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TU: 'Community history:' Images from FSCJ history class show some of Jacksonville's rich past

Jan 13, 2023, 15:25 PM by Andrew Sachse

Link to article: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/history/2022/10/25/jacksonville-florida-history-explored-photos-fscj-class/10554257002/ 

by Matt Soergel

Florida State College at Jacksonville's first semester of its History of Jacksonville class is well underway, and so are its plans to eventually open it up online for anyone who wants to learn more about the city's past, which is richer and more tangled than some might expect.

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This 1905 photograph shows President Theodore Roosevelt standing on the balcony of the Seminole Club in downtown Jacksonville, addressing a packed crowd in what was then known as Hemming Park.
 

Scott Matthews is teaching the course, with research by Jennifer Grey, public services coordinator for FSCJ's library. She's found firsthand accounts and photographs of historical Jacksonville in archives across the country — including these images included with this story.

Miss Black Jacksonville and court were part of a Saturday parade down Jefferson, Davis, Ashley and Broad streets as the Afro-Cultural Center launched Black History Week in February 1974. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, Masons, Shriners, the Street Academy and the Roving Theater also were featured.
 

The course kicked off this fall in time to mark Jacksonville's bicentennial, although its subject matter goes much further back to the indigenous people who once lived in the area.

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The photo, circa 1880, comes from Yale’s library showing a young James Weldon Johnson (sitting on porch stoop on the right) and John Rosamond Johnson (in velvet coat in front row). The brothers would go on to staggeringly accomplished lives, which included composing "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."
 

Students are doing research projects as part of the studies, and those works will be included in later editions of the class, as will research by other historians.

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, soldiers flooded into camps in Jacksonville. That drew the attention of the Ensminger brothers, Jefferson and Madison, photographers who were born in Iowa in 1845 and moved to Central Florida in the 1880s. This photo, from the University of South Florida's Ensminger Brothers collection, is called "Alligator shot by the captain of 4th Illinois Volunteers in Jacksonville, Florida."
 

Matthews said his goal is to make it "a community history of Jacksonville" able to be accessed by anyone who's interested in it. That leads to the plans to one day expand it online to make it available far beyond just the handful of students who can enroll in person.

Taken sometime from 1941 to 1947, this shot shows Jacksonville's busy port, as well Brooklyn and Riverside in the distance and a thriving LaVilla in the foreground. It's from the Army Air Force's "Airscapes" of American and Foreign Areas collection, housed at the National Archives and Records Administration.
 

There's also a partnership with WJCT to create a podcast called "Bygone Jacksonville." Other possibilities could include dual enrollment opportunities for Duval County Public Schools students and seminars for teachers who could then introduce elements of the city's history into their classes.