History of Jacksonville, Florida
In the 16th century, the beginning of the historical record period, the area was inhabited by the Mocama, a coastal subgroup of the Timucua indigenous Native Americans.
At the time of contact with Europeans, most Mocama villages in present-day Jacksonville were part of the powerful chiefdom known as the Saturiwa, centered on Fort George Island near the mouth of the St. Johns River.
[4] Ribault explored the mouth of the St. Johns River before moving north and establishing the colony of Charlesfort on what is now Parris Island, South Carolina.
[5] He also forged friendly relations with their competitors, the Utina tribe, who lived upriver to the south (around what is now Palatka and the Lake George area).
[7] In the meantime, the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés had established the colony of St. Augustine 35 miles to the south, with the express mission to displace the French.
When he arrived, Ribault launched a naval expedition of 200 sailors and 400 soldiers to dislodge the Spanish, but a storm at sea incapacitated them for several days and caused numerous deaths.
As part of the negotiations between the two nations in the aftermath of the war, Spain would cede Florida to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Cuba.
[11] The British government gave land grants to officers and soldiers who had fought in the French and Indian War in order to encourage settlement.
A large number of British colonists who were "energetic and of good character" moved to Florida, mostly coming from South Carolina, Georgia and England though there was also a group of settlers who came from the colony of Bermuda.
Furthermore, the British governors were directed to call general assemblies as soon as possible in order to make laws for the Floridas and in the meantime they were, with the advice of councils, to establish courts.
[15] Spain sold the Florida Territory to the United States in 1821 and, by 1822, Jacksonville's current name had come into use, to honor General Andrew Jackson.
It first appears on a petition sent on June 15, 1822 to U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, asking that Jacksonville be named a port of entry.
[16] During the American Civil War, Jacksonville was a key supply point for hogs and cattle leaving Florida and aiding the Confederate cause.
[19] Soldiers on both sides were veterans of the great battles in the eastern and western theaters of war, but many of them remarked in letters and diaries that they had never experienced such terrible fighting.
Following the Civil War, during Reconstruction and afterward, Jacksonville and nearby St. Augustine became popular winter resorts for the rich and famous of the Gilded Age.
[28] On May 3, 1901, downtown Jacksonville was ravaged by the Great Fire—the largest-ever urban fire in the Southeastern United States, which started when hot ash from a shantyhouse's chimney landed on the drying moss at Cleaveland's Fiber Factory.
Young architect Henry John Klutho had just returned to New York from a year in Europe when he read about the Jacksonville fire and, seeing a rare opportunity, he headed south.
[47] In 1917, the first motion picture made in Technicolor and the first feature-length color movie produced in the United States, The Gulf Between, was filmed on location in Jacksonville.
Jacksonville's mostly conservative residents, however, objected to the hallmarks of the early movie industry, such as car chases in the streets, simulated bank robberies and fire alarms in public places, and even the occasional riot.
By that time, southern California was emerging as the major movie production center, thanks in large part to the move of film pioneers like William Selig and D.W. Griffith to the area.
[51] and created a string of African American films starring black actors in the vein of Oscar Micheaux and the Lincoln Motion Picture Company.
In contrast to the degrading parts offered in certain white films such as The Birth of a Nation, Norman and his contemporaries sought to create positive stories featuring African Americans in what he termed "splendidly assuming different roles."
The land once occupied by this installation is now known as the "Cecil Commerce Center" and contains one of the campuses of Florida Community College which now offers civil aeronautics classes.
More than half of the residents in Jacksonville had some tie to the naval base, whether it be a relative stationed there, or due to employment opportunities, by 1970, necessitating the opening of an international airport in the area.
On December 29, 1963, a fire[56] gutted the first couple of stories of the Hotel Roosevelt on Adams Street, killing 22 people, setting a record for the highest one-day death toll in Jacksonville history.
Black Sit-ins began on August 13, 1960 when students asked to be served at the segregated lunch counter at Woolworths, Morrison's Cafeteria and other eateries.
[61] A group of 200 middle aged and older white men (allegedly some were also members of the Ku Klux Klan) gathered in Hemming Park armed with baseball bats and ax handles.
Rumors were rampant on both sides that the unrest was spreading around the county (in reality, the violence stayed in relatively the same location, and did not spill over into the mostly-white, upper-class Cedar Hills neighborhood, for example).
Despite the storm damage, over 20,000 fans attended a live concert the next day at the Gator Bowl Stadium by the British rock-and-roll band, "The Beatles".
Ultimately the storm turned northward 125 miles off the coast, causing only minor damage in Jacksonville and the southeastern U.S. before making landfall in North Carolina.
