Tag Archives: Mount Zion A.M.E. Church

Paul Laurence Dunbar at James Weldon Johnson’s Home in Jacksonville

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Harlem Renaissance figure — poet, novelist, journalist, ambassador and activist — James Weldon Johnson lived right here when he wrote the words to the Black National Anthem. His late-night debates with house-guest Paul Laurence Dunbar, just after Dunbar marched in President McKinley’s inaugural parade, helped make Johnson the writer he’d become.

Against All Odds: The Survival of Edward Waters College

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It’s the oldest educational institution in Jacksonville. I wander Edward Waters College with Professor David Jamison. He points to buildings long ago destroyed by fire and we discuss R.L. Brown, Jacksonville’s first black architect. Against unbelievably great odds, what’s now the oldest historically black college in Florida survived.