Ten years after the Great Fire Jacksonville’s population had nearly doubled to 57,699. 29,293 were black, 28,329 were white.
Churches, schools, businesses, a new city hall, a new library, skyscrapers, and many other buildings had been built with more going up every day. The city’s busy port and ever expanding railways gave Jacksonville the look of a modern southern city.
Like many other “modern” southern cities of the time, blacks who compromised more than half the population, may have felt less like the city was moving forward and more like it was moving backward, way back.
Before the fire; schools, hospitals, theaters, even jails, were segregated. After the fire; streetcars, saloons, most restaurants, and city government were added to the ever growing list of places blacks could not go.
Before the fire blacks held some political power, how could they not, being the majority. That would change by 1907, when the Duval legislative delegation completed its gerrymandering of ward boundaries to guarantee all white representation. Soon afterward blacks were removed from all supervisory positions in city government.
James Weldon Johnson, the great American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist, who, if not Jacksonville’s favorite son, should be on any list of Jacksonville’s most talented and accomplished.
Unfortunately our fair city didn’t always treat him, or any of our black community, with the respect that was deserved.
After being nearly lynched by a crowd of whites in Riverside Park, his “crime”, standing too close to a white woman. The woman happened to be a light skinned black journalist, that revelation quite possibly saved Johnson’s life.
Johnson later lamented that “Long after the close of the reconstruction period Jacksonville, was known far and wide as a good town for Negroes, Jacksonville today is a one hundred percent cracker town.”
Try as they might, the segregationists could not keep the black community in Jacksonville down.
With their few allies, but mostly on their own, they built their community up from the ashes.
For entertainment and leisure they had; Lincoln Park, Manhattan Beach, the Globe and Bijou Theaters.
For education; The Cookman Institute was rebuilt and a new campus was created for The Boylan School. Black Methodists broke ground for the new Edward Waters campus. Black Baptists rebuilt Florida Baptist Academy, and Brewster Hospital was opened for medical care and training..
Black owned business ownership exploded; tailor shops from 3 to 14, grocers from 45 to 83, Barbers from 23 to 42,.
By 1910 there were seven saloons, four undertakers, nine druggist, seven real estate companies, five contractors, three insurance companies, chief among them, The Afro- American Life Insurance Company, fifteen doctors, two dentists, eight lawyers, and two bankers, serving the needs of the black community, by the black community.
The 1910 City directory listed over 335 small businesses owned by blacks, nearly twice the amount listed before the Great Fire.
Despite segregation and discrimination, Black Jacksonville had risen from the ashes.
