This film was recently made public by FSCJ Library and Learning Commons.
WARNING pejorative language and tone throughout the film.
“This short piece, produced by long-time Florida Theatre projectionist Bender Cawthon, includes rare footage of Hansontown and LaVilla from around 1950 and seems to have been created to convince citizens to take advantage of federal slum clearance programs in order to demolish and replace these neighborhoods. The pejorative language and tone used throughout makes it an excellent example of institutional racism. “Slum Heart of Jacksonville” was the source of a couple of seconds of B-roll for Florida Junior College’s “Jacksonville: The Inside Story,” and was discovered in our files during a mass digitization project. The College neither owns this film nor endorses the views expressed in it, but we offer it for its historical value. If you have additional information regarding the history or ownership of this film, please contact us.”
~FSCJ Library and Learning Commons.
The film begins by showing “white Jacksonville” Your city, Gateway to Florida, Potential Metropolis of the Southeast.
“White Jacksonville” includes positive words and descriptions; growth, natural, beautiful, modern, prosperity, purpose, “people(white) know where they are going, know how to get there.” All of it says, plainly and quite proudly, this is Jacksonville, city with a future.”
Ninety seconds of look at the white people in their great city.
“But if it’s heart is bad…” With that the narrator switches to Black people and uses negative words and descriptions such as; bad, blighted, moldering, germ ridden dirt, old, ugly, vile, primitive, moral and spiritual decay, disease, and death. All of which, the narrator adds, could be brought into your home by your servants. He then continues his description of Blacks and their homes; filthy, evil, a threat to the health and progress of an entire city, shabby disease ridden, dilapidated, unsanitary, renting for $18-$22 a month.
But renting from who? Renting from white men is who. The same white men who wanted to develop the property so they could make more money. The problem was they couldn’t do that with the Blacks there. They needed them gone, so they let the properties deteriorate, no repairs, no upkeep, the only up being with rent increases, as well as payouts to government officials to help make the eventual evictions and exodus all legal like, and additional payouts to filmmakers to produce garbage like this to drum up public support.
The narrator continues; Indecent, insult to human dignity, an evil cancer, ugly, menace, dismal filth, grimy.
Occasionally a nice word is used, because he has gone back to talking about “white Jacksonville”.
The narrator mentions there are also white slums, of course none were photographed because the real issue is Blacks.
Then he continues describing Blacks and their community; creeping cancerous death, dismal waste of lives and land, menace to health, social unrest, economic stagnation, wasteland, fail to carry their own weight, their existence is a drag on the community, urban wreckage to be cleared away, unspeakable squalor, disease, “do you know where your servant girl goes at night”, intolerable stigma.
In the end the shotgun homes and shanties were demolished and most of the residents were forced into Blodgett Homes public housing, or other public housing. Then in 1990 Blodgett Homes was also torn down, because it was never about the slums being there, it was always about Blacks being there.