9 Introduction to 2024-2025 Essays

Jacksonville’s history comes alive when historians bring their microscopes down to ground level and reveal the particularity of the people, places, and events that have given the city its unique identity and feel. The essays in our third issue of Moss Culture do just that. They draw readers into the divided churches and neighborhoods as well as packed stadiums and tourist sites where the drama of Jacksonville history unfolded from Reconstruction to the arrival of the Jaguars.

Though they explore events separated by nearly a century, Michael Arnold’s, “Rock vs. Racism, Starring: The Beatles” and Ken Green’s “The Great Church Divide: Unpacking the Bethel Baptist Split and Its Impact on Jacksonville” both highlight how the politics of race played out in specific places and times—Bethel Baptist Church in 1868 and the Gator Bowl in 1964—when Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement (also known as America’s Second Reconstruction) convulsed the city and nation. Emma Mahon’s, “Pitchforks, Plumes, and Photo-Ops: The History of the Ostrich Farm” and Emily Deremer’s, “Untold History: The Jacksonville Tea Men’s Journey and Their Forgotten Legacy” show how seemingly disparate forms of entertainment and competition—ostrich farms and races and professional sports teams—can instill a sense of civic pride and even national notoriety, which is all the more important because the city has so often lacked both. The essays by Clay Ziegler, “A Ride through Time in Empire Point” and Zahir Miller, “The Legacy of Redlining in Jacksonville,” remind us how the history of Jacksonville is also a history of its neighborhoods and how the legacies of our past—be it slavery or Jim Crow—remain visible in the landscapes and livelihoods of its residents.

These essays take us into Jacksonville’s churches, stadiums, neighborhoods, and tourist attractions—not as distant landmarks, but as sites where real people lived, struggled, celebrated, and shaped the city we know today.