Research, Research, Research!

The next step of my development of the tour script for the Ritz was an in-depth research dive into each topic to ensure that I had the highest level of knowledge I could for the script. I went through academic papers to see what urban Black domestic life would have looked like in Jacksonville in the 1930’s. I researched James Weldon Johnson’s wife— who went largely unmentioned— and found Grace Nail Johnson, a prominent activist and feminist in her own right. I spoke to the archivist about high school culture and learned about the numerous people who had donated their own photographs depicting games and homecoming parades to the museum over the years. It was incredibly interesting!

I was also able to gain a deeper appreciation for how Black history manifested around me before I was even aware it was there. I attended the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, FL, for high school. In the Ritz, I found the most expansive story of who Douglas Anderson was: a businessman and philanthropist who personally ferried Black children to school before the city provided school busses to Black residents, and who later purchased a fleet of school busses as the number of students grew. Being a white-passing Black man, Anderson would regularly infiltrate Klu Klux Klan meetings in order to pass along information to the community and help families avoid violence. I gained a much deeper appreciation for my school being named after him, all thanks to the detail included in his plaque at the Ritz.

The image included with this post is simply one that brought me joy as I delved into the research process. I believe that it holds the magic of history in it: the infants being held by their mothers remind me of my own little brother and little cousins. The proud smiles of the mothers remind me of my mother and my aunts These children are now in their 60s and 70s; if their mothers are still alive, they’re in their 90s. (Aren’t we all the past of someone yet to be?) The Life Insurance Agency is long gone and, to an extent, so is the LaVilla community it was based in. But the stories stretch on as long as we remember these children, these mothers, and the inherent joy and silliness to be found in a baby contest in the 1950s.