During the decade of the 1960s, Jacksonville re-branded itself as the “Bold New City of the South,” a tagline whose authorship is uncertain. Bold and new referred to the consolidation of city and county government, effective October 1, 1968. But did the city’s leaders intend to identify Jacksonville with the South? Or were they signaling the rest of the world that the “new” city stood apart from what it understood to be the American South?
The mentality of Jacksonville’s civic entrepreneurs was probably shaped by their perception of our peer Florida cities, such as Tampa, Orlando and Miami. By the 1960s, those places had drawn even with Jacksonville in many measures of importance – something that had long been the goal of Tampa’s civic elites who, during the 1930s and 1940s, envied Jacksonville’s size, wealth, and its economic and political importance. Then came the tremendous postwar surge in Florida’s population, mainly in the counties of the central and southern peninsula. Growth in those metropolitan areas allowed them to reinvent themselves as part of the modern American Sunbelt.
In the mid-twentieth century, all these cities had common problems, such as water pollution, political corruption, declining downtowns and sharp racial inequality. After 1954, the latter came under a spotlight resulting from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v the Board of Education. In Tampa, Orlando and Miami, sheer growth provided the political realignments and financial resources that helped those cities rebrand themselves. Jacksonville’s growth differed. Travel and tourism were less important to the local economy, while industrial activity such as paper manufacturing, shipbuilding and the seaport remained far more important than they were elsewhere in Florida. So too was the military, especially the U.S. Navy, which drew more newcomers into northeast Florida than it did anywhere else in the state or region.
During the 1960s, Jacksonville looked increasingly different from its peer cities, which became joined to the rest of the United States by brand new interstate highways, and spread out across the countryside by converting vast tracts of former orange groves and cattle ranches into new residential subdivisions. The political appetite for growth was ravenous, and cheap, flat, easily developed land was abundant to meet the demand. Newness was everywhere, and evidence of old Florida became hard to find.
Jacksonville responded to its image problem by combining its city and county governments into one physically sprawling city, and called itself new. In fact, it was a bold play. During those same years of the 1960s, Tampa and Miami attempted the same thing and failed. Political rivalries across those big counties made it difficult to overcome suspicions that downtown interests would take over everywhere. It was hard enough to overcome those suspicions in Jacksonville, where pessimism about the city’s future ultimately drove rivals into hard bargains based on big promises.
The American South continues to live with its historic identity as a collection of states that formed the Confederacy. No one confuses states like Arizona or New Mexico with the South – those states are part of the Southwest, which has its own geography, climate and culture. The American South is here in the Southeast, where Florida also is. But is Florida still what people think of when they imagine the South?
In the United States, “The South” means more than just a compass direction. The South also means climate, culture, economy and other characteristics that help define a place. John F. Kennedy once described Washington, D.C., on the border between two regions, as a place possessing “Northern charm and Southern efficiency,” knowing that people everywhere would instantly get the joke.
When they began calling it the Bold New City of the South, Jacksonville’s leaders knew they couldn’t physically move the place out of its geographic region. Instead, they aimed to move it psychically out of what people imagined the South to be. It happened slowly, and in the 21st century the process is still ongoing, as old preconceptions about Jacksonville linger. But the city is indeed reinventing itself, as newcomers testify when they arrive, begin to settle in and soon enough declare themselves surprised to discover a complex, sophisticated and thriving 203-year-old city that remains different from any other in Florida.
Alan J. Bliss, Ph.D. | CEO, Jacksonville History Center