Features

When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever debuts this week it will serve as a cinematic eulogy to Chadwick Boseman. The actor portrayed a handful of legendary characters who resonated with millions of Black Americans — Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Levee Green in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  — but he was most revered for playing T’Challa in 2018’s Black Panther.

A smile slowly crept across Dr. Charles B. McIntosh’s face as he watched the unveiling last week of a rendering of the community center that will bear his name.  The longtime Jacksonville pediatrician’s legacy is being affixed to the facility in Northwest Jacksonville, meant to both address health disparities and provide a place for youth in the area to gather.

About 30% of registered Duval County voters have already cast a ballot – that’s more than 136,000 people who voted early and 58,000 mail ballots. Between those combined ballots, Republicans have a slight lead of 2,500 votes. Republicans had more combined early and mail ballots than Democrats in most recent midterm races, except the 2018 midterm under former president Donald Trump.

Southside Jacksonville evangelist Doris Rodgers spent her Friday morning posted outside the Northside’s Highlands Regional Library, one of Jacksonville’s early voting sites. She wasn’t holding a Bible or talking about her faith but saw this morning as another kind of ministry: She’s one of more than 25 Jacksonville faith leaders trained as a “poll chaplain,” tasked with ensuring voters feel

Mariam Feist was direct: It is going to take a community-wide effort to “combat the root causes of bias.” Feist, CEO of the Jewish Federation & Foundation of Northeast Florida, was among the hundreds who gathered at James Weldon Johnson Park on Thursday evening for a unity vigil to denounce the series of anti-Semitic incidents in Jacksonville last weekend. “Jacksonville

The Duval County school district has published new, proposed sex education materials ahead of a public vote next month. The new textbooks would replace longstanding middle- and high-school sex-ed curricula in response to new Florida laws and outcry from some local parents against the former curricula’s California-based publishing company.  Critics of the plan fear throwing out the former curricula could

These are the candidates for soil and water conservation district in Duval and Alachua counties. Soil and water conservation districts were implemented across the country almost a century ago during the Dust Bowl to address soil erosion. Florida has 54 of the five-supervisor, unpaid, elected conservation boards, tasked primarily with educating landowners and the public about conserving resources. This election

Moné Holder does not need to be reminded of the importance of next month’s elections. “If we’re about to energize, mobilize, galvanize folks from Duval County, I believe it will be a huge impact in elections this November,” says Holder, a senior director with the progressive-leaning Florida Rising advocacy group. Hers is one of the groups — among them, national

Early, in-person voting starts next week in the special election to replace former Sheriff Mike Williams. The first election in August narrowed the field to two candidates: Lakesha Burton (D) and T.K. Waters (R). Starting Monday, Oct. 24, voters can cast a ballot at any of 20 libraries, community centers and churches operating as early voting sites. Voting sites are open seven

Florida voters are being asked to decide whether to approve two property-tax measures and the fate of the state’s Constitution Revision Commission. Lawmakers placed three proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot, including two that would provide property-tax breaks. One of those measures, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 1, would prevent properties’ assessed values from going up because