‘Original City, Original Sin is a profound and vitally important book. With the benefit of hundreds of interviews and years of archival research, Martin Dobrow gives us a new insight into one of the most important – but far too little known – chapters of the Civil Rights era, the bloody and often terrifying struggle to desegregate America’s original city. In doing so, he provides a complex and fascinating portrait of some of the individuals who swirled around Dr. Martin Luther King during the St. Augustine campaign, from a closeted white peace activist (who would go on to become a pioneer in the alternative newspaper movement), to a black dentist and Air Force veteran who braved Klan beatings to bring justice to his adopted hometown, to a teenage girl who missed the start of high school because she was in prison after a sit-in. Here, on vivid display, is the best and the worst of America, a story both haunting and uplifting.’ Matthew Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of Eighty Days and Paris Undercover