Waters, who is Black and a Republican, took the helm of the sheriff’s office in January. In 2020, Joe Biden carried Duval County thanks to a heavy turnout from Black voters - the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had won the county since Jimmy Carter in 1976.Įarlier this year, Democrat Donna Deegan, who is white, was elected mayor of Jacksonville. Two years later, a Black Democratic candidate running for governor, Andrew Gillum, won the county but narrowly lost statewide to now-Gov. The excision was finalized by Jacksonville’s former mayor, a Republican who once served as his party’s statewide chair.ĭonald Trump took Duval County in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, the city has continued to sever ties to the racist past by removing a Confederate soldier statue atop a memorial in a park bordering City Hall. World & Nation Bust of Confederate general, a KKK leader, moved from Tennessee Capitol buildingĪ decades-long fight over the bust of a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader has been resolved in Tennessee,

A couple years later, there was another watershed moment when a coalition of activists succeeded in persuading the school board, after years of failed attempts, to rename a high school honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Jacksonville elected its first Black mayor in 2011. In recent years, there were signs Jacksonville was changing, and it might still be.

The city is still coming to terms with its Southern heritage while trying to become more cosmopolitan in the shadows of the state’s other major cities: Miami, celebrated for glitzy nightlife and inviting beaches, and Orlando, home to the Disney World and Universal theme parks. Jacksonville is home to nearly 1 million people, about a third of them Black, just south of Florida’s border with Georgia. Somewhat puzzling is the apparent lack of a racial motive in the shooting five years ago, leaving questions about why Palmeter cited the attack in his writings.

But as the city continues to grow, local builders and advocates worry about creating another housing crisis like the one in Los Angeles. Jacksonville, Fla., has a good track record for moving homeless people off the streets. For Subscribers In a Florida boom town, builders and homeless services providers fret: ‘We can’t be L.A.’

Casino crise in jacksonville fl