My father, Henry Pickett, was in Jacksonville, FL in 1965 as part of CORE: Congressional Organization for Racial Equality. He went to the south to help the people in St. Augustine make sure the citizens were falling into line with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So when I learned that First Daughter and the Black Snake was accepted by JoxDocFest I knew I had to go and see the courthouse where my father Henry Pickett researched and lay in wait to help stop a lynch mob attack… but that is another story for another place. Driving around it was clear that the city was putting their money into the criminal justice system as the new courthouse is huge and very proud of itself and the beautiful old one lays empty. Jacksonville Documentary Festival friend James Meadows drove fellow director Michael Galinsky and me around the town. Seeing the old courthouse with the lettering on the door helped me step back in time to imagine my father working there – working to protect civil rights – so my dream of seeing the old courthouse fulfilled. Mom says that my Dad would have been very proud of the film I made on Winona and her family and community… he could have never dreamed at the time that his daughter would screen a film there fifty years later. The universe provides.
The new courthouse
The new courthouse.
First Daughter and the Black Snake director Keri Pickett in front of the old courthouse which is now abandoned.
The old courthouse in Jacksonville, FL which is now abandoned.
The old courthouse in Jacksonville, FL which is now abandoned.
I imagined my father working here in 1965.
Jacksonville is a funky city.
Jacksonville as in the whole nation was once Indian Land.
Stone outside the old Duval County courthouse.
James Meadows drove Michael and I around Jacksonville and he made the picture of me in front of the courthouse.