The Okaloosa NAACP honored the late Charles “Chuck” Morgan Jr. during Monday night’s Destin City Council meeting, presenting a certificate marking his posthumous induction into the organization’s Legacy Walk of Fame.
- Morgan was one of 10 inductees formally recognized during the opening ceremony of the Fort Walton Beach May Day Festival on May 2 at Chester Pruitt Park. Monday’s presentation offered the opportunity for the NAACP to stand before the Destin City Council, with Morgan’s grandson, Councilman Chatham Morgan, seated on the dais to receive the honor.
Sabu Williams, president of the NAACP’s Okaloosa County branch, and First Vice President Lewis Jennings made the presentation.
“I am here to formally invite the city of Destin to join the NAACP in posthumously recognizing a man whose courage helped shape American history, and whose life and legacy are deeply rooted right here in this community,” Williams said.
Morgan, born in Cincinnati in 1930, was raised in Kentucky before moving to Birmingham, Alabama, at 15. He earned his law degree at the University of Alabama.
He gained national recognition on Sept. 16, 1963, the day after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Speaking before white business leaders in the city, Morgan challenged their silence on racial violence.
- “Every last one of us is condemned if we do not do something,” Morgan told the group, according to Williams’ remarks Monday night.*
The speech brought death threats that forced Morgan to close his law practice and leave Birmingham. He went on to argue landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Reynolds v. Sims, which established the “one man, one vote” principle for state legislative districts. He represented Julian Bond and served on Muhammad Ali’s legal team. He also established the ACLU’s Southern Regional Office and authored the book “A Time to Speak.”
Morgan purchased property on Calhoun Avenue in Destin in the 1970s and retired there full time in the early 1990s. His son, Charles Morgan III, had already been living in Destin full time when he founded Harbor Docks Seafood Restaurant in 1979.
The family’s restaurant portfolio has since grown to include Camille’s, Chuck’s Fish, La Paz, Dharma Blue, The Local Market, FIVE Bar and The Sand Flea Beach Bar. Chatham and his brother Eddie, sons of Charles Morgan III and grandsons of Chuck Morgan Jr., continue the family’s presence in the Destin community.
Morgan died Jan. 8, 2009, at his Destin home at age 78.
The NAACP established the Legacy Walk of Fame in 2007 to honor individuals whose courage, leadership and sacrifice helped advance civic and civil rights locally or globally.
“Such recognition is the least one can do to honor a man who stood for justice at a time when it was dangerous to do so,” Williams said. “His induction into the Legacy Walk of Fame is not only a tribute to his national impact, it is a celebration of Destin’s own history.”
“It is not by great acts, but by small failures that freedom dies,” Williams said, quoting Morgan. “Justice and liberty die quietly because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.”
