2020 has finally come to an end.
It was a year of unprecedented challenges in which we lost several local businesses and, much more significantly, hundreds of residents as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – which we’ll talk about more later. It was also a year of slow but steady progress on a number of issues in Jacksonville, including riverfront development and racial equality.
As we look forward to a more positive year in 2021, let’s take a quick look at some of what made 2020 noteworthy locally – the good, the bad, and the in-between. Here are the five biggest stories from Jacksonville in 2020, in no particular order.
Over the summer, protests and debates over racial inequality in the U.S. broke out following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
The movement even spread to Jacksonville, where progress often comes at a slower pace than in most major cities and where the police have a notably complicated history with the Black community.
In June, the Confederate monument that once sat in the center of Hemming Park was permanently removed. Mayor Curry then announced that all other Confederate monuments on city-owned property would be removed as well. And in August, city council voted overwhelmingly in favor of renaming Hemming Park itself to honor James Weldon Johnson, the Jax-born civil rights leader who penned the famous hymn “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” It also voted unanimously to rename Confederate Park as Springfield Park.
The city still has plenty of work to do in addressing inequalities, but it was a welcomed sight to see a few steps in the right direction this year.
