Mount Ararat Baptist Church on Myrtle Avenue North will become part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on February 5, 2026 at 2:53 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
Jacksonville has been added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, along with historic sites in Virginia, Louisiana and Tennessee.
As part of the expansion, a Jacksonville Civil Rights Trail will be created with 40 markers. The first will be installed Feb. 25 at Mount Ararat Baptist Church on Myrtle Avenue North.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The 92-year-old church is where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “This is a Great Time to Be Alive” sermon on March 19, 1961, according to The Jaxson.
The trail is a collection of more than 130 churches, courthouses, schools, museums and other landmarks. Found primarily in southern states, the trail highlights where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s to advance social justice.
“Each of the Jacksonville sites being added to the trail will add unique and powerful stories that will deepen our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and the role our city played in it,” Mayor Donna Deegan said in a news release.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Mount Ararat church officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Civil rights in Jacksonville
King’s sermon at Mount Ararat Baptist Church talked about nonviolent resistance during a time when Jacksonville’s African-American community had begun to stand up to local segregationists.
After the service, King ate ribs and chicken from Singleton’s Superior Bar-B-Q near West Ashley Street. He then stayed at the Northside home of businessman and activist Frank Hampton, and also went at the Clara White Mission and other safe sites, according to a Jacksonville Florida History Facebook post.
Markers on Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Trail will highlight where history unfolded. The city plans to install three to five markers per month after the installation at Mount Ararat Baptist Church.
Jacksonville already appears on the Civil Rights Trail website. One part of its entry says Jacksonville was the birthplace of brothers James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson, whose “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” hymn, composed in 1900, would become known as the Black National Anthem.
The brothers are memorialized by the city’s Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park, opened in June 2024 on Lee Street. The park is in Jacksonville’s historic LaVilla neighborhood, once a thriving Black community in the early to mid-20th century.
For details about all of the sites and stories from civil rights pioneers, go to CivilRightsTrail.com.
