Florida · LaVilla, Durkeeville & American Beach
Jacksonville
Lift Every Voice and Sing was written here. So was most of what the Chitlin' Circuit became.
Why this city
LaVilla incorporated as its own municipality in 1866 and was annexed by Jacksonville in 1887. In the decades that followed it became one of the most consequential Black entertainment and business districts in the South — Ashley Street theatres, ballrooms, insurance houses, and the Ritz — and the neighbourhood where James Weldon Johnson and his brother wrote 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' in 1900. Urban renewal took most of the buildings in the 1990s. The Ritz Theatre & Museum, the street grid, and the record remain.
North of the city, on Fort George Island, the Kingsley Plantation retains the largest surviving group of tabby slave cabins in the United States — twenty-five of them, arranged in an arc. It is quiet, coastal, and one of the most affecting sites on the Atlantic seaboard.
Then American Beach, on Amelia Island: founded in 1935 by the Afro-American Life Insurance Company so that Black Floridians would have oceanfront of their own. MaVynee Betsch, 'the Beach Lady', spent her fortune and her life defending it. The dune she saved is named NaNa.
Museums & historic sites
Ritz Theatre & Museum, LaVilla
The district's anchor. The permanent exhibition on LaVilla and the Johnson brothers is the orientation for everything else.
Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island
Twenty-five tabby cabins in an arc. Go at low sun; allow an hour of walking without commentary.
American Beach & the NaNa dune, Amelia Island
The 1935 resort community, with the small museum and MaVynee Betsch's dune.
Clara White Mission
On Ashley Street — a century of Black social provision, with an archive and gallery upstairs.
Edward Waters University
Florida's first independent institution of higher learning for African Americans, founded 1866.
Mounds & ancient Indigenous ground
Earthworks, shell rings and mound complexes within reach of the city — most of them older than anything else you will see on this trip. Where a site sits on sovereign or restricted land, enter with a tribal or preserve guide, and never climb a mound.
Rollins Shell Ring, Fort George Island
A Late Archaic shell ring on the same island as the Kingsley cabins — roughly 3,500 years of continuous use in one square mile. Pair the two in a single morning.
Mount Royal Mound, Welaka
Ninety minutes south on the St. Johns: a St. Johns-culture mound with an engineered causeway, described by the naturalist William Bartram in 1774.
Shields and Grant Mounds, Mill Cove
Two of the largest sand mounds in Florida, on the lower St. Johns. Largely on private and protected land — viewed with a preserve guide.
Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve
Forty-six thousand acres holding Timucua shell mounds, the Kingsley cabins and the Ribault monument in one park. The Ranger-led walks are the best introduction in the state.
Where to stay
A Black-owned inn or guesthouse in or near LaVilla
Booked through the Circle's desk. Where a city has no Black-owned house at this standard, we say so and place you in the best independent room instead.
An Amelia Island house for the American Beach nights
Independently held, walking distance to the sand.
The table
A Black-owned soul food institution on the northside
Decades in one family. Go at noon, before the church crowd.
A Black-owned contemporary kitchen downtown
The current generation, Florida produce, serious wine list.
Mayport shrimp off the boats
The working waterfront, not the tourist dock.
Tours & walks
A LaVilla walking tour with a district historian
What stood, who owned it, and what took it down.
A Black-owned food tour of the northside
Soul food, Caribbean, and Gullah Geechee lines in one afternoon.
A Kingsley and American Beach day
Plantation in the morning, ocean in the afternoon, deliberately in that order.
Members have this city's stays, tables and guides booked for them, with introductions where protocol allows. Everyone else is welcome to use the guide exactly as written.
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Behind the closed gate.
Our community-governed journeys and the Sovereign Florida Circuit go where a guidebook cannot take you.