When I think of home I think of a place where there’s love overflowing”! (From “The Wiz”) TO OUR PARENTS: A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE By Ben Frazier To College Circle/College Gardens with love! This is home; our beginning; our history; our roots. Actually this neighborhood is much larger than the actual Circle itself. Our larger neighborhood probably extends from Kings Road to the north and Beaver Street to the south; and from Myrtle Ave to the east and Division St to the west. In the past, our neighborhood; our community, was a thriving commercial crossroads. Daylight grocery store, Dixie pharmacy, Lily’s drug store, hardware stores, service stations, pool rooms, and C and C Grocery store. There were beauty shops and barber shops where old men played checkers and little girls got candy curls. There was Jenkins Bar-B –Que,( “With God, a dream and $125,” Melton Jenkins, Jr. and his wife Willie Mae opened Jenkins Quality Barbecue in 1957, using the family’s secret barbecue sauce recipe, handed down from his father). , There were a few doctors and dentists, Cherry’s liquor store and for clear summer nights there was the Skyview Drive in theater!( The Skyview Drive-In was an African-American theater, and had a capacity for 375 cars. It opened in 1949 and closed in 1964). There were also numerous mom and pop corner stores where we purchased cookies, chips, sodas, fire crackers, cherry bombs, wax teeth, lips and a variety of candies. Christmas day was always a big event here! We played with our toys, our roller skates and our bikes. We played touch football in the streets;(telephone posts were the designated goal lines.) (Motorists were never a problem!) Once our streets were paved, people from other neighborhoods came here, with their “union hardware roller skates”( purchased from Western Auto) (that store also sold Converse tennis shoes and Daisy BB guns!!) We explored “the woods” and hunted robins and other birds in “the woods”. We plucked the feathers from the birds and dressed them out; and after our parents cooked them for us, we ate them! Our churches and church leaders were pillars of our community as we pushed past the racial barriers of discrimination. College circle was different but it was still in effect, a microcosm of Jacksonville’s greater black community! College Circle was a working class community of Black folk, who believed that with faith in God, education and by hard work, they could get their piece of the American economic pie! Our schools and our teachers were a large part of our upbringing. They were our heroes and their names make up a legitimate, Hall of Fame list, on the heart strings of our lives. Edward Waters College(Edward Waters College is a private college located in Jacksonville, Florida. It was founded in 1866 to educate freed former slaves and is the oldest historically black college in Florida.), James Weldon Johnson Junior High school, Eugene J. Butler High, Susie Tolbert, Smart Pope Livingston and across the railroad tracks, West side Elementary. We were lifted high on the backs and shoulders of hard working parents and well-meaning parents. We were also brought up by great teachers who were legends and folk heroes. These were the people who taught us right, so that we could lead the way. Many of them have passed on before us; but as we look back over our lives and time, we will never forget them or the contributions they made, in giving us, all they had to give. After all they touched, enlightened, guided, directed, nurtured and loved us. They were a hardworking and dignified people, “full of the faith that the dark past has taught us”! They worked hard, shedding blood sweat and tears, so that our lives would be brighter and better than theirs;so that we could march on, til “Victory is won”. It is to them that we offer this tribute, for a job well done. To our parents and the many others, who taught us to dream; to those who also helped to raise us and to lead us beyond the trials and tribulations of childhood. We offer you, our eternal love and our sincere gratitude.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:04:13 +0000
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