Passage at St. Augustine

Clennon L. King is an Emmy-nominated TV news journalist, who spent more than a decade reporting in the Sunbelt before entering the world of documentary filmmaking. In February, he produced the award-winning civil rights documentary Passage at St. Augustine © 2015.
Passage at St. Augustine © 2015 tells the story of the bloodiest campaign of the Civil Rights Movement, where the Klan and the Movement fought over passage of the Civil Rights Bill. Nearly 50 years later, the audience is transported back to the battlefield – the Nation's Oldest City – to hear from veterans, Klansmen and civil rights foot soldiers alike. Their voices tell the story.
A son of the South, King hails from a prominent civil rights family in Albany, Georgia, where his father, the late Attorney C.B. King, represented scores of civil rights demonstrators, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (no relation) during the historic 1961-’62 Albany Movement.
The filmmaker attended The Putney School, a Vermont boarding school, earned an English degree at Tulane University and studied law briefly at the University of London’s University College London, Faculty of Laws before opting to pursue journalism. (He also studied film for a year at NYU’s Graduate School of Film and Television.)
His two-decade-long career includes reporting for The Boston Globe, Florida Trend, and the Florida-Times Union. He was also an on-air TV reporter for KXAS Dallas-Fort Worth, WSB Atlanta, WSVN Miami, WTLV/WJXX Jacksonville, WALA Mobile and WGBH Boston.
King’s reporting career has earned an Emmy nomination, a regional and national Edward R. Murrow, an award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism also recognized King’s reporting on race.
In 2002, while reporting in Jacksonville, he became intrigued with the little-known St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement. Well aware that many of the campaign veterans were up in age, King bought a camera, and began securing on-camera interviews with those on both sides of the desegregation issue.
His initial version of the film, known as Slave Market Diary ©2004, helped mark the 40th anniversary of the St. Augustine, Florida Civil Rights campaign. However, unhappy with the results, King returned to the project, and 13 years later, produced the hour-long Passage at St. Augustine ©2015. It won The Henry Hampton Award of Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking at the 2015 Roxbury International Film Festival.
King is the father of two adult sons, and is the principal at AugustineMonica Films in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he resides.