{"id":176317,"date":"2026-03-03T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176317\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T13:57:08","slug":"how-new-leadership-continues-the-legacy-of-a-historic-jacksonville-neighborhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176317\/","title":{"rendered":"How new leadership continues the legacy of a historic Jacksonville neighborhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 When you hear the word Durkeeville, you might immediately think of JP Small Stadium<\/a>, where Hank Aaron played baseball and The New Stanton, but it\u2019s also a community investing in its history and growing future generations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a map of Jacksonville in 1887, the border of the town was right near Durkeeville. <\/p>\n

Durkeeville is steeped in rich history — JP Small Field, beautiful brick homes, a Black-owned streetcar system, Emmett Reed Park, and Mount Herman Cemetery<\/a>, where civil war troops rest in peace — and bordered by the oldest HBCU in the state of Florida: Edward Waters University.<\/p>\n

RELATED: There\u2019s a man\u2019s gravesite in the middle of a Jacksonville sidewalk<\/a><\/p>\n

Dana Michelle Maule is the founder of Northside Pride, and she\u2019s one of many keeping the history alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve done is try to amplify those stories through the work that we do with Northside Pride,\u201d Maule said.<\/p>\n

Maule has bike and walking tours through Durkeeville and other Northside communities. <\/p>\n

\u201cJP Small Stadium is where Hank Aaron broke the color lines<\/a> in the minor leagues,\u201d said Maule.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same community where the father of rock and roll, Little Richard, was singing in an unexpected place at Mount Ararat Baptist Church. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same community where a popular lunch spot, Durkeeville and Co., calls home. <\/p>\n

The community is pursuing historical designation. A revitalization study was conducted with $250,000 from the city<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd while it doesn\u2019t have a legal historic designation, there are two sites that are on the National Register of Historic Places and those are the AKA House and Durkee Gardens. And Durkee Gardens is a public housing community,\u201d said Maule.<\/p>\n

The oldest public housing community in the state of Florida. <\/p>\n

The AKA House is a Jeffersonian-style mansion, which is like the last remains of Sugar Hill, where 8th street and I-95 meet; where one of the most wealthy Black communities was destroyed for the interstate, which began the destabilization of the community. <\/p>\n

Not far from where Sugar Hill once existed is a program that is bringing structure back. <\/p>\n

MaliVai Washington attended the University of Michigan and pursued a professional tennis career; training brought him to Jacksonville. <\/p>\n

His love for tennis overflowed into founding the MaliVai Washington Youth Foundation program in Durkeeville on West 6th Street.<\/p>\n

It started out as a tennis program but has blossomed into a program that instills dignity and character. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to try to introduce kids to the sport of tennis, let them experience what I was able to get from the sport now that I have been playing for 51 years. My hope was that they would grow,\u201d said Washington.<\/p>\n

And it has grown so much, children have become adults and now they are bringing their children to the same program.,<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be an organization, and I think we are today, that 10, 20, 30 years from now, any of our supporters can drive through Durkeeville and say, \u2018Wow, that program is still going,\u2019\u201d said Washington.<\/p>\n

There is a new generation of people creating culture and character in Durkeeville for generations to come.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 When you hear the word Durkeeville, you might immediately think of JP Small Stadium, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13337,502,83351,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-176317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-4-your-neighborhood","tag-community","tag-durkeeville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176317","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=176317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}