This chapter covers the dramatic time of June 15-17, 1964, by focusing on a trio of narratives.

The first, on June 15, focuses on the arrival of Jackie Robinson. He speaks to a packed house at the St. Paul AME Church and connects with Audrey Nell Edwards, inviting her and JoeAnn Anderson up to Connecticut for a few weeks in the summer.

The June 16 section deals with the Herbers family. John has promised a family vacation to the beach in Florida on the Gulf coast, but when the civil rights crisis deepens in St. Augustine, he drives there with his wife and daughters. When his identity as a reporter is discovered, white supremacists fire guns in the parking lot of the hotel where the family is staying. Terrified, the family drives back north, abruptly ending the vacation.

The section on June 17 focuses on Kathy Fentress, who is serving time in the St. Johns County Jail for her involvement with Dr. King and the protest at the Monson Motor Lodge on June 11. From her cell, she writes a profound letter to her hometown newspaper in Daytona Beach, explaining her rationale for submitting to arrest.

During the Cold War, popular culture played an important political role when the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) leveraged against each other the two biggest African American stars Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson. HUAC’s investigation into Hollywood “subversives” and Communist media influence is usually remembered for those who refused to cooperate and were jailed (“the Hollywood Ten”) or “blacklisted” and boycotted from working in Hollywood. When Paul Robeson, who viewed his celebrity as a platform for championing social justice, spoke candidly that the United States presumed to be a model democracy for the world while it denied basic civil rights to African Americans, HUAC was outraged. The committee called baseball hero Jackie Robinson as a countermeasure to Robeson’s inflammatory speeches. Robinson, the first Black MajorLeague baseball player, reassured HUAC on a national stage of African American patriotism while trying to convey the importance of Robeson’s civil rights fight.