Lift Every Voice and Sing, LaVilla, A. Philip Randolph and Ax Handle Saturday.
Lift Every Voice And Sing
James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville in 1871. He came home after college to become principal of the Stanton School, and in 1897 he became the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar since the end of Reconstruction. In 1900, 500 students first recited his poem Lift Every Voice and Sing, and his younger brother, the composer J. Rosamond Johnson, set it to music. The schoolchildren of Jacksonville kept singing it, the NAACP promoted it as the Negro national anthem, and in 1920 Johnson became the NAACP's first Black executive secretary.
A. Philip Randolph
In 1891 the Randolph family moved to Jacksonville, a city with a thriving, well-established African American community, and the young Randolph studied at the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, then the only academic high school in Florida for African Americans. In 1925 he was elected president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and on August 28, 1963, he realized his vision of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
LaVilla
LaVilla is Jacksonville's historic African American neighborhood, long the center of the city's Black culture and heritage, with a lively music and entertainment scene. The Ritz Theatre became its main performance venue. When much of the neighborhood was torn down for redevelopment in the 1990s, the Ritz was among the historic buildings restored.
Ax Handle Saturday
On August 13, 1960, Black students began sit-ins at Jacksonville's segregated lunch counters, where they were refused service, kicked, spat at and abused. On August 27, about 200 white men, some thought to be tied to the Ku Klux Klan, gathered in Hemming Park with bats and ax handles, attacked the protesters and then every Black person they could find. Local authorities and the press played the violence down. In 1961 Jacksonville's lunch counters were desegregated.
Black Jacksonville Today
From LaVilla to Hemming Park, Jacksonville's Black history is part of the city, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Jacksonville.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Jacksonville on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Ritz Theater in LaVilla. Photo: PicoOrdinalo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons The Richmond Hotel in LaVilla. Photo: PicoOrdinalo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons