In 1965 when I was a volunteer for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I worked in rural South Carolina.  That summer nine civil rights workers, SCLC and NAACP members, were arrested by authorities for laying out towels to picnic and swim on Edisto Beach.  (You Came Here to Die, Didn’t You: Registering Black Voters One Soul at a Time)  They were arrested for trespass because they were black and white volunteers.  They were taken to jail while the all-white group of bathers left behind was  undisturbed by the  police.  Several of those arrested were part of my group from Berkeley, CA.  All were found guilty of trespass.

That is why I found this article particularly interesting.  “For decades officials imposed regulations to restrict African Americans’ use of public beaches – and the fight for equal access is far from over.”