Born Asa Philip Randolph in 1889, A. Philip Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who planned a march on Washington to protest unequal hiring practices in defense industries before and during World War II. His actions led then President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802. This order banned ethnic and racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry. 

Like most Southern cities, Jacksonville was segregated prior to the Civil Rights movement. On Aug.13, 1960, civil rights activists began a series of sit-ins to protest segregation at local lunch counters, where they were taunted, spat on, and abused. 

On Aug. 27, an integrated group of members of the Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter. A mob of 200 White male Ku Klux Klan members gathered in Hemming Park, armed with ax handles and baseball bats. They chased the activists out of the lunch counter and attacked them in the streets.

The White mob began to assault any African American person they found. Police observed but did nothing until a group of African Americans called the Boomerangs, which the press referred to as a "street gang," arrived to protect activists. Only then did police intervene and arrest members of the Boomerangs and African Americans who tried to stop the beatings. 

In 2020, then President Trump released a press release that proclaimed the site of Ax Handle Saturday as part of the African American Civil Rights network. 

Robert “Bullet Bob” Hayes was born in Jacksonville on Dec. 20, 1942.

Recognized in 1964 as the “world’s fastest human,” Hayes is a graduate of Matthew Gilbert High School where he played on the football team.

A highly recruited athlete, Hayes went on to accept a football scholarship from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). There he also excelled in track and field.

Hayes was not only a professional NFL player, he also took part in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics where he won two gold medals gaining him his nickname: Bullet Bob. He is the only athlete to win an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl.

The Jacksonville, Florida City Federation of Colored Women's Club was founded in 1912. 

Like other women's groups of the Progressive reform era, the City Federation of Coloried Women's Club fought for women's right to vote and improvements in education, health, and city sanitation. 

Despite the prevalence of racial violence toward African Americans during this era, the club fought for civic engagement to improve the lives of Jacksonville's African American community.

Among its various activities, the club worked to improve infant welfare and provide free medical clinics. The club also built a playground for African American children and fought for drainage and road upgrades in Jacksonville's African American neighborhoods. 

In addition, club members petitioned the state for better treatment of male and female African Americans in prison and urged African American men to vote.

The club's membership included prominent female members of the city's African American community. The motto of the City Federation of Colored Women's Club in Jacksonville was "Not for ourselves, but others." 

Eartha M. M. White was born on Nov. 8, 1876, in Jacksonville...where she was adopted by Clara English White. Following her education, she became an accomplished businesswoman. 

She earned a real estate broker's license and joined the Afro-American Life Insurance company in Jakconville. 

Following her mother's motto, "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, for all the people you can, while you can," White became a philanthropist and humanitarian focused on social welfare.

She founded an orphanage for African American children, childcare centers, a home for unwed mothers, a tuberculosis rest home, nursing and retirement homes for elderly African Americans, and the Clara White Mission. 

...White received the national Lane Bryant Award for Volunteer Service in 1970, when she was 94. She was widely known as the "Angel of Mercy" until her death in 1974 at age 97. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Southern states passed a series of laws called Black Codes. 

In 1865, Florida adopted a state constitution that included Black Codes. These laws required African Americans to sign annual contracts with White employers. African Americans who did not comply or broke such a contract could be fined, whipped, imprisoned, or sold for up to one year's labor. African Americans were also banned from owning weapons of any kind without the permission of a judge.

The Florida Black Codes also included laws against vagrancy: any African American without a job could be imprisoned for a year or sentenced to public whippings and pillories. The children of African Americans convicted of vagrancy were often forced to work as apprentices. The Florida State Constitution also mandated segregation in churches and transportation and banned all interracial relationships. 

Excerpts of Black Codes in Florida's Constitution from 1865
ARTICLE IV

Legislative Department.

• No person shall be a Representative unless he be a white man, citizen of the United States, and shall have been an inhabitant of the State two years next preceding his election...
• The Senators shall be chosen by the qualified electors for a term of two years...; and no man shall be a Senator unless he be a white man, and Citizen of the United States, and shall have been an inhabitant of this State two years next preceding his election.

General Provisions

• Whereas, slavery has been destroyed in this State by the Government of the United States; therefore, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall in future exist in this state except as a punishment for crimes, whereof the party shall have been convicted by the courts of the State, and all the inhabitants of the State, without distinction of color, are free, and shall enjoy the rights of person and property with distinction of color.
• In all criminal proceedings founded upon injury to a colored person, and in all cases affecting the rights and remedies of colored person, no person shall be incompetent to testify as a witness on account of color; in all other cases, the testimony of colored persons shall be excluded unless made competent by future legislation. The jury shall judge the credibility of the testimony. 
• The jurors of this State shall be white men, possessed of such qualifications as may be prescribed by law. 

Harry T. Moore and Harriette Moore were prominent figures in the early Civil Rights Movement in the 20^th century. 

Harry Moore was born on Nov. 18, 1905 in Houston, Florida. He attended Florida Memorial College and graduated with a teaching degree in 1925. 

Harriett Moore was born June 19, 1902, in West Palm Beach, Florida.  She attended Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida and earned a degree in 1941. 

Harry and Harriette met while teaching in Brevard County, Florida and married in December 25, 1926.  In 1934, they founded the first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County.  The couple also helped organize Florida’s state NAACP chapter.  Harry became president of that state chapter.

The couple launched a legal battle to gain equal pay for African American teachers.  They also advocated for voting rights and equal pay on behalf of all African Americans. 

In 1945, Harry formed the Florida Progressive Voters’ League and helped register over 100,000 African American voters. Harry condemned lynching and spoke against racial violence across the nation. 

On Christmas Day in 1951, a bomb exploded at the Moore family home in Mims, Florida...Though the perpetrators have never been identified, it is widely believed that Ku Klux Klan members planted the bomb under the Moore home. Harry died on the day of the bombing and Harriette died nine days later in the hospital. 

The bombing drew national attention and African Americans organized nationwide protests and memorials to honor the couple...In 1999, the site of the Moore's home in Mims became a Historical Heritage Landmark of the state of Florida. 

LaVilla is a historically African American neighborhood in Jacksonville. Northwest of downtown, the area was the location of a large Union Army garrison while northeast Florida was under Union control during the Civil War. 

The garrison attracted many enslaved African Americans seeking escape from bondage and continued to attract African Americans following emancipation. A large community of African Americans was established in LaVilla, many of whom were elected to political office in the area. 

In 1887, LaVilla and other nearby suburbs were absorbed by the city of Jacksonville. But in 1902, a new state constitution prevented African Americans from voting, and LaVilla became disenfranchised.

However, it emerged as an important center of African American culture. Nationally-known musicians performed at the neighborhood's segregated nightclubs, and its vibrant social scene earned it the nickname "the Harlem of the South."

During the Great Depression, LaVilla became the headquarters of the New Deal's "Negro" division of the Federal Writer's Project, which employed prominent African American writers such as Zora Neale Hurston. 

The neighborhood declined following the construction of Interstate 95 through it but has been the focus of recent restoration efforts. 

"Jim Crow" laws were state regulations designed to prevent equality for African Americans. In Florida, 19 Jim Crow laws were enacted between 1865 and 1967. The doctrine of "separate but equal" established in the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision meant that public facilities were segregated, but in practice, African American facilities were inferior and underfunded compared to white facilites. In addition, the laws prevented the economic and political progress of African Americans. Examples of "Jim Crow" laws from Florida are included below.

Examples of Jim Crow Laws in Florida

• "This statute provided that Negroes or mulattoes who intruded into any railroad car reserved for white persons would be found guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction sentenced to stand in the pillory for one hour or to be whipped, not exceeding 39 stripes or both at the discretion of the jury. [Note - Whites who entered cars reserved for African Americans could receive the same punishment.]"
  
  
• "The schools for white children and the schools for black children shall be conducted separately." 
  
  
• "All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive are hereby forever prohibited."
  
  
• "Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and Negro woman, who are not married to each other who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nightime the same room shall be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars."
  
  
• "There shall be separate buildings, not nearer than one-fourth mile to each other, one for white boys and one for negro boys. White boys and negro boys shall not, in any manner, be associated together or worked together."

Civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson is the son of a Black American father and Bahamian national mother.

Born in Jacksonville, Johnson went on to enroll at historically black college, Atlanta University at the age of 16. There he became a member of National Pan-Hellenic Council organization Phi Beta Sigma.

After moving to New York City to work with his brother in musical theater, the lawyer and activist went on to write a poem in honor of Booker T. Washington known as “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”

The poem was recited as a tribute to Abrahams Lincoln’s birthday during Washington’s visit to Stanton School. The poem would go on to be set to music and after popularity, be adopted as the “Negro National Anthem” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Johnetta Betsch Cole is an anthropologist, educator, museum director, and former college president.  Dr. Cole was born in Jacksonville, FL in 1936. She was the granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, Florida’s first black millionaire, entrepreneur and cofounder of the African-American Industrial and Benefit Association.

In 1987, Cole became the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college.  She served until 1997, building up the schools endowment through a $113 million capital campaign and significantly increasing student enrollment. In 1997, President-elect Bill Clinton appointed Cole to his transition team for education, labor, the arts, and humanities.

Dr. Cole serves as chair of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute in Atlanta, and in 2009, was named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, a position she currently holds.

The history of Kingley Plantation on Fort George Island, Florida shows that enslaved African Americans often experienced slavery in different ways. 

Zephaniah Kingsley was a Quaker merchant, plantation owner, and enslaver who lived at Kingsley Plantation from 1814-1837. Kingsley was not like most Quakers who opposed slavery. Kinglesy traded and owned enslaved people. He also openly engaged in interracial relationships with enslaved women. His first wife was a 13-year-old Senegalese girl named Anna, who he purchased in Cuba. He later made three other enslaved women his common-law wives. He also publicly recognized his biracial children.

At Kingsley plantation, enslaved people grew oranges, cotton, corn, potatoes, peas, and indigo. They worked through the task system, which gave the enslaved people free time once their daily work was completed. Many enslaved people at Kingsley Plantation hired themselves out in their free time to earn money to purchase their own freedom. 

Today, the Kinglsey plantation is a historic site. 

Civil rights activism in St. Augustine gained steam in 1960 when local African American dentist Dr. Robert. B. Hayling became advisor to the NAACP Youth Council.

Both African Americans and White Americans joined the sit-ins and nightly marches. The elderly mother of the White governor of Massachusetts was even arrested for participating in one of the sit-ins.

The St. Augustine movement became national news on June 11, 1964, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), was arrested for trying to enter the Whites-only Monson Motor Lodge's pool. 

In response, the owner of the motor lodge poured acid into the water, a brutal action that horrified millions. The very next day, the United States Senate passed the Civil Rights Act. 

Mary McLeod Bethune was a leading civil rights and suffrage activist, educator, and leader in the 20th century. Born to enslaved parents, Bethune spent her life advocating for racial and gender equality. She spent much of her life in Florida, where she started a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach named the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. This later evolved into the present-day Bethune-Cookman University.

She also started the National Council for Negro Women in 1935. In addition, Bethune served as an advisor in President Roosevelt's administration and advocated for the inclusion of African Americans in defense industries. In a letter dated June 15, 1940, Bethune wrote to Roosevelt about the patriotic spirit and leadership abilities of African American women. To that end, Bethune helped establish a training facility for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in Daytona Beach. 

Below is a transcript of her letter written to President Roosevelt. 

June 4, 1940

The President,

The White House 

My Dear Mr. President: 

At a time like this, when the basic principles of democracy are being challenged at home and abroad, when racial and religious hatreds are being engendered, it is vitally important that the Negro, as a minority group in this nation, express anew his faith in your leadership and his unswerving adherence to a program of national defense adequate to insure the perpetuation of the principles of democracy. I approach you as one of a vast army of Negro women who recognize that we must face the dangers that confront us with a united patriotism. 

We, as a race, have been fighting for a more equitable share of those opportunities which are fundamental to every American citizen who would enjoy the economic and family security which a true democracy guarantees. Now we come as a group of loyal, self-sacrificing women who feel they have a right and a solemn duty to serve their nation. 

In the ranks of Negro womanhood in America are to be found ability and capacity for leadership, for administrative as well as routine tasks, for the types of service so necessary in a program of national defense. These are citizens whose past records at home and in war service abroad, whose unquestioned loyalty to their country and Its ideals, and whose sincere and enthusiastic desire to serve you and the nation indicate how deeply they are concerned that a more realistic American democracy, as visioned by those not blinded by racial prejudices, shall be maintained and perpetuated. 

I offer my own services without reservation, and urge you: In the planning and work which lies ahead, to make such use of the services of qualified Negro women as will assure the thirteen and a half million Negroes In America that they, too, have earned the right to be numbered among the active forces who are working towards the protection of our democratic stronghold.

Faithfully yours,

Mary McLeod Bethune

President

Ocoee is a city outside of Orlando, Florida. On Election Day, Nov. 2, 1920, an African American citizen named Moses Norman went to the polls in Ocoee to cast his vote. 

However, White poll workers said that he was not allowed to vote because he had not paid his poll tax. Norman traveled to Orlando to meet with attorney and former judge John Cheney (also the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1920). Cheney told Norman to return to Ocoee and demand his constitutional right to vote. 

When Norman returned to the polling place, he was again denied the right to vote. There are multiple reports about what happened at this point. One account claims that a group of White residents assaulted Norman. After Norman was once again denied his right to vote, he went to a friend's house and then decided to leave Ocoee.

Later in the day, a mob of White residents searched Ocoee looking for Norman. Along the way, the mob set fire to homes in the African American community and murdered African American men, women, and children. A colleague of Norman's, Julius "July" Perry, was captured, jailed, and eventually lynched. 

The exact number of African Americans who were killed on that Nov. 2 is unknown. After the massacre, African Americans left Ocoee or were forced to leave due to the racial violence. 

Patricia Stephens Due was a civil rights activist trained in nonviolent resistance by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1959. On Feb. 20, 1960, she, her sister, and nine other students from Florida A&M University tried to integrate a lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida and were arrested. Upon her release from jail, Stephens Due continued to participate in sit-ins and marches. She suffered permanent vision damage from when police sprayed tear gas directly in her face during a march. When the sit-in participants were found guilty, she and several others refused to pay the fine and instead served 49 days in jail. During their time in jail, the group received support from Martin Luther King Jr. Stephens Due later met with leaders including Eleanor Roosevelt and James Baldwin and continued her civil rights activism. 

Sharecropping is a system in which a farmer rents land and buys farming supplies from a landowner in exchange for a share of the eventual crops. Tenants had no legal rights to the crops they grew.

Frequently, the cost of rent and supplies -- and the high rate of interest charged by the landowner -- was greater than the value of the crops, forcing tenant farmers and sharecroppers into a perpetual cycle of debt and poverty. 

In some instances, African Americans ended up sharecropping land on which they had been enslaved before the Civil War. The sharecropping system virtually recreated slavery in a new form. 

In Florida, many African American tenant farmers rented land from white landowners and produced cash crops including cotton, sugar, and tobacco. 

The institution and practice of slavery took many forms in Florida, both before and after it was admitted to statehood in 1845. 

The first enslaved people were brought to Florida in 1526, almost 100 years before the British brought enslaved people to the northern colonies in 1619. 

Despite the existence of the slavery system, Florida also offered opportunities to achieve freedom. Similar to the Underground Railroad, Florida's "Saltwater Railroad" provided an escape: enslaved people who made it to Florida beaches often set out for the Bahamas, where they established free communities. 

Following Spain's transfer of Florida to Great Britain in 1821, many White Americans moved to Florida to profit from agriculture and the forced labor of enslaved persons. Enslaved people worked as house servants and as agricultural workers. 

Conditions varied, but long workdays from sunup to sundown were the rule, and the physical abuse and neglect of enslaved people was routine. 

In the early 20th century, Rosewood, Florida was a small, largely African American town with three churches, a turpentine and sugar industry, and many middle-class homes. One resident remembered Rosewood as "a town where everyone's house was painted. There were roses everywhere you walked." 

Yet Rosewood's peace and prosperity was regularly threatened by racial violence, legal segregation, and voter repression. Public Ku Klux Klan demonstrations and the lynchings of African American men were common.

On Jan. 4, 1923, a white woman in nearby Sumner, Florida falsely accused an African American man of assault. Hundreds of White men descended upon Rosewood and tortured, terrorized, and murdered African American residents of the town for three days. The White mob also destroyed many of the town's homes, churches, and businesses. 

Some newspapers reported that eight African Americans were murdered, but researchers place the figure much higher, estimating between 27 and 200 African Americans were killed.