Tag Archives: Lackawanna Elementary

New Story: Schools Named for Confederates and the Demise of Manhattan Beach

Posted on April 25, 2021 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

Joseph Finegan Elementary School, named for a Confederate general, stands where segregated black Manhattan Beach once was. White developers said they wanted “Negroes removed from the oceanfront” and the one business whose family didn’t sell was destroyed in a “mysterious fire.” So, “what’s in a name?” Juliet asked.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Agnes Lloyd Cobb, Alfred duPont, American Beach, An American Beach for African Americans, Atlantic Beach, Avondale, Bob Rutter, Camilla Thompson, Chloe Merrick, Davis Street Blues, Deerwood, Dew Drop Alley Stomp, Don Mabry, Donal Godfrey, Eartha White, Ed Ball, Edward Ball, Hanna Park, Harcourt Bull, Henry Flagler, jax psycho geo, jaxpsychogeo, JEB Stuart, Jefferson Davis Junior High, Jefferson Davis Middle School, Jessie Ball duPont, Joseph Davin, Joseph E. Lee, Joseph Finegan, Joseph Finegan Elementary School, Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna Elementary, Mack Wilson, Mack Wilson's Pavilion, Manhattan Beach, Marsha Dean Phelts, Nathan Bedford F, Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, Ponte Vedra, Ponte Vedra Beach, RCBS Corporation, Robert Hayden, Rogers Crawford Swartz and Bull, San Marco, Stockton Whatley Davin, Sugar Underwood, Tim Gilmore

The Horrid Little History of the National Association for the Advancement of White People in Jax

Posted on March 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

In the 1990s, the National Association for the Advancement of White People kept dragging Jax into national headlines. A school board member appointed a white supremacist to a task force on desegregation, a national racist hotline connected to a local elementary school and city officials apologized to the NAAWP when librarians defended black employees.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged A.C. Shuler, Alphise Brock, Beaver Street Baptist Church, Bob Gray, Calvary Baptist Church, Dan Daniels, David Duke, Donal Godfrey, Donald Van Fleet, First Baptist Church, Fuller Warren, George Hodges, Highlands Branch Library, J.D. Driggers, Jerry Driggers, Joyce Cochran, KKK, Lackawanna Elementary, Linda Sparks, NAAWP, National Association for the Advancement of White People, Pay Doyle, racism Jacksonville, Reno Wolfe, Susan Lamb, Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, Tommy Prater, Tonyaa Weathersbee, Trinity Baptist Church, W.A. Hobson

This Week’s Story: Tip Top Tavern / Randall’s Ranch House Restaurant

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the direction buttons at the top of the page:

Before that night the Ku Klux Klan wore their hoods in for dinner, before somebody assaulted Randall Fleiss and stole his ivory, before Ron Pate initiated his “If you want to fight, you have to fight me” policy, Darryl Swearingen asked his mother if he could take a job washing dishes. The story of the Tip Top Tavern / Randall’s Ranch House Restaurant dates back almost a century.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Darryl Swearingen, Donal Godfrey, DuPont School, Ed Canady, Folsom Haven, Helen Fleiss, Helen Wooten, Hines Restaurant, J&L Friendly Tavern, jax psycho geo, John Haven, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna Elementary, North Shore, Panama Park, Patrick Foley, Randall Fleiss, Randall's Ranch House Restaurant, Richard Atkinson, Robert Zortea, Ron Pate, Rose Pate, Tallulah, Tally's Lounge, Tim Gilmore, Tip Top Tavern, Urban Meyer, Woody's Place, Your Tavern, Zorty's Ranch House Restaurant

Posted on June 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

Click below for the fourth 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.

For most of his life, he’d not realized the full traumatic effect of the Klan’s bombing of his childhood home as retaliation for his being the first black child to attend Lackawanna Elementary School.

Can anyone feel the brutality and tragedy in the landscape? Does the Klan’s hate and the Godfreys’ fear and sorrow and determination remain in the soil or the air or the trees? I can’t tell, because I can’t not know what happened here.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Beloved, Bob Gray, Donal Godfrey, Jacksonville, jaxpsychogeo, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna, Lackawanna Elementary, Murray Hill Heights, Ottis Toole, Robert Gray, Sethe, Terianne Summers, Tim Gilmore, Toni Morrison, Trinity Baptist Church, We Shall Overcome

When the Klan bombed a six year old’s home

Posted on June 4, 2017 | Leave a comment

Click below for the second 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.

Fifty-three years later, Donal Godfrey tells me from his home in Monrovia, Liberia, that if the family had been on the side of the house where the bomb detonated deep in the night, they’d be dead.

“It blew the refrigerator through the roof,” he says. “Not too many people have survived a Klan bombing. It’s an exclusive club.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Burton H. Griffin, Donal Godfrey, Donald Eugene Spegal, J.B. Stoner, Jacky D. Harden, James Earl Ray, KKK, Klan bombing, Ku Klux Klan, Lackawanna Elementary, Martin Luther King, NAACP, Robert Pittman Gentry, Stetson Kennedy, The Klan Unmasked, William Rosecrans, Willie Eugene Wilson