Published on February 23, 2026 at 9:54 pm
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BLACKSONVILLE 100 |Coaches and players whose athletic gifts helped bring notoriety to Jacksonville, its schools and some of its oldest neighborhoods.
Edward “Ned” Gourdin (1897-1966)
Judge, military, Olympic athlete | Jacksonville native Ned Gourdin was born with Black and Seminole heritage. The Stanton High School valedictorian in 1916, he went on to break a 20-year-old world record in the long jump in July 1921, when he leapt 7.69 meters – approximately 25 feet, 2 inches. He won the pentathlon in the 1921 and 1922 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and earned a silver medal in the long jump at the 1924 Olympics. After athletics, Gourdin earned his undergraduate degree and his law degree from Harvard. He served as a U.S. attorney in Massachusetts for more than 15 years. During World War II, Gourdin served as the commanding officer of the segregated 372nd Regiment. By the time he retired from the National Guard in 1959, he was the first Black person in Massachusetts named brigadier general. In 1951, he became the first Black or Indigenous person to be appointed a superior court judge in New England. Gourdin died at age 68. The Justice Edward O. Gourdin Veterans Memorial Park in Boston is named in his honor.
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(Photo courtesy: Boston University Edward Gourdin Collection)
Bob Hayes
Olympic athlete | Jacksonville native Bob Hayes grew up on the Eastside and attended Richard Lewis Brown Elementary and Matthew Gilbert High School before breaking records in football as well as track and field. He won two gold medals at the 1964 Summer Olympics, including the 100 meters. Hayes set a world record in the 100 meters at the Tokyo Olympics, a mark that stood for more than two years. Later, Hayes joined the Dallas Cowboys and helped win the team’s first Super Bowl, in the 1971 season. His 71 receiving touchdowns was a Cowboys franchise record for more than 40 years. He is the only person to have won an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl. Hayes was also a member of the 1958 Gilbert football team that finished 11-0 and the 1961 Florida A&M football team that finished 10-0 and outscored opponents 504-33. Hayes died in September 2002 at age 59. He was posthumously inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009.
(Photo: Associated Press)
Earl Kitchings Sr.
Football coach | Jacksonville native Earl Kitchings led Matthew W. Gilbert High School to the 1958 Florida Interscholastic Athletic Association football championship – the first Duval County program to finish unbeaten and state champions. He was the first football coach at Raines High School. He earned an undergraduate degree from Florida A&M as well as a master’s from Columbia. Kitchings also served in the U.S. Army. Kitchings died in April 2009 at age 82.
(Photo courtesy: William M. Raines High School)
Florida Dwight
Recreation supervisor | Florida Dwight grew up in Jacksonville, graduated from Stanton High School, and taught at a one-room schoolhouse in Mandarin. She later became Jacksonville’s first supervisor of recreation for Negroes, a role in which she oversaw the opening of what was then called the Oakland Playground in 1918. “From a tiny movement on July 1,1918, recreation work here has grown into a race-building and health-building movement of large proportions,” Dwight wrote in the January 1942 edition of The Crisis. (Oakland Park was renamed Eartha M.M. White Park in 2025. Eartha White was the person who encouraged Dwight to accept the recreation role with the city.) The Florida C. Dwight Memorial Playground in LaVilla was named in Dwight’s honor in 1982.
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(Photo courtesy: Jacksonville Public Library, Black History Month Calendar)
Jimmie Johnson
Coach, administrator | Jacksonville native Jimmie Johnson grew up in LaVilla and graduated from Stanton High School in 1952. He earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Florida A&M prior to his 37-year career in education. Johnson served as the head football coach at Raines High School and led the Vikings to the 1973 state final. During his tenure on the sidelines, the Vikings had a 42-game unbeaten streak in the early ’70s. He then served as Raines principal between 1979 and 1995. Johnson was elected to the Duval County School Board in 1996 and served as its chairman in 2001. Johnson died in January 2022 at age 88.
(Photo courtesy: William M. Raines High School)
James Day
Track coach, administrator | During James Day’s 32-year run as the track and field coach at Raines High School, the Vikings earned two team titles, six runner-up finishes, 37 regional titles and 36 district championships. Day founded the Bob Hayes Invitational Track and Field Meet. Served as first Black president of the Florida Athletic Coaches Association in 1989. He was named the National High School Athletic Coaches Association boys’ track coach of the year in 1989. In 2025, Day was inducted into the Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Day died in February 2022 at age 88.
(Photo courtesy: William M. Raines High School)
Al Austin
Girls’ basketball coach, educator | Jacksonville native Al Austin graduated from New Stanton High School where he excelled in both football and track. In 1975 he became the girls’ basketball coach at Ribault High School and led the Trojans to eight FHSAA championships. Between January 2000 and January 2003, the Trojans won 101 consecutive games. Austin’s 695-56 record made him Florida’s winningest girls basketball coach at the time of his retirement. Austin was the USA Today and Student Sports Magazine national Coach of the Year in 2002. He was inducted into the Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 2003.
(Photo by Sam Alexander/Elevated Media; submitted by Northside Pride)
Freddie Stephens
Football coach | Lake City native Freddie Stephens came to Jacksonville to attend Edward Waters. After graduation, he joined the football staff at William M. Raines High School in 1970 and served as defensive coordinator before becoming head coach in 1978. Stephens went 142-65 as Raines football coach between 1978 and 1996. The football field at Raines High School was named in his honor in 2022.
(Photo courtesy: William M. Raines High School)
James P. Small
Coach, band director | Florida A&M graduate J.P. Small coached various sports at Stanton High School from 1934 to 1967. He’s credited with giving Stanton High School its Blue Devils nickname in 1934. (Stanton’s mascot was previously the Tornadoes in the 1920s and the Tigers prior to that.) Small led the Stanton football team to a 197-84-25 record, with eight Florida Interscholastic Athletic Association North titles and an FIAA Class A championship in 1944. He also served as director of bands at Stanton from 1940 to 1949. His coaching career also included stints as Stanton’s basketball coach, baseball coach and athletic director. Small died in 1975. The baseball park in Durkeeville was renamed J.P. Small Memorial Park in 1980 in his honor.
(Photo: The Stantonian yearbook, 1942)
Chandra Cheeseborough-Guice
Olympic Athlete, coach | Two-time Olympic gold medalist Chandra Cheeseborough-Guice grew up on Jacksonville’s Eastside. She attended R.L. Brown Elementary as well as Ribault High, where she set national high school records in both the 100-yard and 220-yard dash. Her state sprinting records stood for more than a decade until the events were discontinued. As a coach, she helped Ribault’s boys 400-yard relay win the Gateway Conference title. She earned a place on three U.S. Olympic track and field teams. At the 1984 Summer Olympics, Cheeseborough was on both the 400-meter relay and 1,600-meter relay teams that earned gold medals. She also earned silver in the 400 meters in the 1984 games. The Tennessee State graduate has served as the women’s track coach at her alma mater since 1994. She was elevated to Tennessee State’s director of track in 2011. She has been named the Ohio Valley Conference Women’s Track and Field Coach of the Year nine times.
(Photo courtesy: Tennessee State University)
Frankie Shannon Rolle
Athlete, educator | Jacksonville native Frankie Shannon Rolle is a Stanton High graduate who captained the Blue Devils through the Florida Interscholastic Athletic Association championship in 1942, the first girls’ basketball title won by a Duval County school. She is a graduate of Florida A&M who taught at George Washington Carver High School in Miami, where she coached basketball and varsity track, for 42 years. Rolle died in 2014 at age 89. She was posthumously inducted into the FHSAA Hall of Fame in 2023, and the Frankie Shannon Rolle Community Center in Miami is named in her honor.
(Photo courtesy: Frankie Shannon Rolle Community Center. Portrait by Oscar Thomas)
This entry is part of Jacksonville Today’s BLACKSONVILLE 100, a list of influential people with ties to Jacksonville, compiled on the centennial of Negro History Week. See the whole list.
