JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Very few realize that the remains of a 19th-century settlement, established by former slaves, still remains a mile or two south of downtown Jacksonville. Dr. Tim Gilmore of jaxpsychogeo.com highlights the story of the Southside's Philips community.
After the Civil War, small rural communities of freed slaves formed instantaneously all over the bloodied landscapes of the South. Though most slaves had only moved away from remnants of African indigenous religions and toward Christianity 30 or 40 years previously, new communities that surrounded just-exited plantations bore names like Mount Zion, Mount Pisgah, Shiloh, and Jerusalem. The exodus of the Biblical Israelites from their slavery in ancient Egypt became the nearest, dearest metaphor for the emancipation of slaves after Lincoln.
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The minuscule community of Jerusalem planted itself two miles from the plantation its former slaves and supporting freedmen left behind. Two miles from the plantation was nothing in a time when the Red Bank Plantation once covered 450 acres.
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