BLACK HISTORY LANDMARKS

LANDMARK LEGACIES

Black history surrounding parks, monuments in Jacksonville

Elena Vincenty | Staff Reporter

Black history and the fight for racial equality surrounds Jacksonville.

It flows through the schools, government buildings, public parks and even our homes. To acknowledge and appreciate this history is to recognize the value of the changes made to society.

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts

In 1922, South Jacksonville Grammar School was the only school on the southside that offered a free, public education to Black students. Douglas Anderson operated the only free bus service for Black students in Duval County, and in 1945, the school was renamed in honor of Anderson, who also led efforts to convince the Duval County School Board to build a school and provide free busing for Black children. Today, the school commemorates Anderson by keeping a historical plaque on campus detailing his life and the ways in which he contributed to the education of Black students in Jacksonville.

Clara White Mission Museum

This museum stands as a memorial to Clara White and her daughter, Dr. Eartha White, who “planted the dream [of] educational training,” according to the clarawhitemission.org. From 1876 to 1974, Dr. Eartha White founded several facilities to provide care to those in need, including The Old Folks Home and helped establish Mercy Hospital, the Boys’ Improvement Club, a home for unwed mothers, an orphanage and adoption agency. While the city of JAX offers food and shelter to homeless persons, the Clara White mission provides training and volunteer services for those people to get back on their feet. It is designed for “enrolled students who were previously homeless and/ or low-income, ex-offenders and veterans,” according to the website, allowing those individuals the chance to give back to the community while training, serving and preparing meals for more than 400 homeless people daily. CEO Ju’Coby Pittman, mother of junior Winston Peele, has helped the BK Diversity Student Union work with the Clara White Mission by cleaning up some of their land and helping serve food.

Ax Handle Saturday Mural

Forty demonstrators from the Jacksonville Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sat down at the whites-only lunch counter of Woolworth Department Store at the corner of West Adams and North Main Streets on Aug. 27, 1960, according to axhandlesaturday.com. The group was met by 200 white males wielding axe handles and baseball bats. Peaceful protestors were then chased through the streets of downtown Jacksonville and beaten. To commemorate this event and to honor the Civil Rights Movement, a mural was created on A. Philip Randolph Blvd near the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena. There is also a historical marker at James Weldon Park which describes what happened at the site of the protest.

J.P Small Memorial Stadium

Small Stadium housed the first integrated teams in the South Atlantic League of Florida which included the Jacksonville Braves who were the start of the Milwaukee Braves. In addition to being the first stadium for integrated teams, several Major League Baseball teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, have played at this field. As well as “baseball greats like Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb,” according to News4Jax. In 1926, the field was destroyed by a fire and rebuilt to provide a separate section for Black patrons during the time of segregation and became the home of the Jacksonville Red Caps of the Black League, which has since dissolved. Throughout the years, the ballpark was used for other teams such as the Old Stanton High School, where J.P. Small served as the athletic director and head coach. Today it is known as a “diamond in the rough” according to News4Jax and located on Myrtle Avenue North just several blocks from Stanton College Prep. Lloyd Washington, who is a part of Jacksonville’s Historical Society, spoke with News4Jax about how this stadium reflects not just Black culture but the culture of Northeast Florida as a whole and how much history was made in just that one stadium.

Kingsley Plantation

Kingsley Plantation, a part of the Timucuan Preserve and National Parks, is one of the oldest plantation houses in the state of Florida and one of the few remaining examples of a plantation system in Florida. The site shows the history of “freedom and enslavement from a different perspective,” according to VisitJacksonville. com. Kingsley Plantation inhabits multiple wellpreserved, original, buildings including the plantation house, built in 1798, as well as the foundation and walls of 25 slave cabins. Park ranger Josh Salestrom described the park, in a News4Jax interview, as a “beautiful place, but also a horrible place…[and] its importance to never forget that this site was constructed on the backs of misery.” The original owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, married Anna Jai, whom Kingsley originally purchased in Cuba in 1806. By the time she was 18, Kingsley and Jai already had three children and she and her children all worked as slaves on the plantation until 1811.

James Weldon Park

Formerly named for Civil War veteran Charles C. Hemming, who donated a Confederate monument to the park that stood for nearly 122 years before its removal on Aug. 11, 2020, this is the first public park founded in Jacksonville and it has witnessed history throughout time. Mayor Lenny Curry called the removal of the Confederate monument “the start of a commitment to everyone in our city that we will find a way to respect each other and thrive,” according to HemmingPark.org. The park was renamed in honor of James Weldon Johnson, who was Florida’s first Black lawyer after Reconstruction, an author and served as the principal of Stanton School, the first public Black high school in Jacksonville. Today the park holds monthly art walks, food festivals and the annual Christmas tree lighting.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP: The Clara White Center gives food, shelter and job opportunities for thousands of homeless people per year. (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons); The James Weldon Johnson Park has sat in the center of downtown since 1987. (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons); The Kingsley Plantation sits facing the St. Johns River on the northside. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service); A statue of J.P. Small stands at the front of the J.P. Small Memorial stadium with the quote “Heading for home.” (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons).