Humphries, Young pay tribute to Robert Hayling’s legacy

On Saturday, former FAMU President Frederick S. Humphries and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young were among the speakers at a memorial service for the late Robert Hayling in Lincolnville, Fla.

Hayling, who died on Dec. 21, 2015 at the age of 86, was “hailed as the ‘father’ of St. Augustine’s civil rights movement” according to the St. Augustine Record.

“A native of Tallahassee, where his father was a longtime teacher at what is now Florida A&M University, Dr. Hayling was one of four children, all of whom went on to earn advanced degrees. After graduating from Florida A&M, he joined the Air Force in 1951, serving as a first lieutenant at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,” the Record reported. He went on to earn a dentistry degree from Meharry Medical College.

Hayling later served the president of the St. Augustine chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and worked with the Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead demonstrations in the city in 1964. Those protests helped lead to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Young, who was the executive director of the SCLC in 1964, recalled Hayling’s courage and commitment to bringing people together. Humphries, according to the Florida Times-Union, “said he would like to establish a place of honor for Hayling, a distinguished graduate, at A&M’s campus. He also proposed building a partnership with St. Augustine to bring more students down to Lincolnville to learn about Hayling’s and St. Augustine’s place in the civil rights movement.”