Crooks chronicles history of Jacksonville in sequel

Jim Crooks

Anyone who knows Jim Crooks knows how much he loves history. That love affair started in 1972 when he arrived in Jacksonville to teach at UNF and continues unabated today with his newest book.

"Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, From Civil Rights to the Jaguars" is the result of a 10-year project that included researching extensive records from four Jacksonville mayors and numerous other officials.

The book, published by University Press of Florida, is a sequel to "Jacksonville after the Fire, 1901-1919", which traces how the city was rebuilt after the devastating fire of 1901.

The picture of Jacksonville that Crooks draws is complete with warts that many longtime residents would probably just as soon forget. But from the description of the problems the city faced involving race relations, environmental pollution and deterioration of downtown, Crooks also shows how dedicated leaders were able to find solutions. Many of those solutions were made possible by consolidation, which was endorsed by an almost two-to-one majority in 1967.

In the area of pollution, for example, Crooks describes the condition of the St. Johns River in the early ‘60s, when an estimated 15 million gallons of raw sewage per day flowed into the waterway in addition to industrial pollution from plants and farms.

He notes that the Ribault River, a tributary of the Trout and St. Johns rivers, was “little more than a large, convenient sewer for industrial waste and sewage plants.”

In 1968, following consolidation, the city undertook a comprehensive plan for new water mains and sewers that began to address these issues. Crooks’ book contains a photo of Mayor Hans Tanzler water-skiing on the St. Johns River in 1977 to mark the completion of the cleanup effort.

He also discusses Jacksonville’s other environmental problems, including horrible odor problems caused by paper mills and chemical plants and even the lack of such basic city services as garbage collection.

“Jacksonville was a sorry place in the ‘60s,” he says.

But Crooks traces how environmental improvements were made by working with the companies to reduce emissions while Mayor Tanzler started free garbage collection to discourage residents from dumping their trash in fields and ditches.

Crooks tells similar stories about the decline of downtown and the corruption of city government. Before consolidation, he called Jacksonville city government one of the most ineffective, expensive and corrupt in Florida. Indictments of various officials on corruption charges the year before the consolidation vote undoubtedly helped the issue to pass, he said.

As for downtown, Crooks gives much of the credit for the beginning of revitalization to Mayor Jake Godbold. He made the Jacksonville Landing possible, built a new convention center, and restored the Florida Theatre, Metropolitan Park and the southbank river walk. The historian says Godbold’s greatest contribution was re-thinking downtown by using the river as the city’s greatest asset.

Some of the most glaring parts of Crooks’ book deal with race relations in Jacksonville. He details stories of blatant discrimination by city businesses and widespread mistreatment of blacks by city police. The subsequent riots polarized the community and damaged the city’s reputation for years to come, he says.

However, Crooks also points to city leaders, both black and white, who played major roles in keeping the peace and slowly improving race relations. That mending process ultimately resulted in Nat Glover being elected the city’s first black sheriff.

Crooks tracks the city’s development through the administrations of Tommy Hazouri and Ed Austin and then chronicles how the city obtained the Jacksonville Jaguars franchise, which he labels the most exciting event of the ‘90s.

“The excitement ranked not far behind celebrations for the Armistice ending World War I and V-J Day ending World War II,” he says.

Crooks concludes his book with an upbeat assessment not only of the benefits of consolidation but for the prospects of Jacksonville:

“Assuming wise leadership and taxpayer support, consolidated Jacksonville’s prospects for the 21st century hold substantial promise to serve well all of its residents, environment, neighborhoods and downtown.”

The book is available at the UNF Bookstore or from the University Press of Florida.