What’s with Queen Bess? In the spring of 1926, Jacksonville’s Negro Welfare League invited the only Black woman in America with a pilot’s license to headline its May Day festival — and Bessie Coleman came. Born in Texas in 1892, of African American and Native American heritage, she had been refused by every American flight school she approached; so she learned French, sailed for Paris, and in 1921 became the first African American woman and the first Native American woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license. As Brave Bessie, the barnstorming Queen Bess, she insisted on a single entrance for every ticket holder at her shows — and won. Her Jacksonville days were spent doing what she loved beyond flying itself: speaking to the city’s Black schoolchildren, urging them toward the sky, her dream of a flight school nearly funded at last. In 2023 the United States Mint honored her on a quarter in the American Women Quarters Program — suited for flight, beside the date of her license: 6.15.1921.
Our Jacksonville design carries the Florida alligator beneath an arched JACKSONVILLE and the line Florida Territory · Est. 1845, printed in a black, woodcut-style mark. The alligator is old Florida itself — the river-and-swamp country the city grew out of — and the 1845 date marks Florida statehood. It is a River City emblem: not the tourist Florida of postcards, but the lived-in city on the river that runs north.
Why People Visit Jacksonville Florida
- Look up at the Laura Street Trio and the St. James Building downtown — the Prairie School rebuild of 1901 standing in straight modern lines.
- Walk both Riverwalks past Friendship Fountain, with the skyline across the north-flowing St. Johns.
- Stand under the Treaty Oak on the Southbank — a live oak centuries older than the city around it.
- Spend a beach day at Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, or Atlantic Beach — the barrier islands are inside the city limits.
- Visit Fort Caroline National Memorial and the Timucuan Preserve for the French colony of 1564, the river marshes the Timucua knew, and the preserved, sobering history at Kingsley Plantation.
- Photograph the fallen giants of Boneyard Beach on Big Talbot Island, and swim at Little Talbot or Hanna Park.
- Ride the tiny St. Johns River Ferry at Mayport and eat local shrimp where the boats come in.
- Browse the historic districts — San Marco’s 1920s square, Five Points, Riverside-Avondale’s leafy streets, Springfield’s restored blocks, and Mandarin on the river — where Harriet Beecher Stowe wintered and wrote.
- Catch the LaVilla story downtown, where the Harlem of the South once rang with jazz and blues.