Jacksonville, Florida’s Gun Violence Is Rooted in Redlining and Homes Built on Toxic Waste

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.

A new medical examiner’s office and morgue serving five counties opened next door to a school in Jacksonville’s Brentwood neighborhood, which is predominantly Black. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News)

The new medical examiner’s office and morgue in Jacksonville. Residents had pleaded for an urgent care center or a pharmacy to be built instead. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News)

Jacksonville once fought to keep Black people from moving into Brentwood.

Bell said she believes the city placed the morgue in the neighborhood because more than 80% of its residents now are Black. She said its presence could send a negative message to children about the worth of the lives in the neighborhood.

“I saw this as a child,” Bell said, “and now I am fighting it when I’m supposed to be enjoying being a grandmother.”

(Action News Jax)

A spokesperson for Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan declined to answer questions about gun violence and racial inequality.

Of 19 members of the Jacksonville City Council, only Council members Jimmy Peluso and Ju’Coby Pittman responded to requests for comment.

The city’s north side “has really kind of been ravaged over the years,” Peluso said, “and I feel like it’s not given the proper opportunity to kind of stand on both feet.”

Litter and other blight persists in Jacksonville’s Moncrief Park, a formerly redlined neighborhood. (Fred Clasen-Kelly/KFF Health News)

The Cleanup

Spencer Fletcher, who has worked to save 26 bungalows in a historically Black Jacksonville neighborhood, said the stories he hears at community meetings are disturbing.

Children played on playgrounds where workers dumped toxic incinerator ash, Fletcher said. People were told it was good for potting soil, so some used it in their gardens, he said.

That part of the city’s history — and its health effects — are often downplayed, Fletcher said.

“It’s like it never happened,” he said.

Incinerator ash can be highly toxic and contain high concentrations of lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium. Rain can cause contaminants to leach into groundwater, and studies have linked exposure to cancer, kidney damage, and developmental problems in children. The federal government banned lead in house paint in 1978.

A December 2024 Environmental Protection Agency report said much of the Brown’s Dump site had been cleaned or covered with enough new soil to reduce exposure to people and protect groundwater in the area.

The EPA also reported that year that authorities were cleaning a second Superfund site on the city’s north side called the Jacksonville Ash Site. The three parcels covering more than 1,100 acres include a 250-acre park, with residential and commercial areas occupying the former sites of municipal incinerators.

EPA officials wrote that the contamination no longer threatens people living or working near them.

But Goldhagen, the professor emeritus at UF Health Jacksonville, said severe damage had already been done.

Jacksonville has one of the highest lead poisoning rates in Florida. There is no known safe amount of lead for humans, and even small amounts can impair cognitive development, attention, and behavior in kids. Black children, other people of color, and those living in low-income households are at the greatest risk, studies show.

Goldhagen and other public health leaders say lead exposure early in life can affect brain development and impulse control as children grow older. He noted the Wisconsin study by Emer and her colleagues.

Emer’s research team studied more than 89,000 people in Milwaukee who were tested for lead exposure by age 6. Even after controlling for other factors such as race, sex, and neighborhood socioeconomics, they found that lead exposure increased the risk of becoming a perpetrator or victim of firearm violence.

The results show “the potential importance of lead exposure reduction in firearm violence prevention efforts,” the researchers said.

Sara Baldwin is a forensic social worker who researches a defendant’s medical and social background to present mitigating factors that can reduce sentencing in criminal cases in Florida and other states.

“I always say the school-to-prison pipeline is lined with lead,” Baldwin said.

A sign on the fence in front of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in Jacksonville, which closed due to environmental contamination from ash and toxic waste that was dumped and used as fill dirt in the area. (Fred Clasen-Kelly/KFF Health News)

Teri Sopp, an assistant public defender for the state’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, which includes Jacksonville, said it’s unsurprising that so many children suffer gunshot injuries. People grew up swimming in lead-contaminated creeks, she said.

Local officials have long been aware of anecdotal evidence that lead poisoning caused violence, but failed to seek remedies, Sopp said.

“There needs to be a large-scale assessment of the situation,” she said.

Once the federal government, the state, and the city began efforts to clean the sites, the county health department under Goldhagen began to examine the effect of lead exposure and other environmental hazards in these communities.

“We tested hundreds and hundreds of kids from the community,” he said. “We really couldn’t find it, because the ash was buried under dirt that had accumulated over the years. But yes, I think it did have an impact.” He added that “the impact of lead-based paint in homes was greater than the lead in the ash.”

Goldhagen said testing was an effort to address one of the “root causes” of gun violence. But he said that in the last 20 years, local and state leaders have largely abandoned a public health approach to gun violence.

“This is a disease,” he said, “and we need to use rigorous public health approaches to address it.”

Goldhagen, who led Duval County’s health department from 1993 to 2005, said Florida’s statewide system of county health departments has been hollowed out by years of staff and budget cuts, diminishing their ability to address public health crises.

A KFF Health News-Associated Press analysis of state data found that the health department in Duval County had the equivalent of 852 full-time employees and spent about $91 a person in 2008 but by 2019 had only 422 workers and spent $34 a person.

“There was a commitment to public health in the state,” Goldhagen said, “but that commitment has been slowly and under [Republican Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis rapidly dismantled so the public health departments in each of the counties are a shadow of what they were.”

The State Health Improvement Plan, a set of goals developed by the state health department and an advisory committee, does not mention guns, the toll they take on children, or efforts to reduce firearm deaths and injuries to young people.

“This is a story the government doesn’t want told,” said Baldwin, the mitigation specialist. “We would get these cases and everyone in this person’s family has been incarcerated. Why did this whole family go to prison? Well, let’s look at where they lived.”

Jacksonville Councilwoman Pittman, whose district includes the Brown’s Dump site, said the city, state, and federal governments have made progress cleaning up contaminated areas. But more needs to be done, she said.

“Remediation of contaminated soil does not, by itself, repair generations of neighborhood disinvestment,” she said, adding that a long-term solution will require sustained spending on housing, public health, education, and economic development.

A boarded-up home in Jacksonville’s Moncrief Park neighborhood. (Fred Clasen-Kelly/KFF Health News)

Pittman said the legacy of Brown’s Dump is “especially troubling” because of the burdens it placed on those who lived nearby.

“The history matters,” she said, “but our responsibility today is to determine what we are going to do about the conditions that continue to affect our youth and families.”

Documents from the 1930s showed a federal government appraiser discouraged investment in some areas north of downtown Jacksonville, saying the residents were Black people and the neighborhoods lacked sufficient sewer and water infrastructure, sidewalks, and roads in good condition.

“It listed all these things back in 1934 as reasons not to invest, to provide private capital into these neighborhoods,” said Peluso, who co-sponsored the City Council’s redlining resolution. “And if you look today, a lot of those areas that were redlined — you could say the exact same thing.”

KFF Health News data editor Holly K. Hacker contributed to this report.

This report was produced by KFF Health News, The Trace, and Action News Jax.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.