"Through extensive research at the ACCORD Civil Rights Museum in St. Augustine Florida, where the artist now resides, Taylor constructs a narrative of events between 1960 and 1964 chronicling the Civil Rights struggles of St. Augustine's residents and the city's resistance to racial integration. The artist reanimates these occurrences through a combination of forthright text and brash imagery. Taylor's iconic illustrative style comprises complex and layered brushwork. The contrasting colors and overlapping imagery of the multilayered screen prints add to the chaos of the events and the struggles faced by the Civil Rights movement in St. Augustine and throughout the country. As the title implies, elements from this historical narrative continue to seep into the present day, may this edition be used as a teaching tool to guide educators, activists and advocates."--Vendor's catalog.

"From the artist: In the grammatical sense, the Present Perfect Progressive Tense refers to an action that has begun in the past, continues into the present, and possibly into the future. As such, the events of the Civil Rights Movement in St. Augustine, Florida are as much a part of the city today as they were in 1964. Trading solely on its identity as the oldest European settlement in the U.S., the town was readying itself to celebrate its 400th anniversary in 1965. Local activists from the NAACP contacted president Kennedy to ask that he withhold considerable federal funding for what was to be a segregated celebration. The events that followed caused Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to call the city the most lawless he had ever visited. This book examines a city's, and by extension, a nation's, unresolved debt."--Mike Taylor, March 2019