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Welcome to the ejuaac project…

Our Mission

The mission of EJUAAC is to create and provide oversight of a strategic plan that inspires the investment in human capital and material resources. This plan aims to remove the barriers to healthy and productive lifestyles for African Americans and underserved communities in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Our Vision

To inspire the removal of barriers to healthy and productive lifestyles for African Americans in underserved communities in Jacksonville, Florida, EJUAAC aims to invest in human capital and material resources. By doing so, EJUAAC strives to create an environment that fosters well-being and productivity within these communities.

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How Did We Get Here?

From slavery to desegregation, primarily through their churches, African Americans in Jacksonville survived almost solely with personal and social networks, produced and exchanged goods, and services among themselves. They built, and managed, successful cultural, and thriving business centers throughout their communities. Business districts, with numerous African American-owned small businesses, such as Florida Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, Broad Street, Davis Street (and its 5 points district); Moncrieff Road, Kings Road, and the Lavilla District (with its international acclaim) are prime examples. Several prominent residential areas, a hospital, and a golf course flanked their communities. In spite of overwhelming odds, they forged a thriving future until desegregation and expansion of Jim Crow laws.

How Did We Get Here?

Desegregation, construction of the Mathews Bridge, and its ramps construction of then 20th St. Expressway (now Martin Luther King Expressway), consolidation of Jacksonville, white flight to the suburbs, all during the 1950s and 60s, and red lining were designed to structurally divide, displace, and most of all, destroy African American communities’ economic engines, and will to reclaim their progress. Today, 50 – 60 years later, their communities have not recovered. Conditions are worse and the collective African American community seems to be helpless, and hopeless, in reclaiming its destiny.

How Will We Address The Issues?

Community of Longbranch

Longbranch, Jacksonville, Florida
Along with Brentwood, Panama Park, Tallulah and North Shore, Longbranch is a part of Jacksonville’s Northside known as Metro North. The neighborhood of Longbranch was platted during the mid-1880s by James Jaquelin Daniel. A civil war veteran, Col. J.J. Daniel was an early philanthropist, civic leader, president of the Jacksonville Cemetery Association, and husband of Emily Isabel L’Engle . Under Daniel’s leadership, the cemetery association established the nearby Evergreen Cemetery in 1880. Also president of the Auxiliary Sanitary Association, Daniel died of yellow fever after catching the disease from coordinating volunteer efforts to combat the epidemic in 1888.
The Colored Man’s Railroad
The Black-owned streetcar system connected what would become Durkeeville, Moncrief, New Town, and Sugar Hill with LaVilla and Downtown In the 1950s and 60s, the once upper-class and prestigious Black community of Sugar Hill in Jacksonville, was chosen by city officials to be leveled to make way for a multi-lane expressway. Once known for its elegance and millionaire residents, Sugar Hill was left decimated, and what remains of it today sits largely boarded up, ghostly and overgrown. 
Graded Springfield School
This public school building welcomed its first students in 1909. The school was built to serve the Phoenix Avenue neighborhood, a working-class settlement that peaked in population in the mid-1920s. The school was expanded in 1926 by local architect Roy Benjamin, who is best known for designing the Florida Theatre and San Marco Theatre. The area’s population declined until the 1960s when construction of the Haines Street Expressway isolated the neighborhood.
Upon its completion in the early 1960s, the road was actually known by two names. The eastern portion, running due north from the base of the Matthews Bridge, was known as the Haines Street Expressway. The northern portion, running due west from the northern terminus of the Haines Expressway, was known as the 20th Street Expressway. Both sections took their respective names from the actual city streets that they either replaced or ran parallel to. The two roads were, in actual operation, a single road, providing a rapid, limited-access route from the Gator Bowl in the southeastern corner of downtown Jacksonville, to the northwestern residential reaches of downtown.
20th Street Expressway

Upon its completion in the early 1960s, the road was actually known by two names. The eastern portion, running due north from the base of the Matthews Bridge, was known as the Haines Street Expressway. The northern portion, running due west from the northern terminus of the Haines Expressway, was known as the 20th Street Expressway. Both sections took their respective names from the actual city streets that they either replaced or ran parallel to. The two roads were, in actual operation, a single road, providing a rapid, limited-access route from the Gator Bowl in the southeastern corner of downtown Jacksonville, to the northwestern residential reaches of downtown.
East Jacksonville

Upon its completion in the early 1960s, the road was actually known by two names. The eastern portion, running due north from the base of the Matthews Bridge, was known as the Haines Street Expressway. The northern portion, running due west from the northern terminus of the Haines Expressway, was known as the 20th Street Expressway. Both sections took their respective names from the actual city streets that they either replaced or ran parallel to. The two roads were, in actual operation, a single road, providing a rapid, limited-access route from the Gator Bowl in the southeastern corner of downtown Jacksonville, to the northwestern residential reaches of downtown.
Interstate 95

Interstate 95 slices through what’s left of Sugar Hill today.

The Lavilla Community

Lavilla Community: Brooklyn

Brooklyn developed as a working-class neighborhood for African-American railroad workers following the end of the Civil War. Major roadway projects, such as the construction of I-95, the Acosta Bridge, and the widening of Forest Street and Riverside Avenue have forever changed the neighborhood’s landscape. Now a hotspot for infill development, Brooklyn’s historic flavor is being replaced by a network of Texas Doughnut-styled multifamily developments.

Lavilla Community: Durkville

Durkeeville originated as an African-American streetcar suburb during the early 20th century. During the 1950s, it was negatively impacted by the construction of the Jacksonville Expressway (I-95) and the 20th Street Expressway (MLK Jr. Parkway). While the expressways severed their ties with downtown, being dominantly black and on the other side of the highway also left it out of site for the city’s failed urban renewal experiments of the late 20th century. 

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Location

5711 Marlin Ct.
Jacksonville, Fl 32277
(904) 898 – 6933

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