Tag Archives: Dale Carson

The “Dream Hunch” that Spawned a Killing Spree

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In his infamous nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote briefly mentions the colder and bloodier story of George “Ronnie” York and James Latham, whose cross-country murder spree began in York’s hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. National newspapers published the “murder map,” which stretched from Jax to Utah, while Jax papers published the “Route of Death” across the Westside for Patricia Anne Hewett and Althea Ottavio, two Valdosta women who’d decided to play a “dream hunch” at the dog tracks.

The Forgotten History of Snyder Memorial Methodist Church

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Last year would have been the church’s 150th anniversary. There was no one to celebrate its incredible history. Founded by Northern abolitionists, Snyder Memorial Methodist Church played an important role in Jacksonville’s Civil Rights struggle a century later. Whether Reverend Hinkle committed suicide nobody said. And whether police shipping the homeless man one-way to L.A. was really a good deed is doubtful. Now the church waits, abandoned, for its next chapter.

Protests in the Summer of 2020, the spring of 1964

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This story compares the protests of 1964 to those of 2020. It demonstrates how current protests call out the murder of George Floyd, but also the long pattern of Jacksonville police abuses of authority. It shows how 1964 Jax protests were met with official racism and racist vigilantism and how 2020 protests were met with public bullying against organizers. It suggests how police, if they care, might start the process to make a systemic (not a “bad apples”) restructuring, and asks what we might do about the disintegration of America. 

McCormick Apartments and Mythos at Jax Beach

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“There are enough concrete blocks in the McCormick Apartments to build a solid wall eight feet high from Jacksonville Beach to Downtown Jacksonville.” So bragged J.T. McCormick at the 1948 Open House, five years before he was elected mayor of Jacksonville Beach. The mythos contains stories of horsewhippings and murders and the family who built up the beach.

When Governor Claude Kirk Hopped the Fence and Took the Mic from “Black Power Agitator,” H. Rap Brown

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This ballpark has been the heart of Durkeeville for more than a century. It was Jacksonville’s municipal baseball stadium until 1954. The Negro Leagues played here. Hank Aaron “integrated” the Jacksonville Braves and won MVP, 1953.

White people had lots of guns and white cops all had guns, so black people! should get guns too. So said H. Rap Brown, who bridged the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to the Black Panthers.

Claude Kirk, 36th governor of Florida, Jax insurance salesman, hopped the fence at Durkee Field, tromped toward the pitcher’s mound, and snatched the mic from H. Rap Brown.

Part Two: What Ever Happened to Beverly June?

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Emmett Spencer was in jail on charges of two murders and told police he’d dreamt about seven others. Soon headlines would refer to Spencer as the “Dream Killer.”

“I knew I couldn’t go on living as I had those six months. If I had, I believe I would have become totally insane.”

Tim Gilmore’s talk on the case will take place at Chamblin’s Uptown, August 16th, at 7 pm. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1637767666267952/

Part One of a New Series: What Ever Happened to Beverly June?

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Every day, he replayed the Wednesday he’d come home from work at 6 pm—February 24, 1960—to find his wife gone, the baby crying alone in her crib.

Neighbors said the stranger had been parking a blue 1958 Ford across the street from the Cochrans’ for three weeks and reading a newspaper for hours at a time.

When the Klan hid and sniveled in a courthouse bathroom

Click below for the seventh 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.

A wave of mostly black protesters, about 300 of them, marched against the Klan before Duval County Courthouse on Bay Street, chanting, “Who’s gonna stop the Klan? We’re gonna stop the Klan!”

A black protester named Rose Marie Seay had snatched the white hood off Royals’s head and was parading around on the street with it for cameras.

Klansmen hid in a back bathroom, upstairs in the courthouse. “‘They accused us of being racists,’ one said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his shirttail.”