Between 1890 and 1920, hundreds of immigrants arrived and settled in Jacksonville from an area of the Middle East that is now home to the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and other territories. Early settlers established themselves as grocers, peddlers, and small businesspeople, and dispersed throughout the city instead of forming ethnic enclaves. By immersing themselves in the dominant culture they gained an unusual level of acceptance compared to other cities. At the same time, religious institutions and social clubs have helped generations maintain their culture locally. Today, the city now boasts the country’s fifth-largest Syrian population, and the tenth largest overall Arab American community.
Between 1880 and 1920, nearly 4 million Italians migrated to the United States to escape depressed economic conditions. Many early US Italian communities began near rail yards and Jacksonville’s was no exception. By 1910, 74 percent of the city’s documented Italian residents resided near the former St. Johns River Terminal Company rail yard, which along with Hogans Creek, separated Downtown’s Cathedral District and neighboring community of East Jacksonville. Many came from rural southern Italy, working locally as tailors, fruit dealers, grocers, barbers, shoemakers and other trades.
Historic trade partners with the capital of Puerto Rico, 90 percent of the goods shipped to and from the mainland and the island come through Jacksonville. As a result, San Juan was declared a sister city in October 2009. Historically lumped into the generic term “African American”, Afro-Puerto Ricans were an important part of Jacksonville’s segregation era Black community evolution as a place for jazz, blues and landmark civil rights events. For example, a Puerto Rican-born pillar of Black society, Manuel Rivera operated Ashley Street’s Manuel’s Tap Room, a lounge and grill that was open 24 hours a day during the 1940s and 50s. Described by the NAACP as “the finest of its kind in the South”, Rivera hosted many up-and-coming jazz musicians including Ray Charles before he found international fame. Overcoming Jim Crow, in 1953 Rivera also opened his home to three young Black Jacksonville Braves baseball players named Puerto Rican-born Flex Mantilla, Hank Aaron and Horace Garner, thus integrating Major League Baseball in the Deep South.
Early census records make finding the exact date of Jacksonville’s first Filipino migrant a complicated one. However, many agree that the first wave of Filipino immigrants to Jacksonville began in the 1940s as a result of heavy enlistment of Filipinos in the U.S. Navy during World War II. At the time, the U.S. Navy offered Filipinos a path to American citizenship. By the 1950s, 90 percent of North Florida’s Filipino population was linked in some way to the American military. Today, our Filipino community makes up about 35 percent of the local Asian population and about 10 percent of the city’s total immigrant population. Concentrated in two principal hubs, on the Westside on the Southside north of the University of North Florida, Jacksonville’s Filipino community is the largest in Florida and one of the largest in the Southeast.
Duval County’s Hispanic population has increased from 2.6 percent in 1990 to 11.3 percent in 2020. As a result, the cultural makeup, development pattern, flavor of long-established neighborhoods across the city continue to evolve. Today, there are thousands of people of Latin and Caribbean descent, including from countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Venezuela, residing in town and reshaping neighborhoods, such as the Westside’s 103rd Street corridor and Spring Park near Englewood.
As Jacksonville has become a minority majority community, modern ethnic enclaves will grow and bring unique character to once very bland thoroughfares. For example, Jacksonville’s Indian community reflects the diversity of India itself as the population rapidly grows with families moving to the area for economic opportunities. As a result, since the late 1990s, a stretch of Baymeadows Road has morphed into a corridor characterized by restaurants, groceries, salons, offices and other businesses representing a fusion of the various cultures of India.
The same can be said for the University Boulevard corridor, which has long been an area of focus for refugees from various countries. Here, several apartment communities work with resettlement agencies, which prefer to locate refugees in similar communities as it helps them improve their social life when they first move to the area and decreases the feeling of being alone. As a result, neighborhoods along this corridor have become some of the most diverse in the city. Today, residents of Eastern European descent from countries such as Ukraine, Bosnia, and Albania, along with a rapidly growing Hispanic community make up a large percentage of their population.
The communities mentioned above are just a small part of the multicultural story and makeup of Jacksonville. As we continue our quest to discover and build upon what makes Jacksonville a special place, highlighting our multicultural history and incorporating our diversity and changing demographics should become a major priority.
Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com