Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, from Civil Rights to the Jaguars (Florida History and Culture)

Description

In the 1950s and '60s Jacksonville faced daunting problems. Critics described city government as boss-ridden, expensive, and corrupt. African Americans challenged racial segregation, and public high schools were disaccredited. The St. Johns River and its tributaries were heavily polluted. Downtown development had succumbed to suburban sprawl. Consolidation, endorsed by an almost two-to-one majority in 1967, became the catalyst for change. The city's decision to consolidate with surrounding Duval County began the transformation of this conservative, Deep South, backwater city into a prosperous, mainstream metropolis.

James B. Crooks introduces readers to preconsolidation Jacksonville and then focuses on three major issues that confronted the expanded city: racial relations, environmental pollution, and the revitalization of downtown. He shows the successes and setbacks of four mayors--Hans G. Tanzler, Jake Godbold, Tommy Hazouri, and Ed Austin—in responding to these issues. He also compares Jacksonville's experience with that of another Florida metropolis, Tampa, which in 1967 decided against consolidation with surrounding Hillsborough County. Consolidation has not been a panacea for all the city's ills, Crooks concludes. Yet the city emerges in the 21st century with increased support for art and education, new economic initiatives, substantial achievements in downtown renewal, and laudable efforts to improve race relations and address environmental problems. Readers familiar with Jacksonville over the last 40 years will recognize events like the St. Johns River cleanup, the building of the Jacksonville Landing, the ending of odor pollution, and the arrival of the Jaguars NFL franchise. During the administration of Mayor Hazouri from 1987 to 1991, Crooks was Jacksonville historian-in-residence at City Hall. Combining observations from this period with extensive interviews and documents (including a cache of files from the mezzanine of the old City Hall parking garage that contained 44 cabinets of letters, memos, and reports), he has written an urban history that will fascinate scholars of politics and governmental reform as well as residents of the First Coast city.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2006-03-31
Summary: "not bad, but could be deeper"

I am moving to Jacksonville soon, and this book was a handy history of Jacksonville in the last half of the 20th century. The book shows how Jacksonville's heritage is that of the rural, blue collar south: conservative Democratic until the 1990s, conservative Republican thereafter.

It points a reasonably distinctive portrait of Jacksonville 50 years ago: uneducated (with no four-year college in 1956), heavily industrial, and so polluted that in 1948, "sulphuric acid droplets in the air began to disintegrate nylon stockings on women on the streets of downtown Jacksonville."

Occasionally, the book is stingy with analysis: for example, it mentions city government's love affair with expressways here and there but fails to address the possible relationship between highways, suburban sprawl, and downtown deterioration.

The book discusses education often, but here too is uncritical of bureaucrats, routinely assuming that more education spending means more education. Although the book occasionally notes that desegregation was not a complete success in Jacksonville, a more complete analysis would have compared Jacksonville to other cities. Is Jacksonville a city where desegregation worked with a few hitches, or one where (as in most northern cities) desegregation ended with an all-black urban school system surrounded by white suburban schools? This book does not answer that question.

The last chapter of the book is focused on Jacksonville's city-county consolidation: but the book's discussion of scholarly commentary is too focused on comparing Jacksonville with Tampa, which has annexed significant swaths of suburbia (as opposed to other cities with more limited annexation powers such as Cleveland or Detroit). Are taxpayers better off because Jacksonville has one city government instead of 20? It is hard to tell from this book.