Jacksonville, Florida
Burger King cooked up a whopper of a different sort in 1998, but that didn’t mean fast-food customers were any less willing to swallow it. In a full-page ad in USA Today, Burger King announced a solution for the 1.4 million left-handed customers visiting their restaurants Read More …
It’s an arrival more than a decade in the making. The USS Orleck, the most decorated post-World War II ship, sailed into Downtown Jacksonville to great fanfare on Saturday. The destroyer is expected to open in a couple of months as the floating Jacksonville Naval Museum, showcasing the “U.S. Read More …
Vietnam Veterans of America chapters from Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties invite the public to join in Northeast Florida’s only Vietnam War Veterans Day recognition event, Saturday morning at 10 a.m. at the TAPS Monument, at 915 Walnut St. in Green Cove Springs. The monument Read More …
Viola Muse, a Jacksonville hair salon owner and writer with the Negro Writers’ Division of the Florida Federal Writers Project conducted interviews in the Jacksonville Black Community during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Her interviews detailed the lives of children, former slaves and everyday people in Read More …
Read all the poems published in Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker, now available in the public domain, as well as “The Algonquin Hotel: Summer 1927,” the introduction to the comprehensive biography Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (Penguin Books, 1989), by Marion Meade. “Epitaph for Read More …
The Florida Historical Society 2022 Public History Forum and the 33rd Annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society Conference are being presented together May 19-21, at the Hilton Conference Center in Gainesville. Registration for the conference is now open at myfloridahistory.org where you will also find a Read More …
Today in 1948 – President Harry S. Truman attended the dedication ceremony of the Charles O. Andrews Causeway, bisecting Lake Estelle in Orlando.. Andrews represented Florida in the U.S. Senate from 1936 until his death in 1946. He was born in Ponce de Leon on Read More …
Sallye B. Mathis was one of the first Black women to be elected and serve on our City Council in 1967. Locally, Ms. Mathis is honored by the local NAACP Jacksonville Branch by naming their annual community service award in her honor, as well as Read More …
Happy Birthday to Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve! It was 34 years ago today when President Ronald Reagan signed the bill that established this National Park Service preserve, named after the Timucua who inhabited the area for thousands of years. With more than 46,000 acres Read More …
“Life’s Most Persistent and Urgent Question Is: What Are You Doing for Others?” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the Civil Rights Movement(link is external) from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His skillful rhetoric, iconic Read More …
Ronald Wayne “Ronnie” Van Zant, lead singer of the famous rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, was born in Jacksonville on this date in 1948. Raised in Jacksonville, Van Zant formed the band in 1964 with fellow classmates from Robert E. Lee High School. The band released Read More …
African American landmarks and legacies can be found at a variety of locations in Jacksonville. While some of these sites can be visited, other listings are marked “private” and are not open to the public. 1960s Civil Rights Historic Site Marker James Weldon Johnson Park, Read More …
The City of Jacksonville invites the community to celebrate the life, legacy, and service of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the 35th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast, presented by Florida Blue virtually on Friday, January 14, 2022. The virtual event will feature Mayor Lenny Read More …
The 241-foot steel-hulled schooner, “Prinz Valdemar,” capsized inside the Miami ship channel on this date in 1926, blocking larger vessels from entering and exiting the port for over a month. The ship proved difficult to right due to her large masts. City officials began digging Read More …
FRIDAY 8 a.m. — Virtual presentation of 35th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Empowerment Breakfast, hosted by Jacksonville chapter of NAACP. Tickets are free; to register, go to events.blackbirdrsvp.com/35th-annual-mlk-jr-community-empowerment-virtual-breakfast-jacksonville-branch-naacp. 8:30 a.m. — Virtual presentation of 35th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast, hosted by city of Jacksonville. Tickets Read More …
Happy Birthday to prominent author, anthropologist, and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston. In the late 1930s, Hurston ran the “negro unit” of the Federal Writers Project, whose offices were in the Clara White Mission right here in Jacksonville. Learn more about Read More …
Polk County native Lawton Chiles assumed his seat in the U.S. Senate on this date in 1974. Running one of the most unconventional campaigns in Florida history, a relatively unknown Chiles walked 1,003 miles, from Pensacola to Key West, meeting the Sunshine State’s constituents face Read More …
The Florida Senate officially “consented to and adopted” the first flag of the new state of Florida on this date in 1845. It was unfurled at Governor Moseley’s inauguration on June 25 of that year, even though the Senate objected to the motto, “Let Us Read More …