Jacksonville

My home and the home of most of my family is Jacksonville, Florida. Much like my family, I really love my city, even for all of it’s faults. I harbor a lot of resentment towards Jacksonville for her lack of progression over the last 27 years I have known her. J-ville, as I affectionately call it was dubbed “The Bold New City of the South” in 1968. It almost seems sarcastic that they named Jacksonville this in 1968, when my mom, 13 years old at this time remembers only a couple of years later experiencing the height of the civil rights era activism at her high school, which was incidentally named (and is named) for a Ku Klux Klan member and Confederate General in the Civil War. Jacksonville today is still fraught with racially biased citizens and a very old way of thinking concerning race relations. It is still acceptable to use words like “colored” in some settings and on a Saturday you might see a group of people adorned in Confederate flag clothing protesting the local BJ’s for firing a man who had a 5’x8′ rebel flag hanging on an antenna on his truck which he parked in their parking lot (yes, I pulled over and asked the protesters what they were doing there). I feel that my home city has a long way to go regarding civil rights issues.