EXPLORE FLORIDA'S ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY

 Jacksonville also played a crucial role in bringing the film industry to African-Americans. In 1920, the former Eagle Studios and its five-building complex were sold to Norman Laboratories. Richard Norman, a producer of films from nearby Middleburg, made the complex his creative center. Norman, who was white, had been bothered by the way black movie actors always appeared in subservient roles; he also saw an untapped market for segregated black audiences. http://normanstudios.org 

 Leander Kirksey (1909-1995), the son of a former slave, also graduated from BTWHS in Pensacola. In 1930, he graduated from Florida A & M University (“FAMU”), but instead of pursuing his field of Chemistry, he decided upon the concert hall as his legacy. After graduation, he was appointed as FAMU’s Assistant Band Director. He officially established the FAMC Collegians as one of the earliest known college jazz bands in America. Serving as Band Director from 1932 to 1945, he aimed to create a hundred-member band for the college, which became a reality after WWII at the helm of Dr. William P. Foster. The Marching 100 was created and lives to this day. Kirksey was a prominent figure in Florida's music history and the first African American inducted into the Florida Music Education Association’s Hall of Fame. (watsonfirm.com)

  Raymond “Ray Shep” Sheppard (1916-1981) graduated from Booker T. Washington High School (“BTWHS”) in Pensacola, where he continued his influence on youth and developing bandmasters as the founder and director of the BTWHS band. It was one of the first Black high school bands in Florida. Pensacola’s Gulf Coast and military roots influenced its musical style with Creole jazz overtones and military high-marching technique and precision. He also served in WWII and had an illustrious musical career as a leader of his own orchestra. Always in style, his orchestra dressed sharply in sports coats and suits played instruments with dignity, and exhibited gentleman-like manners that epitomized the coming of ages. His influence on Pensacola’s youth bands continues today.  (watsonfirm.com)

 Lift Every Voice and Sing" is a hymn with lyrics by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954).  

 Premiered in 1900, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was communally sung within Black American communities, while the NAACP began to promote the hymn as a "Negro national anthem" in 1917 (with the term "Black national anthem" similarly used in the present day). It has been featured in 42 different Christian hymnals,[1] and it has also been performed by various African American singers and musicians. Its prominence has increased since 2020 following the George Floyd protests; in 2021, then House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn sponsored a bill proposing that "Lift Every Voice and Sing" be designated as the "national hymn" of the United States.