{"id":145144,"date":"2026-02-05T20:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/145144\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T20:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:19:07","slug":"jacksonville-sites-added-to-u-s-civil-rights-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/145144\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville sites added to U.S. Civil Rights Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacksonville has been added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail<\/a>, along with historic sites in Virginia, Louisiana and Tennessee.<\/p>\n

As part of the expansion, a Jacksonville Civil Rights Trail will be created with 40 markers. The first will be installed Feb. 25 at Mount Ararat Baptist Church on Myrtle Avenue North.<\/p>\n

The 92-year-old church is where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his \u201cThis is a Great Time to Be Alive\u201d sermon<\/a> on March 19, 1961, according to The Jaxson.<\/p>\n

The trail is a collection of more than 130 churches, courthouses, schools, museums and other landmarks. Found primarily in southern states, the trail highlights where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s to advance social justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of the Jacksonville sites being added to the trail will add unique and powerful stories that will deepen our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and the role our city played in it,\u201d Mayor Donna Deegan said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Mount Ararat church officials could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n

Civil rights in Jacksonville<\/p>\n

King\u2019s sermon at Mount Ararat Baptist Church talked about nonviolent resistance during a time when Jacksonville\u2019s African-American community had begun to stand up to local segregationists.<\/p>\n

After the service, King ate ribs and chicken from Singleton\u2019s Superior Bar-B-Q near West Ashley Street. He then stayed at the Northside home of businessman and activist Frank Hampton, and also went at the Clara White Mission and other safe sites, according to a Jacksonville Florida History Facebook<\/a> post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Markers on Jacksonville\u2019s Civil Rights Trail will highlight where history unfolded. The city plans to install three to five markers per month after the installation at Mount Ararat Baptist Church.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville already appears on the Civil Rights Trail website. One part of its entry<\/a> says Jacksonville was the birthplace of brothers James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson, whose \u201cLift Ev\u2019ry Voice and Sing\u201d hymn, composed in 1900, would become known as the Black National Anthem.<\/p>\n

The brothers are memorialized by the city\u2019s Lift Ev\u2019ry Voice and Sing Park<\/a>, opened in June 2024 on Lee Street. The park is in Jacksonville\u2019s historic LaVilla neighborhood, once a thriving Black community in the early to mid-20th century.<\/p>\n

For details about all of the sites and stories from civil rights pioneers, go to CivilRightsTrail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville has been added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, along with historic sites in Virginia, Louisiana and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-145144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}