This article was produced in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In a Florida county with a startling rate of child firearm injuries, a boarded-up elementary school named for famed educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune sits in a 250-acre site once called “Brown’s Dump.”
The dump emerged in an era of redlining, systematic racism that divided American cities large and small. From the late 1940s until the mid-1950s, the city operated a landfill here, heaping toxic ash from nearby municipal incinerators.
The Duval County School Board in the 1950s built a school there. On the surrounding land, developers built homes and apartment complexes.
Generations of Black children lived, learned, and played on the polluted land. It was first assessed as a potential Superfund site in 1985. In 1999, the federal government and state of Florida said the soil at Brown’s Dump “posed a potential public health hazard.”
The school closed in 2001. And eight years later, officials finally began the process of cleaning up lead, arsenic, and other contaminants.
But the poisons had seeped into the lifeblood of residents. The harm to their physical and mental health is tied today to another public health crisis: high rates of gun violence.
A study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that lead exposure in the first six years of life was positively associated with an increased risk of firearm violence in early adulthood. And across the nation, people living in neighborhoods that were long ago segregated face a higher risk from gun violence today than residents in other neighborhoods, research shows.
“It’s the legacy of segregation and redlining,” said Lindsay Emer, lead author of the Wisconsin study. “It’s a huge environmental injustice to our African American population.”
That legacy has shaped a tragic disparity in Jacksonville, which has three of the 10 worst ZIP codes for child firearm injury rates in Florida, according to an analysis of hospital claims data obtained by KFF Health News and The Trace.
Hospital billing data obtained from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration shows that from 2018 to 2024 more than 4,000 children in the state were hospitalized for firearm injuries — about 1.5 a day.
The data was obtained exclusively for this reporting on firearm injury hospitalizations in the state. The newsrooms spent more than a year analyzing the records, which did not identify patients. The data contained patients’ residential ZIP code, age, race, and other demographic information.
At least 375 children under age 18 in Jacksonville have been hospitalized for firearm injuries since 2018 and at least 150 from ZIP codes 32206, 32208, and 32209 — where Brown’s Dump is located.
“We have to work hard to make sure our kids get home safe,” said A.J. Jordan, a community organizer who has worked with families of gunshot victims. “Anytime we let them out in this society, they could be killed.”
Jacksonville has a rich history of Black culture and community that stretches from the early days of Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Movement to present-day environmental justice activism. But the city, rooted in the Deep South, falls under the long shadow of its legacy of racism.
In the 1930s, the federal government deemed parts of Jacksonville and nearly 240 other U.S. cities undesirable for mortgage lending because Black people lived there. Officials color-coded maps, marking mostly white areas green and predominantly Black districts red, a signal to lenders to avoid investing in those neighborhoods.
Around the country, local authorities then disproportionately permitted solid waste incinerators, oil and gas facilities, and other industries linked to toxic pollution to be built in or near communities of color.
Redlining was outlawed nearly 60 years ago, but the U.S. Justice Department alleged that it was practiced in Jacksonville’s minority neighborhoods in recent years.
In 2023, it announced a $9 million settlement with Ameris Bank, which it accused of redlining predominantly Black and Hispanic portions of the city.
In a news release at the time, Ameris CEO Palmer Proctor said, “We strongly disagree with any suggestion that we have engaged in discriminatory conduct.” The bank agreed to set up a loan subsidy fund, enhance outreach and community partnerships, and open its first branch in a minority neighborhood. It reported nearly $26 billion in assets under management at the time of the settlement.
To this day, redlining shortens lives.
Black neighborhoods north and northwest of downtown Jacksonville endure poverty, pollution, and high incidences of lead poisoning, cancer, and other diseases — and hundreds of shootings involving children.
A map of Jacksonville made in the 1930s by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. Areas shaded red — mostly Black neighborhoods — were deemed the least desirable for mortgage lending. (City Survey Files, 1935-1940/National Archives)Jeffrey Goldhagen, a professor emeritus of pediatrics at University of Florida Health Jacksonville and a former county health director, has studied the link between lead exposure and high firearm injury rates.
“If somebody came to me,” he said, “and said, ‘What’s among the most important things you can do to impact gun violence on the Black community,’ I’d say, ‘Get the lead out of the environment.’”
Public health experts, grieving parents, and activists say the violence has created a collective trauma in neighborhoods where people brace for the next shooting death.
So many Jacksonville children are lost to gun violence that a “Wall of Compassion” memorializes them. When organizers ran out of room, they stood up a second wall in a nearby parking lot.
A “Wall of Compassion” in Jacksonville lists the names of people, including scores of children, killed by gun violence in the city. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News)Not far from the memorial, Jacksonville has opened a new medical examiner’s office and morgue across the street from a school, a move denounced by neighbors.
Anthony Brown, founder of the Red Alliance for Justice, a community group, said protests over the morgue, the history of redlining, and ongoing gun violence are interconnected. Brown said the City Council spent more than $60 million to build the morgue but has not created a dedicated funding source to make life better in redlined neighborhoods.
“We need something that has teeth,” Brown said. “We want some tangible action.”
The Morgue
In 2024, the Jacksonville City Council unanimously approved a resolution to “redress the effects of redlining still felt today.”
Two years later, there is little evidence of progress, according to public health experts, doctors, and grieving parents and community activists.
Wells Todd, a community activist, noted the city is named for Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president and a wealthy slaveholder who is honored in the city’s downtown waterfront with a larger-than-life bronze statue.
“Sometimes living here is like being in a time capsule,” Todd said. “This is about white supremacy.”
On a sidewalk in front of City Hall last fall, a small group marched during the lunch hour to protest the construction of the medical examiner’s office and morgue in Brentwood, a predominantly Black neighborhood north of downtown.
Protesters carried signs that read “Jax still has racism in: Housing, education, policing, healthcare and city hall.” Some wore T-shirts with the words “Dream,” “Resist,” and “Flourish.”
Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president and a wealthy slaveholder, is honored in Jacksonville’s downtown waterfront with a larger-than-life bronze statue. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News) A group of residents marched outside Jacksonville City Hall last fall to protest a new medical examiner’s office and morgue opening in Brentwood, a predominantly Black neighborhood. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News)Residents had pleaded for an urgent care center or a pharmacy on the site. Instead, in 2024, city officials allowed the project to move forward. Today the morgue serves five counties.
For some locals, the decision was a slap in the face.
It’s across the street from a public charter school, which neighbors say makes it a symbol of both the city’s abysmal firearm injury rate for kids and systemic racism.
Lydia Bell, a lifelong resident, said the morgue felt like a second wave of redlining.
“They have so much disrespect for Black people,” she said.
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