Tag Archives: Roseland House

Remembering Roseland House and Kalem Film Studios

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Miriam Cooper came to Jax for stardom, starring in weekly movies for the Kalem Company. She stayed at the tall boarding house, the Roseland, on Clarkson Street between Tallyrand and the river, and played heroic roles dynamiting bridges. The Moving Picture World of 1912 said she had “large dreamy eyes” and was “expert in the use of boxing gloves.” 

The Oldest Christianity Renews the Newer Abandoned

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From the Matthews Bridge downtown, you can see the red, yellow, and green—the colors of the Ethiopian flag—that stripe the old gothic belltower, a bright dab of color in the center of a drab post-urban emptiness.

Within these walls, former slaves shed tears, sweated, beat their whip scars with flagellant fists. In this holy space rose cris de coeur, roared and collapsed a thousand times the ghost of a chance, and soared skyward the hymns of a black Moses leading his people home. Try to imagine all the pain, cumulative, felt through every prayer. Who came here for succor? Who died? Who was hungry and given supper? Who came into the world? Who married, and who else, and whom? Who found all the truth they’d ever need and died believing?