Tag Archives: Alexander Stephens

2020 Protests Continue (Confessions, Consciousness, Change)

Posted on June 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

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For more than a week, the protests have flooded the streets, demanding police release body cam footage. This crowd does me good. In my depths, stories from decades before I was born churn a historical conscience. The Confederate monument has again been vandalized. I ask Donal Godfrey, whose house the KKK bombed when he was six years old, if this time really is different.

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Tagged Alexander Stephens, Black Lives Matter, Brittany Chrishawn, Donal Godfrey, George Floyd, In Memory of our Women of the Southland, J.B. Stoner, Jacksonville Community Action Committee, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Jamee Johnson, James Robinson, Jimbo Robinson, Josue Garriga, Ku Klux Klan, Kwame Jones, Lackawanna Elementary School, Lenny Curry, Mayor Lenny Curry, Michael Sampson, Mike Williams, Nicholas Lawson, Phil Gilmore, Reginald Boston

Jefferson Davis Junior High School

Posted on February 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

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My father and I were the only white people on the basketball court. He was 40 years older, at least, than everybody else. I’m writing this story on his 96^th. He died six months ago tomorrow.

Of what beloved Jacksonville architect Taylor Hardwick thought of designing new schools with the names of Confederate leaders, there’s no record. The only black faces in 1960s Jeff Davis yearbooks are those of the custodial staff. And the school principal, Wilber C. Johnson, standing beside a Confederate flag and wearing blackface.

“We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree. / We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree. / We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree, / As we march along!”

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Tagged Alexander Stephens, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Battle of Yellow Tavern, blackface, Bob Gray, Brown v. Board of Education, Confederate Park, Cornerstone Speech, desegregation, Fort Pillow Massacre, Grand Wizard, In Memory of our Women of the Southland, J.D., J.E.B. Stuart, jax psycho geo, Jay Dee, Jeff Davis, Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis Junior High, Jefferson Davis Middle School, Jesse Jackson, Kirby Smith, Lost Cause Movement, Martin Luther King, Morrison's Cafeteria, Natham Bedford Forrest, Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, Robert E. Lee, Robert Gray, Sam Wolfson, segregation, Southernaire, Taylor Hardwick, Tim Gilmore, Trinity Baptist Church, Trinity Christian Academy, Wilmer C. Johnson

Confederate Park’s “In Memory of our Women of the Southland”

Posted on March 25, 2018 | 1 comment

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She’s the embodiment of a Romantic concept called the Lost Cause. Her rhetorical strength, as an object of art, is that to stand before her and deny the Lost Cause lie is to look her in her loving and noble face and call her a liar before her tender children.

Unfortunately, for the Lost Cause Romantics, history documents the originating words of the Confederates.

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Tagged Alexander Stephens, Allen George Newman, Birth of a Nation, Confederate Park, Confederate Veteran, Eartha White, Jim Crow, Ku Klux Klan, Lost Cause, NAACP, Ocoee Massacre, Reconstruction, Redemption, Stetson Kennedy, Triumph of Peace, Zip Coon

The Klan in Jax Politics, Story no. 6

Posted on June 8, 2017 | 1 comment

Click below for the sixth story in a series of seven about the KKK in Jacksonville. On June 13th, come to Coniferous Cafe in downtown Jax at 7 pm, to hear Tim Gilmore’s talk “The Klan in Jax: Its Repugnant Rise and Hysterical Collapse.

Confederate generals like Nathan Bedford Forrest formed the KKK in Tennessee in the wake of the Civil War in 1866. A prominent Jacksonville attorney and Klansman had dubbed himself Nathan II in 1950.

Jacksonville would name another prominent bridge after Governor Fuller Warren, former Jacksonville City Councilman and Klansman. In 1949, Warren called the Klan “covered cowards and sheeted jerks,” but only after Jax Klansman and Baptist preacher A.C. Shuler outed Warren in a sermon as a Kluxer.

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Tagged A.C. Shuler, Alexander Stephens, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Association of Carolina Klans, Axe Handle Saturday, Bill Hendrix, Canter Brown Jr., Carver Village, Claire Goforth, Confederacy, Cornerstone Speech, David Lawrence, Donald Trump, Edgar Waybright, Florida Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Fuller Warren, Fuller Warren Bridge, Gutzon Borglum, Harry T. Moore, Haydon Burns, Heritage Not Hate, I.D. Hart, Imperial City, Isaiah David Hart, Jacksonville, jaxpsychogeo, John Kasper, John Mathews, KKK, Klan, Klan Act, Ku Klux Klan, Loyal White Knights, Mathews Bridge, NAACP, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Nathan II, Original Southern Klans, Ossian Hart, Richard Spencer, Robert Lee “Wild Bill” Davidson, Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Southern Poverty Law Center, Stet, Stetson Kennedy, Stone Mountain, The Klan Unmasked, Tim Gilmore, Tom Hamilton, United Daughters of the Confederacy, unmasking, White Primary Bill