Under Our Feet

Four years ago, I picked running back up as my primary hobby. I'd run since high school and off and on in the decades (gasp) since, but started with a new consistency when lockdown hit and I needed something that got me outside for at least 30 minutes a day. It's been a balm. I've run almost every path and road within a two mile radius of home. Sometimes I'll take off and make it my goal to cross as many bridges as I can on one long meandering run. It's quite a feeling of accomplishment when you find yourself in another neighborhood that would have taken you ten minutes to drive to and you've arrived there on foot . . . and then you realize you need to make your way back home on foot.

About ten years ago, I became familiar with the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative when I saw a recording of an event he did with Tim Keller on YouTube. I was impressed and impacted. And still too this day, I have not heard a clip, listened to a interview, or read anything from him that has not somehow left me challenged. Their organization does incredible work in civil rights and amongst these is a remembrance project where they are seeking to draw attention and memorialize the history of race-based lynching throughout the United States. Both at their main memorial and museum in Montgomery and on a local level where they have set aside memorials to be claimed and displayed by every county in the country where a lynching has taken place.

For the past two years, I have had the pleasure to work (in a very small way) alongside a non-profit in Jacksonville that is seeking to build an urban path system known as the Emerald Trail that once completed will total 30 miles of new and refurbished, interconnected trails that bring beauty, activity, economic development, recreation, and environmental restoration across over a dozen neighborhoods locally. It has been encouraging to see tangible progress of this trail come together as my running habit has persisted. New trees get planted along one section. A new path is paved elsewhere. And a portion of this trail runs directly through our neighborhood, Brentwood.

These threads were tied together for me recently as I was on a run through a particularly beautiful section of the trail that runs through our neighborhood. In fact, this specific stretch is where we took some of our wedding photos. As I ran, I noticed a plaque I'd never seen before. So, I debated in my mind the two highly held values and which would win out of 1) Always read the plaque or 2) Never stop on a run (I've run over a mile out of my way before to avoid having to stop and wait at a red light). This time the desire for knowledge won out and I paused my run to see what this plaque read.

And to my surprise this placard had been installed by the Equal Justice Initiative. They had installed the sign to mark the site of the 1919 murder of Bowman Cook and John Morine, two Black World War I veterans who were lynched by a mob of 50 white men at this spot. This story was news to me. I consider myself something of a neighborhood historian and someone aware of the history of racism and terror in our community, but I knew nothing of this even though it was less than a mile from home. Furthermore, when sharing this "news" with others I learned the plaque had been in place for three years already. It was hiding in plain site and I was unaware.

And this is the story of injustice. It lives in the soil beneath our feet whether we acknowledge it or not. It seeps into the ground where we make our home whether we know about it or not. It is there as we pursue our hobbies, drive our roads, and live our lives. Not only in the past, but the story persists into the present. After the murder, Mr. Cook's body was mutilated and then left outside of a Confederate monument in downtown Jacksonville. In future years, the City of Jacksonville would establish their City Hall directly in front of that monument. The memorializing statue would not be removed until over 100 years after that murder. When it was finally removed, the Mayor had it done unannounced and under the cover of darkness to avoid violence.

If we take another stretch of the Emerald Trail, you'll find a mosaic that's been installed in honor of a neighborhood called Sugar Hill. The public art piece is found under an overpass of I-95. Why? Because Sugar Hill was a thriving Black neighborhood that was selected to be demolished to pave the way for the highway. This was not a coincidence. And it is a pattern and story that was repeated in dozens of cities across the country. And not limited to the South.

Just a quarter mile down from Sugar Hill, another section of the trail runs along through the Durkeeville neighborhood near Beaver Street. This whole area was subject to ash pollution that required much of the topsoil in the whole area to be removed and replaced with clean fill in recent decades. Again, the location of the industrial incinerator that caused this contamination in a Black neighborhood, was also no accident.

And we could go on, another portion of the trail runs through the Brooklyn neighborhood, which I've written on before, as another community torn up via mid-century highway construction.

But, when we examine this history under our feet, we'd be remiss to just craft a story of oppression, violence, and destruction. Because there's more than that. There is beauty and triumph to be told as well. The La Villa neighborhood was the Harlem of the South and home to Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and other playwrights, filmmakers, and artists. Near the southernmost section of the trail, there is a historic Black church that a friend of mine pastors. It is over 160 years old and most of its founding members were formerly enslaved. This congregation has prayed, worshipped, and gathered for many generations of faithfulness. We ought to celebrate that. Along the path you'll find sites where Martin Luther King spoke and where the land is being regenerated, creeks long covered in concrete are being daylighted, and flowers are blooming.

As I write this, the day in Juneteenth. This day celebrates the joyous news of Emancipation reaching the state of Texas on June 19th, 1865. And as we commemorate it, we must note that this was two and half years after the Emancipation proclamation and over two months after the surrender at of the Confederacy that had ended the Civil War. Justice delayed and denied again and again. As we consider our history, our land, our roads, and more, we must hold all of this. Injustice exists under our feet, but so does great joy and beauty. 

We do well to lament, celebrate, and act for a more just future.