Original subtitles

[narrator] A rusting, mining town in Arizona,

where a global conflict took its toll on the nation.

This is where the Great War was fought in United States.

This was the battlefield.

[narrator] A dilapidated Colorado homestead

unlike any other.

To survive, they turned to infiltration,

and espionage.

[narrator] And a forgotten Florida venue

which hosted a galaxy of stars.

There was one blind piano playing teenager

who would change the musical landscape.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States

are abandoned structures

and those who know their stories.

These forgotten ruins reveal the past of this land

and its people.

These are the secrets

of hidden America.

[dramatic music playing]

In the Mule Mountains of Arizona,

one boomtown saw industrial rebellion stamped out

in the most brutal way possible.

[dramatic music playing]

[man 1] This was one of the largest criminal hacks

to take place in the United States.

People were rounded up

and brought to the scene of the crime here.

[man 2] We are close to the Southern border.

Just a stone's throw away from Mexico.

[man 3] This is beautiful country but it's also very difficult country.

This is not a place that you wanna strike out on your own.

[woman] In this steep gulch,

there's a town with buildings climbing up

the sides of the surrounding mountains.

[narrator] The remains of disused mines

litter the landscape.

[man 2] You have this massive open pit,

you have tunnels everywhere,

it would have taken a massive team of people

to keep this place running on a daily basis.

[narrator] This town holds a terrible secret

about what happened to thousands of its workers.

It was just a very scary time.

They took them in the cattle cars and said,

"Don't come back, you'll be killed."

[man 2] They're hauled away from their families.

This is the most un-American thing

that I can possibly think of.

[narrator] Rina Valdez's family came to Arizona over a century ago.

And these tunnels were well-known to one of her ancestors.

[Valdez] It's pretty eerie,

kind of imagining what my grandfather

felt like going to work everyday.

And if it ever was scary for him.

Arizona is known as the copper state.

And that's because of the huge deposits of copper there.

[narrator] The rapid pace of development across the country

in the early 1900s,

was putting copper in high demand.

[man 3] By 1900,

cities across America were building power grids.

All of this new infrastructure required wires.

And the wires were made of copper.

[narrator] In this mining town,

one company was in charge.

[man 2] The Phelps Dodge Corporation is the largest employer in town.

But they didn't just own the mine,

they also owned the town in many ways,

because they owned the newspaper, the hospital...

They owned everything.

[narrator] In the early 1900s,

this was the most productive copper mine in Arizona.

This is the Copper Queen mine in the town of Bisbee.

But great industrial productivity

came at great human cost.

[Valdez] My great grandfather, what we know of, he came from Mexico,

and married my grandmother.

He ended up in Bisbee working in the mine.

It was very unsafe.

People died in the mines and were replaced very quickly.

But it was something they did to provide for their families

and to survive.

[man 1] Safety conditions were poor.

Especially when the pneumatic drills started to be used.

Workers were breathing rock dust.

So it was like smoking several packs of cigarettes a day.

[McRobbie] The Mexican-American workers were also fed up

with the discriminatory practices they faced

at the hands of their supervisors.

They were paid less, treated poorly,

and routinely overlooked for promotions.

[narrator] Having had enough of substandard pay and working conditions,

many of Bisbee's foreign-born mine workers

signed on with the Industrial Workers of the World union.

And talk quickly turned to strikes.

The mine owners were prepared for retaliation.

[Meigs] The sheriff in Bisbee, a guy named Harry Wheeler

was a real piece of work.

He was the archetypal Wild West sheriff.

And not the good kind.

He assumed that he was the law.

[narrator] All of this industrial agitation

was being stirred up at the same time

as America was joining the Allied forces in World War I

and troops were shipping out to Europe.

[Anderson] Within just a short time after war was declared in April 1917,

this country went berserk with culture patriotism.

There's this pent up warrior spirit that animates

a number of the people that are there,

even the Sheriff himself.

[McRobbie] Harry Wheeler was desperate to go to Europe

to attack America's enemies.

But he found a way to do it without even leaving Arizona.

[narrator] An already tense atmosphere

had been wound even tighter

with the interception of a coded telegram

from the German foreign office

to the Mexican government.

[Meigs] This telegram was absolutely explosive.

It was known as the Zimmermann telegram.

It contained a proposal from Germany

to the Governor of Mexico,

that if Mexico join the war effort on Germany's side,

Germany would help Mexico

reclaim some of the territory in United States that it had lost.

Bisbee was just a few miles from the Mexican border,

and tensions were further stoked.

[Anderson] A good part of the labor force is Mexican.

And Harry Wheeler, he believed that

Mexican workers were stockpiling arms and explosives,

which was absolute nonsense.

[narrator] The local authorities' suspicions of the foreign-born miners

increased as the workers at the Copper Queen facility

officially went on strike and walked off the job.

Sheriff Harry Wheeler decided to take drastic measures,

almost destroying this town.

[Meigs] Sheriff Wheeler, he organized a posse

of 2000 volunteers.

Essentially, a small army.

Now they were prepared to, essentially, go to war

against the striking miners.

[narrator] The posse went house to house,

rounding up those on strike and their supporters

in Sheriff Wheeler's domestic war efforts.

One miner, and one posse member killed each other.

But that was only the beginning of the chaos in Bisbee.

[narrator] The striking miners were marched through the streets at gunpoint

to Warren Ballpark.

Mike Anderson has long studied this event

and aims to reveal its secrets.

[Anderson] They were marched in here,

and then they were put into the grandstands.

And there were about 2000 of 'em

and the grandstands only held about 1500.

So they were packed in like sardines in the grandstands.

[narrator] The mine owners were there to make a statement,

and they brought in some heavy weaponry

to convince the miners to go back to work.

The mining company's bought five belt-fed machine guns

and placed them in strategic locations around the ballpark.

They were willing to mow people down if it got bloody.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] In the middle of World War I,

two thousand striking miners in Bisbee, Arizona,

have been corralled into a ballpark

by an armed gang led by Sheriff Harry Wheeler.

When you consider all of these forces at work,

it's a miracle that Harry Wheeler and his posse

didn't kill every damn one of them.

[narrator] The armed posse of mine owners and loyalists

had the strikers in their crosshairs.

[Anderson] Once they were packed into these stands,

an effort was made to convince those ordinary workers,

give them a chance to recant, to repent,

to renounce the unions, to be good boys,

and go back to work.

[Meigs] About 700 men took them up on that offer.

The rest refused.

Sheriff Wheeler decided he had to take a drastic action.

[narrator] Sheriff Wheeler had already decided what to do

with these stubborn miners.

[Morgan] Twenty-three cattle cars were brought to Bisbee

to haul off the members in the union.

And these cattle cars, some of them were still covered in manure.

[Anderson] In the end, 1,186 men were loaded aboard.

Long train ride in the middle of July.

Very unpleasant experience.

[narrator] The train headed east towards New Mexico.

Eventually, at 3:00 in the morning,

it stopped in the middle of the desert.

The miners were kicked out of the cattle carriages,

two hundred miles from home, and they were told

that if they return to Bisbee, they would be killed.

[Morgan] And ever since this time, it has been known

as the Bisbee Deportation.

[Meigs] Sheriff Wheeler was making sure

that nobody that he deported could get back into town.

[Anderson] And they kept stacks of unsigned warrants, John Doe warrants,

so that if a man came back,

they would tell him, "Here's your choice.

You can either pick up your stuff and leave

or, we're gonna sign this warrant with your name on it

and you're gonna get 90 days on the chain gang.

[narrator] Yet, against the odds,

Rina Valdez's great grandfather

who worked in this mine,

managed to sneak back into town.

[Valdez] My great grandfather came in in the middle of the night.

He and probably, several of my great uncles.

And they all came back and told their wives.

They all went to Los Angeles.

And that's where they all worked as longshoremen for the next three years.

The families actually returned to Bisbee

at the same time three years later,

and all stayed here from that point on.

[narrator] Many other miners would not be so lucky,

and hundreds would never return,

leaving friends, families and livelihoods behind.

[Morgan] No one, in the end, is prosecuted for the actions that were taken at Bisbee.

The war and the war effort,

sort of, disguised the entire event.

[narrator] In the aftermath,

news of the deportation would not see the light of day.

[Meigs] The story was covered up.

The mining company managed to keep this out of the newspapers.

The teachers weren't allowed to teach about it in the schools.

[Valdez] That was kind of, an eye sore to all of the residents,

here in Bisbee,

whether it was embarrassing to have been put in cattle cars,

or whether it was embarrassing to have been the people

who rounded them up like animals.

[narrator] The miners of Bisbee would slowly return

and copper would continue to be extracted

until the mines shut down after almost a century of production, in 1975.

Yet, it would be many more years

before this town could confront its violent history.

It didn't become a topic of public widespread discussion

until the centennial in 2017.

[narrator] Over 100 years since the Bisbee Deportation,

the town has made a full recovery.

[McRobbie] Bisbee is now a tourist town.

It's full of art and creativity.

And if there's a model for how a mining town can get a second life,

it's Bisbee.

[Anderson] This is small town America. I think it is best.

I get up in the morning and think to myself

how grateful I am to live in this wonderful place.

[narrator] The Copper Queen mine has also had a second lease of life,

having reopened as a tourist destination

where stories are still told about the Bisbee Deportation.

[Valdez] I think it... It's a relevant event that continues to be relevant,

because of the history that we're now making,

and the different things that are happening in our world

and things that can get out of control very fast.

[narrator] Off a remote highway in Colorado,

a ramshackled group of buildings

holds an untold story of the old West.

[woman 1] It's 12 miles from the nearest town.

But when these huts were built,

you might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

[Morgan] For the most part, the structures are just

collapsed piles of wooden boards.

[man] It was very difficult to figure out what these buildings were used for.

At first, I didn't know anything about the people,

what they had to do to build this and how big it was.

[woman 2] It was just part of a dream of theirs to have their own lives

and control their own destiny.

[narrator] But a threat to their very way of life was looming.

[woman 1] Most people will have heard of homesteaders in the West.

But this side of the story is far less often told.

[Morgan] These buildings were a part of this ideal community that existed,

although it was under threat from this sinister organization.

It's just horrific to see some of the things that were happening back then.

[narrator] Risking everything, one man put his life on the line

to protect his people.

[woman 1] He could preempt any plots that they were hatching,

and take the wind out of their sails.

[narrator] George Junne has made it his life's ambition

to piece together the remnants of this remote settlement.

[Dr Junne] I see some of the buildings getting in worse shape,

but at the same time, there's a pride that I have.

These people came out here with nothing

and built an outstanding farming community.

They wanted to own their own farms,

their own homes, their own lands.

[woman 1] The idea of moving out West,

getting some land and providing for yourself and your family

is central to the mythology of America.

[narrator] The right of independent farmers to buy and farm land

was enshrined in law in the 1860s.

But one side of American homesteading has almost been erased.

The story of homesteading of the West after the Civil War

is the story that's generally caricatured

by white Americans.

What that leaves out is the fact that the Homesteading Act was color-blind.

There was no restriction about race associated with it.

[narrator] Under the homestead laws,

one man saw the potential for a pioneering Black community

on the Colorado Plains.

This house was lived in by O.T. Jackson.

Oliver Toussaint Jackson.

[Alcock] Oliver T. Jackson was a successful Black entrepreneur from Ohio.

He owned restaurants and a catering firm,

but he had a vision of something far greater.

[narrator] Jackson identified a plot of land outside Denver

that would be perfect.

As a businessman with many irons in the fire,

he knew exactly how to convince people to join him.

[Dr Junne] Jackson worked for one of his brothers' newspapers.

So when it came time for him to advertise,

he had all kinds of fliers, he had newspaper articles about it.

[narrator] In 1910, the first settlers answering Jackson's advertisements

arrived at a barren and foreboding patch of land.

This is the town of Dearfield, Colorado.

[Alcock] This was considered marginal land, though.

It wasn't a prime destination for farmers

like the Northwest or California.

[Dr Junne] People did not have their own cabins.

So they dug holes, put blankets over the opening,

and that's where they lived for the winter.

That's how badly they wanted to own their own farms and land.

[narrator] Against all odds,

the early settlers marked their place on the prairie

and the budding town of Dearfield took root.

But to make ends meet in this marginal land,

Jackson and the residents of Dearfield had to resort to illegal measures.

Jackson was known for making some good beer.

[Morgan] Jackson had to pay the bills

and that was one great way to do it at the time.

[narrator] After nine years of successfully living on the homestead

and bringing in revenue,

the passage of the 18th Amendment

and the arrival of prohibition in 1919

threatened to cutoff a vital source of income.

The anti-alcohol people got together and he had to stop making it,

at least openly.

[narrator] Hours away from the nearest authorities,

Jackson stuck up an illegal bootlegging operation in Dearfield

to fund the growing town.

So the nickname for Dearfield, to some, was Beerfield.

[narrator] In the 1920s, Dearfield was flourishing.

But the revival of a dangerous supremacist group

nearly brought about its destruction.

[fire crackling]

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Outside Denver,

an African-American homestead community thrived on the Plains.

But in the city, a notorious group which had lain dormant for 50 years

was rising once again.

The second iteration of the KKK

began to spread across the country in 1915,

largely inspired by the movie, The Birth of a Nation.

That film reanimated sympathies with a very concocted notion

of what the old South was supposed to be.

That film depicted, of course, African-Americans as being the primary enemy of whiteness.

[narrator] In 1921, the Ku Klux Klan reared its head in Denver

and publicly announced its presence to the city.

[Alcock] We might think of Denver as a progressive city today,

but in the '20s, about a third of the population of white, American-born men

were members of the Klan.

It controlled the State House, it controlled the Assembly,

it controlled the Mayor's office in Denver.

[narrator] Just 60 miles from Denver,

the residents of Dearfield needed a way to keep tabs on the growing threat.

And one man stepped up to the task.

I haven't met Dr. Westbrook in person

but I feel inexplicably linked to Dr. Westbrook through both sides of the family.

[narrator] Terri Gentry can trace her own roots

back to the homesteaders on the Colorado Plains.

Her ancestors were close friends of Dr. Joseph Westbrook.

[Morgan] Dr. Westbrook was a physician from Mississippi

who moved to Dearfield

and was an important early member of that community.

[Gentry] Dr. Westbrook coined the term, "The fields are dear to us."

And that's where the name Dearfield came from.

[narrator] As a man of African-American descent,

one characteristic made Dr. Westbrook stand out.

Dr. Westbrook was born in Hernando, Mississippi

and his mother and grandmother were enslaved.

And as a result of that, Dr. Westbrook was very, very fair skinned.

[narrator] Westbrook's appearance allowed him to pass as a white man,

and get closer to the Klan than anyone else in Dearfield.

A brave act that threatened to get him killed if his identity was discovered.

[man] He was able to freely maneuver through KKK activities.

He could infiltrate them, keep tabs on their activities,

learn about the topics of their meetings,

and relay this to the Black community.

[narrator] Even as the Klan marched openly down the streets of Denver,

Westbrooks' reports allowed the Black community

to preempt their plots.

With a spy of their own, the people of Dearfield defied the segregation of the era.

[Alcock] Even at the height of the Klan's power in Denver,

the town of Dearfield thrived.

It was a true testament to integration in the face of overwhelming prejudice.

[Dr Junne] There's this kind of a saying in farming

that you never wanna get your neighbor mad

because you never know when you have to borrow something.

So out here, the Black people here got together very well with their neighbors.

[Morgan] They would pick up work from white farmers near them,

they were borrowing equipment and renting equipment from white farmers.

[narrator] One resident's home was even a destination for Black and white farmers alike.

[Dr Junne] On Saturday nights, people from all over would gather for their dances.

The time that the Ku Klux Klan is going,

you have Black people and white people on the same dance floor having fun.

[narrator] The community in Dearfield outlasted the Klan in Denver.

[Morgan] The KKK in Colorado ultimately dies of self-inflicted wounds.

There's eventually an investigation for tax evasion.

And that will bring down the KKK within the state.

[narrator] Dr. Westbrooks' espionage had undermined years of Klan activity.

But the intense stress of the work eventually took its toll on him.

[Gentry] It was an incredible risk

and my grandmother thinks that it impacted his health considerably.

He was a member of the Shorter AME Church.

And he stood up to address the congregation about something,

and sat down on the chair and died of a heart attack.

That was in 1939.

[narrator] The same year Dr. Westbrook died,

a growing crisis was ravaging the farms of Dearfield.

Over farming and natural factors had turned the topsoil to dust.

[Morgan] They were depending on seasonal rains

that kept this marginal area capable of agricultural production.

And with the onset of the dust bowl,

that all comes to a crashing halt.

[Alcock] The rains stopped coming,

the creeks and rivers dried up,

and the farming that had sustained these homesteaders

largely became untenable.

[narrator] After 30 good years which saw many homesteaders prosper,

Dearfield was largely deserted by 1940.

Families moved away in search of work.

But the town's founder, Oliver T. Jackson,

stayed until his death in 1948,

seeing his dream through to the very end.

While only a few of Dearfield's structures remain,

community and academic efforts are underway to preserve its legacy.

[Dr Junne] Even as we're struggling to keep the buildings going

and to repair them,

we should remember that those people overcame all odds to live here

and they make it work, and they did it.

[voice shaking] Very humbling that they did so much,

they worked so hard,

so that I could have an amazing life.

[narrator] Off the shore of South Carolina,

one structure has weathered deadly conflicts

and seismic change.

[dramatic music playing]

[man 1] Where we are now is the Atlantic Ocean.

But at one point, this was a battleground.

[woman] Outside the port of Charleston,

the coast is strewn with many low-lying barrier islands.

[man 2] The only thing on the horizon for miles

is this stark tower,

seemingly jutting straight up out of the water.

[narrator] Teetering over the waves,

this forsaken harbor lighthouse

has defied both humans and nature.

The tower has this lean like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Just looks like it's gonna tip over at any moment.

[man 2] But why build so far offshore?

What happened to everything else around it?

[woman] This place was changing,

not just politically,

but also physically.

[narrator] Hundreds of men would die here.

Every time the shore eroded further,

more skeletons would emerge.

It became known as Coffinland.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Off Morris Island,

five miles from Charleston harbor,

access to a remote lighthouse requires a precarious journey.

Getting onto this thing does not look easy.

There is no platform to land on.

There's just this tall rusting ladders.

[man 2] On a stormy day,

you get waves crashing right up the side of this thing.

[narrator] Denis Blyth and Richard Beck

have dedicated their lives to the preservation of this historic tower.

[Blyth] My father and I used to camp on Morris Island,

and fish and such.

And I would come over here on a smaller boat in my early teen years,

and would traverse the lighthouse myself.

[narrator] But reaching the structure wasn't always this treacherous.

[Beck] As you can tell, it's now over a quarter of mile out the sea.

When it first was built, it was 2700 feet inland.

[narrator] This is the Morris Island lighthouse,

part of a long history of beacons that have marked Charleston harbor.

There's been some form of navigational aid on Morris Island,

even going back to 1673.

The tower we see today

is actually the third formal lighthouse on the island.

[Dr Szulgit] The lighthouse seems to be in this cursed position.

It's constantly being accosted through history

by either nature or by humans.

[narrator] In the middle of the 19th century,

the threat came not from the sea

but from war.

[Bell] When news reached Charleston

that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president in 1860,

it was almost certain that the Southern states were gonna secede.

And South Carolina was the first to do so in December that year.

[narrator] On April 12th, 1861,

the Civil War broke out when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter.

Just three miles down the coast,

Morris Island became a strategic target for Union Forces.

Morris Island was a island they needed to take

in order to get the canons within range of Charleston.

[Bell] The weight of the Federal Navy

was going to come crashing down on Morris Island.

And the lighthouse was caught right in the middle.

[narrator] As the Civil War broke out,

Union and Confederate forces clashed outside Charleston harbor.

Morris Island became just this immense battleground

with some really advanced tactics.

There were trenches dug,

there were mines, both land and sea.

There were even semi-submersible vehicles being used.

[narrator] As the fighting wore on, the dead began to pile up

at the base of the lighthouse.

[Dr Szulgit] The only thing they could really do is just

to bury them in shallow graves in the sand.

[narrator] The harbor lighthouse that stood on the island

wouldn't survive the conflict.

[Beck] The first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12th.

By the middle of September, they had destroyed that structure completely.

[narrator] For the remainder of the war,

Charleston harbor remained dark.

Finally, in 1873,

construction began on the tower we see today.

[Beck] It took three years to construct it,

made of over a million bricks.

Lighthouses were critical to commerce at that point in time.

So the Federal government spent a lot of money on lighthouses.

It was equipped with a keeper's cottage,

barns, chicken coops,

and even a schoolhouse for the keeper's children.

[Bell] So the question remains,

"Where is all of this now?"

The lighthouse was built on Morris Island.

So what's it doing now out at sea?

[narrator] The nation's greatest internal conflict had passed.

But the new lighthouse would now have to contend with an ill-conceived attempt

to control nature.

[dramatic music playing]

[Dr Szulgit] Throughout the 19th century,

the harbor traffic was increasing.

Charleston harbor was becoming ever more important.

Two rock jetties were built to deepen the shipping lane into the harbor.

But this would have dire consequences for the rest of the coastline.

[Blyth] The jetties extend two and a half miles out from the shore

of Sullivan's Island on the north side

and Morris Island on the south side.

[Bell] The jetties altered the ocean currants enough in the bay

that Morris Island began to erode, and rapidly.

[narrator] As storms battered the island and the coastline shifted,

the horrors of a decades old war began to reemerge.

[Dr Szulgit] There is an account from a lighthouse keeper that says

that with every storm, so many bodies would appear out of the sand

as the sand was taken away that he would have a wagon load

that he had to dispose of.

[narrator] Despite surviving everything the Atlantic Ocean could throw at it,

nature had one more cruel trick to play on Morris Island lighthouse,

one that would leave it bent and broken.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] On Morris Island, this lighthouse has stood proud

for a century-and-a-half.

Yet, one event would scar it forever.

1986, there was the Charleston earthquake,

which was felt all the way into the Northeast.

[Dr Kwami] The earthquake that struck Charleston destroyed two churches

and killed about a hundred people.

Out of Morris Island, the lighthouse was cracked in two places

and the building was hanging on by a thread.

The crack on the wall actually starts from the exterior,

comes through these archways,

up through this archway and continues up the tower.

[narrator] Decades later,

the battered lighthouse finally found itself

at the edge of an approaching shoreline.

[Dr Szulgit] So by 1938, the outbuildings had to be removed

but the ocean was also importantly,

striking right up against the lighthouse.

[Bell] They needed to act fast

or this thing was gonna be swept away.

[narrator] Still vital to the survival of the ships in Charleston harbor,

the lighthouse had to be saved.

In 1939, a drastic solution was devised,

one which requires constant maintenance to this day.

The Army Corps of engineers built a giant bulkhead around the base of the lighthouse,

that you can see today.

They took a giant steel sheath and pounded it down into the sand

around the lighthouse.

They could then fill that with concrete,

so that you have this large concrete pile on that was nice and stable

with the lighthouse sitting on top.

[narrator] Cut off by the waves,

the lighthouse keeper's job was made impossible.

The Morris Island lighthouse was automated

and finally, in 1962, it was decommissioned.

[Bell] Throughout all its iterations it had seen the most defining conflicts

in American history.

And each time, it was rebuilt again.

But this would be its last life.

[narrator] Today, the Morris Island lighthouse

has become an iconic symbol for the port of Charleston,

and a reminder of its tumultuous history,

one preserved by the Save the Light group.

[Beck] This lighthouse is part of the fabric of this community.

If you lose it, then the community is diminished by it.

So we think it's important to do everything we can.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] In Downtown Jacksonville,

a forgotten city block was the site of both destruction

and international stardom.

We are standing on what I would consider to be holy ground.

[Meigs] We're in the neighborhood of LaVilla

on the west side of Jacksonville.

This is an area that has seen better days.

[Bell] Most of the lots are vacant and overgrown.

Many of them are just being used for parking.

The buildings are old. They are, in some cases, falling apart.

[Bell] There's three little shacks straight out of a horror movie.

And then, just on the other side of the fence, this big brick building

props up on a few columns.

[narrator] The interior of this structure lends few clues

to the array of celebrities that walked its halls.

[man] This brick building is totally gutted inside.

Why was this one building saved?

[Meigs] You wouldn't know it by looking at this hulk of a building,

but this was once an important cultural center

for a thriving community.

[man 1] America would not be what it is today

if not for the contributions of people from this particular neighborhood.

Stepping into these buildings is a bit emotional.

The blood and sweat and tears of my ancestors that

built communities like this all across the South.

[narrator] For his whole life, community activist Ennis Davis

has been reviving this neighborhood's place in history.

[Davis] A lot of my history has been passed on generationally.

I'm a sixth generation Black Floridian.

My family, they would share stories with me as a kid.

It all started to come together

in terms of understanding the significance of LaVilla itself.

[narrator] Even before their time in the spotlight,

these buildings were home to a burgeoning Black middle class.

Jacksonville has long been a crossroads,

situated on the narrowest point of the Saint John's river.

And it soon became a railroad hub for the state.

On thing that was distinctive about rail in America

is that it was a big employer of Black Americans.

[narrator] Known as shotgun houses,

these buildings became a symbol of the workforce

employed by the railroads.

[Davis] These shotgun houses are very interesting to me

because my dad grew up and was raised in a shotgun house.

[man] The shotgun house was a popular architectural style

from Reconstruction all the way up in to the 20th century.

And because they were easy to build,

you could put 'em up by the dozen.

[Davis] Many say it's called the shotgun house

because you can take a shotgun,

shoot it through the front door

and it could pass through the entire house

and out the back door without hitting anything.

[narrator] But a disaster would soon strike the city.

And one building would emerge like a phoenix from the flames.

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] In the LaVilla neighborhood of Jacksonville,

Black railroad workers had carved out a thriving middleclass life.

But all that was about to go up in flames.

On May 3rd, 1901,

a fire started, just a few blocks away from here,

in a pile of Spanish moss at a mattress factory.

[narrator] In a race against time,

the fire department struggled to contain the blaze.

Fire got out of hand, wind changed directions,

and it literally burned down the majority of what was then downtown area of Jacksonville.

[Meigs] In just eight hours, this fire would destroy 2000 homes.

It wiped out 146 city blocks.

It left about 10,000 people homeless.

[narrator] But in the wake of the fire,

this neighborhood would undergo a musical renaissance.

One building that survived the flames found itself at the heart of it.

This is Genovar's Hall.

[Meigs] This building was built by a guy named Samuel Genovar

in 1895,

primarily for use as a grocery store.

This building had a bar upstairs called the Lenape Bar,

and it was this bar, not the grocery store

that made this building an iconic location in the neighborhood.

[Dr Kwami] There were so many Black-owned businesses here,

it became known as Harlem of the South.

[narrator] The LaVilla neighborhood and the Lenape Bar

became a crossroads for musical legends

travelling through the Southeast.

So some of those people who would have come through here

would be, Louis Armstrong,

Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday,

Duke Ellington.

Louis Armstrong actually stayed upstairs in the hotel when he was in town

because he said this was one of the most happening spots

in Jacksonville.

[narrator] One young boy who moved to the neighborhood

found himself at the heart of musical history in the making,

and wanted to carve out his own shot at stardom.

[Meigs] One musician who used to hang out here

was a blind piano player

named Ray Robinson.

And he was a real prodigy.

He'd moved to the area as a teenager.

He made $4 a night

playing the clubs up and down the street,

including this place.

He actually memorized how to walk from his family's house

to the Lenape.

[narrator] But if Ray was going to catch his big break,

he needed an opportunity,

and this street presented one.

[Davis] Along Ashley Street, there is a post

where you would actually hitch your horse to.

And it became known as the rail of hope.

So you had a lot of aspiring musicians waiting to be discovered,

who would hang out on the front of this building.

[narrator] In the right place at the right time,

Ray Robinson got some of the first gigs of his career

that set him on the path to super stardom.

[Bell] He developed his talents playing as a sideman for other performers

before becoming a star himself

under the name we know today,

Ray Charles.

[Davis] Just hanging out on this street,

playing his sound, showing his talent,

that gave him an opportunity to be discovered.

[Dr Kwami] Ray Charles said he never wanted to be famous,

but he wanted to great.

He surely accomplished both of those goals.

And this building was a huge part of that journey.

[narrator] But unlike Ray Charles,

this neighborhood would not prosper in the latter half of the 20th century.

By the 1960s, everything was changing

in the LaVilla neighborhood.

The railroads have gone into decline.

So this great source of pride and steady income

for this majority Black neighborhood,

that started to go away.

[narrator] As railroad traffic shrank,

the car became king of Jacksonville,

and LaVilla took another hit.

I-95 was built right through the heart of this community.

[Meigs] When you divide up a neighborhood with a super highway,

often the neighborhood that's on the wrong side of that highway

goes into a rapid decline.

[Bell] The final nail in the coffin for LaVilla came in the 1990s.

In a failed effort to redevelop the neighborhood,

most of the buildings were demolished

and Genovar's Hall was one of very few to be left standing.

[narrator] Today, Genovar's Hall and these shotgun houses

stand as mementos of this neighborhood's heyday.

Activists like Ennis

hope that this community will be strengthened

by their restoration.

[Davis] Today, we look at it as it's time to reclaim

LaVilla's rightful place and tell LaVilla's story,

not only for future generations,

but also for our ancestors and their sacrifices,

and blood, sweat, and tears

that they made to build communities like this.