St. Augustine is America's oldest city, and that history belongs to everyone who has lived here - Spanish colonists, British administrators, Timucua people, enslaved Africans, freedpeople, civil rights activists, and generations of Black St. Augustinians whose stories are inseparable from the story of the city itself. The Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center is where that history lives. THE BUILDING The museum is housed in the historic Excelsior School building, which served as the first public high school for African Americans in St. Johns County, Florida. After U.S. public schools were desegregated, the school was closed and the building housed government offices until the mid-1980s. A group of former Excelsior students and community members rallied to save the building from demolition. Lincolnville is now a neighborhood of the city of St. Augustine, but was originally a distinct town settled by freed Black slaves after the American Civil War. The museum opened in 2005 as the Excelsior Museum and Cultural Center and was renamed the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center in 2012. WHAT YOU WILL SEE The museum's exhibits trace the stories of Black people in Florida from the beginning - from Juan Garrido's arrival in La Florida alongside explorer Ponce de Leon in 1513, all the way to the city's present-day figures. Prominent exhibit topics include the music, businesses, and military service of Black St. Augustinians. A major part of the museum is devoted to local Black history that began 300 years before Lincolnville. Both free and enslaved Blacks arrived in 1565 with the Spanish founders of St. Augustine. Also highlighted is Fort Mose, located about five miles from the museum. Established by the Spanish in 1738, it was the first legally-sanctioned community for people of color in what would become the United States. The arts and culture of Lincolnville prior to World War II was not unlike that of New York's Harlem. Bands, musicians, artists, and entertainers who lived and performed here are featured among the exhibits. This includes Ray Charles, who learned to read both braille and music while a student in St. Augustine. The Civil Rights era receives significant focus. A section of the original Woolworth lunch counter has been preserved to commemorate the civil rights history of St. Augustine. This original counter is displayed in the same room as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fingerprint card from his 1964 arrest in St. Augustine. St. Augustine's role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was pivotal - the demonstrations here, the wade-ins at the beach, the arrests and the violence that followed drew national attention and directly contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Lincolnville Museum is the definitive place to understand that story. Recently voted fifth place in the 2024 USA Today 10Best Readers Choice Awards for Best Small Town Museum, the LMCC stands out as the only Florida