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Dare Not Walk Alone is an award-winning feature-length documentary created by Jeremy Dean. a twenty-something director and former student of Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida.
Dean began making the film after moving to St. Augustine to attend Flagler. Living in the historically black neighborhood of Lincolnville and helping out on various community projects, like the restoration of stained glass windows in an historic black church in St. Johns County, Dean began to hear stories of what had happened in the community in the early sixties.
Dean was stunned by the fact that he had not heard this part of the civil rights story in middle school or high school. And he was amazed to find that St. Augustine was a major battleground in the struggle for civil rights in 1964. Why? Because in 2003 there was precious little evidence in the city of the civil rights chapter in its long and otherwise well-documented past. (St. Augustine was founded in 1565 and ironically the first settlement of free blacks in America is also in St. Augustine, at Fort Mose, pronounced mo-zay, which is a National Historic Landmark.)
When Dean learned that the infamous "swimming pool integration incident" in St. Augustine had played a major role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 he began to research his film, aided by several local groups who were preparing to mark the 40th anniversary of that signing. Dean participated in the 2004 ceremony of apology at a St. Augustine church which, in 1964, had barred blacks from attending and had them arrested.
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