What if Jacksonville suddenly woke up?

[Metro Jacksonville]

What if Jacksonville suddenly woke up?



Some say,  Jacksonville is a diamond that wants to remain coal . What would it be like if Jacksonville were a city that didn’t hate itself... led by people who acknowledged its achievements?

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/832

[billy]

We would be more like Boston than Birmingham.
We would have culture out the wazoo and still be a great working seaport.
We would have a massive convention center on the river,
a clean river.
You don't need an aquarium when you  protect your river and ocean.
You could send your kid to the neighborhood school,
and know that the most ambitious students will go to the Ivy League if they want,
or to a Florida university for free, but any graduate will be able to earn a living wage and raise a family, and stay.
We would produce and attract the same caliber music and performers as Nashville, Atlanta, Athens or Seattle.
Heartbreak Hotel , Lift Every Voice and Sing, and Gimme Three Steps
were written in Jacksonville, or by people from here.
The train terminal would be a beautiful multimodal station.
You could kayak up Hogan's Creek.
Your children could walk to Sunday school downtown from Springfield without fear,
you could impress  your friends visiting from Barcelona or Brooklyn,and  you could
go hunting or throw a cast net if you wanted.
It would not matter if you were materially rich or poor, there is no other place you would want to live.

[jason_contentdg]

I think it could possibly do what's in the following video...

http://www.contentdg.com/blog/?p=138

[tufsu1]

I did not know that Jacksonville was a city that "hated" itsellf...

This is very odd to me, because most of the people I talk to who live here seem to think its a pretty nice place!

[David]

Meh, it's getting better in recent years with the urban renewal momentum that's building, even if it does sputters at times. The inferiority  complex is felt mostly by the natives who are incredibly defensive over our city. Especially those who have traveled a good bit to other places and have seen how simple things can make a city great. I never felt the insecurity complex more than the week leading up to the 2005 superbowl. I’m sitting on the sidewalk outside of London Bridge and Philly & Patriots fan are constantly stopping by and asking “where’s some cool clubs? Where can I get food, how do I get around without a car?" This was before Bay St had anything, before even Burrito gallery, Café 331 and the new clubs at the landing were open and the northbank riverwalk hadn't been finished yet. So when you look at it that way, that’s not bad for  3 years time. As for getting around without a car, yea that's a ways off for now. We still need more late dining options downtown though, and something to pull more people in towards the river.

[second_pancake]

I did not know that Jacksonville was a city that "hated" itsellf...

This is very odd to me, because most of the people I talk to who live here seem to think its a pretty nice place!

Do any of these people live in urban areas or do they all live in the suburbs...St. John's county perhaps?  Jacksonville will always appear to be a "nice place" when you shut yourself out from the reality of what it is and what it has the potential to become (good and bad).  For the majority of residents of suburban Jacksonville, you could transport them in their sleep to any other suburban destination in any other state and when they woke up they'd have no idea they ever left Jacksonville.  Is that how you want to live, in a cookie-cutter world completely devoid of passion and culture?

What the author was speaking about (correct me if I'm wrong) is a sense of pride in our roots and pride in our city, the original city, downtown, of which, the powers-that-be who determine what course of action is going to be taken regarding the best interests of our city, have none.

In my opinion, it truely is unfortunate that so many of our communities which are so far disconnected from the urban core, are considered to be, Jacksonville.  It's an injustice to what could be done for and in those smaller communities as well as what could be done for downtown.  Orange Park is over 30 minutes away from downtown Jacksonville by highway, the intercoastal communites and the beaches are even further.  People who live in those areas have a tendancy to stay in those areas because they have no reason to venture into downtown for anything other than a couple of games or shows and then they're out and back home.

So, again, depending on where you live in 'Jacksonville' and how much you choose to see/learn, it's either going to be "nice" or it will resemble a teenage girl with self-esteem issues, looking at fashion mags and trying to emulate Gisele Bundchen.

[Eazy E]

The Southern Music Hall of Fame would be open and full to capacity somewhere in downtown. Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers would have exhibits there and all the music aficionados would know a history of the Southern music and the Jacksonville music scene


well, maybe Jacksonville having incompetent leadership isn't such a bad thing after all...

[thelakelander]

A Southern Music Hall of Fame would also have to include Ray Charles, James Weldon Johnson and Blind Blake, the King Of Ragtime Guitar.

[tufsu1]

I did not know that Jacksonville was a city that "hated" itsellf...

This is very odd to me, because most of the people I talk to who live here seem to think its a pretty nice place!

Do any of these people live in urban areas or do they all live in the suburbs...St. John's county perhaps?  Jacksonville will always appear to be a "nice place" when you shut yourself out from the reality of what it is and what it has the potential to become (good and bad). 

Some people live in the suburbs...others in established neighborhoods like Riverside and Springfield....I, for one, live downtown....and, yes, I agree there is much potential that has often been squandered....but its still a pretty nice place to live!

If you don't like it, you can always move!

[thebrokenforum]

If you don't like it, you can always move!

You shouldn't get offended. I don't think that's the point of the article. A lot of people here do have an inferiority complex - just bring up the topic of the Jags moving or Tony Kornhieser to see examples. The major point of this article is, I think, the diamond in the coal analogy, which is so very true. Jax has some great things - if it didn't none of us would be here. But it could have some really cool stuff if it tried - if we had leaders who were progressive thinking and trying to get more investors, and if the media didn't try so hard to freak everyone out every evening.

Excellent article. Stories like these are why I continue coming here. This one, the Dixieland Park and the 30's Days stories are all excellent stuff and deserves to be in the front page spotlight. I wish the rest of the city could read this stuff because, agree or disagree, it gets people talking and that's almost always a good thing.    

[David]

i'm sure all of us at one point in time pulled the "you can move" line on people. It's a natural reaction when you listen to the type of people that bitch about how it's so much better where they're from (not saying anyone's doing that here)

but seriously, with all the transplants who brag about how much better their city is up north or outwest, it can be a drain on you as a local. One of the best lines I heard from a defensive local yokal in response to typical jacksonville smack talk was "you know, 95 is open all year round. Here's what you do, take the 95 north exit and just...drive...for ohhhhh about 15 hours and there you go! You'll be back in outragerous realestate land in no time!"

Thankfully most transplants are happy to be here, and bring some of their culture along with them.

[thelakelander]

Advocates in Chicago saw the need to open a museum showcasing the works of the Civil Rights leader that grew up in Jacksonville.

The A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum was founded in 1995 by Lyn Hughes, its current director. The facility is located in the Historic Pullman District in Chicago. The facility is named after men who made history - Asa Philip Randolph and Pullman Porters who made up the membership of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) union. Randolph was the chief organizer and founder of the BSCP, the first African-American labor union in the country to win a collective bargaining agreement. With the help of Randolph, the Pullman Porters fought a valiant battle for employment equality with the corporate giant, the Pullman Rail Car Company.

These pioneering efforts created the first bona fied union for the African American worker. This victorious struggle in America’s early labor movement was also the doorway through which many civil rights gains were made.

The A. Philip Randolph Museum is locally recognized as a historic site and is a unique addition to the tourism sites of the Pullman community of Chicago, Illinois. The Museum is also nationally recognized as a valuable and unique African-American museum. The A. Philip Randolph museum pays tribute to one of the most influential African-American leaders in history. A. Philip Randolph redefined American labor, American democracy, and American society. During a time when it was unsafe and unpopular, Randolph demanded that African-American people be fully and equally included in American society. A. Philip Randolph was an intelligent and fair leader who devoted decades of his life to his vision of a more moral and civilized American society. A Philip Randolph was a great man, a great humanitarian, and a great American.

http://aphiliprandolphmuseum.com/


About the life of Philip Randolph

A. Philip Randolph was born April 15,1889 in Crescent City, Florida. He was one of two sons. His parent's names were Reverend James Williams and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, who were both dependents of slaves.

He and his family moved to Jacksonville in 1891. This was the place where he and his brother attended school. They both excelled by being the top in their classes at the Cookman Institute. After school, he was reduced to menial work. In the spring of 1911, he traveled to New York with a friend, secretly hoping to become an actor. He took classes at City College, and bowing to his parents objections to an acting career, switched from drama to politics and economics, soon joining the socialist party. During this time Randolph met his future wife, Lucille Green, a 31 year old widow from Christianburg, Virginia.

Randolph soon met another friend from North Carolina. His name was Chandler Owen. He was studying sociology and political science at Columbia University. They both shared the same ideas and would soon become soap box orators and establish THE MESSENGER, a radical Harlem magazine, in 1917.

He organized The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters which was considered the first serious effort of unionizing the Pullman company. The Pullman company was the most powerful business organization in the country, and it viciously resisted efforts to unionize.

full story: http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/schools/randolph/A_P_Randolph.html

[xian1118]

Quality article SD. For all the talk of liking and disliking Jacksonville, more people need to step up and show the pride they have for the city.  As a life-long resident and self-proclaimed "ambassador" for the city, it's important that every single one of us take responsibility to transform the city into the exceptional place we all know it has the potential to be...instead of bitching about all the things that hold us back. It will be a fine day when the participants of this website and other young inspired voices take the next step to hold City Council seats and realize these dreams.

[BridgeTroll]

I wish the rest of the city could read this stuff because, agree or disagree, it gets people talking and that's almost always a good thing.   

Absolutely!

[thelakelander]

Jacksonville's Negro League baseball team was known as the Jacksonville Redcaps before relocating to Cleveland in 1939.  A large segment of Jacksonville's early African-American population worked with the railroads.  Many black men worked as "RedCaps" or "Porters" (men who helped passengers with their baggage and supplies).  Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

Randolph had some experience in labor organization, having organized a union of elevator operators in New York City in 1917. He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. In 1925, Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This was the first serious effort to form a labor institution for the employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African-Americans. With amendments to the Railway Labor Act in 1934, porters were granted rights under federal law, and membership in the Brotherhood jumped to more than 7,000. After years of bitter struggle, the Pullman Company finally began to negotiate with the Brotherhood in 1935, and agreed to a contract with them in 1937, winning $2,000,000 in pay increases for employees, a shorter workweek, and overtime pay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Philip_Randolph

There's also a movie called 10,000 Black Men Named George about the Brotherhood, that comes on TV from time to time.

More about Randolph:

Philip Randolph brought the gospel of trade unionism to millions of African American households. Randolph led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and served as the organization's first president. Randolph directed the March on Washington movement to end employment discrimination in the defense industry and a national civil disobedience campaign to ban segregation in the armed forces. The nonviolent protest and mass action effort inspired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Asa Philip Randolph was born April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Fla., the second son of the Rev. James William Randolph, a tailor and ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891, the family moved to Jacksonville, which had a thriving, well-established African American community. From his father, Randolph learned that color was less important than a person's character and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of education and of defending oneself physically, if necessary. Randolph remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his father tucked a pistol under his coat and went off to prevent a mob from lynching a man in the local county jail.

Asa and his brother, James, were superior students. The Randolph brothers attended the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, for years the only academic high school for African Americans in Florida. Asa excelled in literature, drama and public speaking; starred on the school's baseball team; sang solos with its choir; and was valedictorian of the 1907 graduating class.

After graduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting and reading. W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk convinced him that the fight for social equality was more important than almost anything else. He moved to New York City in 1911 to become an actor but gave up after failing to win his parents' approval. Columbia University student Chandler Owen shared Randolph's intellectual interests and became his close collaborators.

In 1914, Randolph courted and married Mrs. Lucille E. Green, a widow, Howard University graduate and entrepreneur who shared his socialist politics and earned enough money to support them both. The couple had no children.

Randolph joined the Socialist Party and began to harangue the crowds at Harlem's soapbox corner (135th Street and Lenox Avenue) about socialism and the importance of militant class-consciousness. In January 1917, William White, president of the Headwaiters and Sidewaiters Society of Greater New York, asked them to edit a monthly magazine for the society, Hotel Messenger. Randolph and Owen dropped "Hotel" from the masthead and in November 1917 published the first issue of the Messenger, which soon became known as "one of the most brilliantly edited magazines in the history of American Negro journalism."

Their magazine provided an outlet for those who, like Randolph and Owen, were opposed to both the cautious elitism of the NAACP and the utopian populism of Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association. By now established figures in the Socialist Party in New York, Randolph and Owen embarked on a nationwide anti-war speaking tour in 1918 that brought them to the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice and almost got them arrested.

In June 1925, a group of Pullman porters, the all-black service staff of the Pullman sleeping cars, approached Randolph and asked him to lead their new organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph agreed. Besides his abiding interest in and knowledge of unions, Randolph's primary qualification for the job was his reputation for incorruptibility and the fact that he was not a Pullman Company employeeâ€"meaning the company could not fire him or buy him off. For the next 10 years, Randolph led an arduous campaign to organize the Pullman porters, which resulted in the certification of the BSCP as the exclusive collective bargaining agent of the Pullman porters in 1935. Randolph called it the "first victory of Negro workers over a great industrial corporation."

Randolph became the most widely known spokesperson for black working-class interests in the country. In December 1940, with President Franklin Roosevelt refusing to issue an executive order banning discrimination against black workers in the defense industry, Randolph called for "10,000 loyal Negro American citizens" to march on Washington, D.C. Support grew so quickly that soon he was calling for 100,000 marchers to converge on the capital. Pressed to take action, President Roosevelt issued an executive order on June 25, 1941, six days before the march was to occur, declaring "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." Roosevelt also set up the Fair Employment Practices Commission to oversee the order.

Six years later, after the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1947, Randolph demanded that the government integrate the armed forces. He founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation and urged young men, both black and white, to "refuse to cooperate with a Jim Crow conscription service." Threatened with widespread civil disobedience and needing the black vote in his 1948 re-election campaign, President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, ordered an end to military discrimination "as quickly as possible."

The March on Washington movement and Randolph's call for civil disobedience to end segregation in the armed forces helped convince the next generation of civil rights activists that nonviolent protests and mass demonstrations were the best way to mobilize public pressure. Randolph was, in this sense, the true "father of the civil rights movement" in the United States. The movement recognized his role by naming him the chair of the 1963 March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, and by heeding his advice to cooperate in keeping the march nonviolent.
Randolph was elected a vice president of the newly merged AFL-CIO in 1955. He used his position to push for desegregation and respect for civil rights inside the labor movement as well as outside. He was one of the founders of the Negro American Labor Council and served as its president from 1960 to 1966. In 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.

Retiring as president of the BSCP in 1968, Randolph was named the president of the recently formed A. Philip Randolph Institute, established to promote trade unionism in the black community. He continued to serve on the AFL-CIO Executive Council until 1974. He died in New York City on May 16, 1979.

www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/randolph.cfm