'A struggle that is not over': Jacksonville Civil Rights Conference focuses on racial equity

Jacksonville is the birthplace or adopted home of some of the country's most well-known civil rights leaders, from labor unionist A. Philip Randolph to writer James Weldon Johnson.

It was also the site in 1960 of Ax Handle Saturday, where a mob of white men attacked black residents and workers in downtown.

And over the last three days, it was host to its first Civil Rights Conference.

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Rodney Hurst, who was a teenager in 1960 when he led the sit-ins on the infamous Ax Handle Saturday, was this year the architect of the conference, which started Thursday night and ended Saturday evening.

In a pre-recorded video played on Friday, Hurst told participants: "Black history is who we are, racism is why we fight."

"I've been talking about our need to have a civil rights conference for people just to come together for a meeting of the minds," Hurst previously told the Times-Union.

The conference brought together about 250 people in person at the Southbank Marriott and another 100 online, according to event organizers. It featured civil rights leaders from Jacksonville and across the country, including Spelman College and Bennett College President Emerita Johnnetta Cole and Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Topics in speeches and break-out sessions included the treatment of low-income and Black people by law enforcement, housing issues, generational wealth, voting rights and inequalities, including in city services.

"This is not some nice gathering where folks can come in and have lunch and meet each other and chit chat. This is about our city. This is about our nation. This is about a struggle that is not over," Cole told the Times-Union. "Though I went through those wretched days of Jim Crow and Jane Crow, those days of legal segregation, I'm filled with pride that my city is having such a critical conference at this point."

The sold-out event was sponsored by some major local names in Florida, including Miller Electric Company, United Way of Northeast Florida, JEA, Baptist Health and Florida Blue.

Darnell Smith, Florida Blue's North Florida market president, said political turmoil and the deaths of people like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd made his team look inward and make changes, including making Juneteenth a corporate holiday.

"We looked at ourselves and said we're doing good work, but we're not doing enough, so we set out to focus on this work very differently," Smith told attendees. "We created an equity alliance, which is a group of employees, leaders and frontline employees to talk about things that really matter. What does equity really look like?"

Jacksonville in particular is a key place to hold a civil rights conference, according to Johnnetta Cole, a Jacksonville native, the first female African-American president of Spelman College and the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.

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Organizers hope the momentum from the conference will continue after Saturday.

Following the conference, Hurst, the local United Way, LIFE (Leadership Is For Everyone Inc.) and other event sponsors and activists will continue to host similar conversations on a smaller scale.

Hrabowski told the Times-Union there's more that people can do than talk, however.

"The emphasis should be on hope. That is the legacy of the civil rights movement...I hope there is action," Hrabowski said. "It's one thing to talk about things, but the question is what can people do? Of all the thing I can think about, it is to have more people hopeful that their vote counts...We need people to vote."

Katherine Lewin is the enterprise reporter at the Times-Union covering criminal and social justice issues in Northeast Florida.  Email her at klewin@jacksonville.com or follow on Twitter @KatherineMLewin. Contact her for her Signal number to share anonymous tips and documents. Support local journalism!

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville conference features national civil rights leaders