city commissioners Monday that a larger buoy is in place and inlet dredging is planned, but too late for a $1 million sport fishing boat that ran aground and sank last week when its skipper failed to notice a smaller buoy.

   Hank Thomas began protesting the status quo as a child.

   At 9 or 10 he corrected the white insurance man who came calling on his aunt but addressed her only by her first name. Later, because blacks were not allowed in the public library, Thomas would take his own books there and read for about an hour or so.

   He sat in the white seats on city buses, and, during the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, suggested to the local ministers that they attempt something similar in St. Augustine. They declined.

   In 1960, while on break from his studies at Washington's Howard University, Thomas staged a solo sit-in at the lunch counter of the McCrory's store on St. George Street, and a year later, at 19, he joined the 1961 Freedom Ride.

   Hank Thomas, today a successful Atlanta businessman, will be the main speaker at Saturday's unveiling of the St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument. The monument is being installed today in the southeast section of the Plaza de la Constitución.

   Memories of an historic era will likely be racing through his mind. Last week he was among dozens of Freedom Riders appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show for the 50th anniversary of that period, and next Monday will be part of a PBS documentary The Freedom Riders.

History on canvas lecture today

   After two years of widespread fighting across Florida known as the Second Seminole War, desperate measures were initiated to defeat the Seminole Tribe's resistance to the removal policy put in place by the U.S. Government.

   It was determined by the Federal Army and the Territorial Militia of Florida, in combat with the Indians, that the war could be ended and the spirit of the Seminoles broken if their charismatic war leader Osceola was eliminated.

   A controversial plan was initiated to meet with the leader and his followers under a flag of truce and then apprehend them by force. The plot was successfully executed at a place ten miles south of St. Augustine known as Moultrie Creek.

   The trap was sprung and the entire delegation of Seminoles was abducted in minutes. The captives were herded back to St. Augustine.

   The procession wound through the narrow streets, creating a spectacle that drew the citizens to line the doorways and verandas along the way. They all wished to see the fabled Osceola, who was already becoming a legend.

   Of the more than eighty captured Seminoles, some escaped. The others were later removed to the Western Territory.

   Osceola fell ill and was transported to Ft. Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. His health continued to decline and the legendary war leader died there on January 31, 1838.

   Osceola has become one of the greatest Native American leaders in our history. His followers fought for four more years, never fully capitulating to their enemy. They receded into the Everglades, where today their descendants still live with honor.