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.
So Jacksonville gathers a French fort and a cow ford, a great fire and a Prairie School phoenix, a film capital and a jazz district, a Navy river and a city the size of a county onto one north-flowing waterway — and our Jacksonville designs gather that into wearable form. Whether Jacksonville is your hometown, your river, your beach, or the city you still mean to know, wear the history. On the St. Johns since 1822.
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.