AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. – There’s a story of resilience rooted in the sand and soil of Amelia Island. Long before becoming a postcard destination, it was a promise of refuge for the formerly enslaved and an island where freedom rang early.
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George Green carries a lot of that history with him. His great-great-grandfather, Gabriel Means, was one of the slaves who lived on what was once known as the Harrison Plantation.
“He was in the military and I was in the military,” Green said. “It’s rewarding to know that we had that kind of history.”
It was Feb. 11, 1865, three months before Florida’s Emancipation, when General William Sherman sent Union soldiers to Trinity Methodist Church to relay the message that Black enslaved families were free.
But long before freedom touched this community, author and historian Marsha Phelts said the pain of slavery wasn’t just physical. It was the stripping away of identity, humanity, and hope.
“Agony, suffering. Nothing could be worse than slavery,” Phelts said. “To not have a name. Joe. Mary. No last name. You’re just a number. To be bred, like chickens, like cattle. Your perfect purpose is to produce more for me. And to take care and nurse the master’s child, and have to leave my child on its own. To have one I have come to love, stripped, taken away, just at a whim. It was unmerciful. To be whipped, nearly to death. To have limbs taken from you, so that I won’t run again. Shame on you, America.”
When the message of freedom finally came, the church on Amelia Island was overflowing with nearly 300 people in their Sunday best.
Joy turned to tears and then to song. They lifted their voices in the doxology: ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’
“We must, and we will overcome,” Phelts said. “And we cannot let anything keep us buried and keep us down.”
These shores once saw enslaved Africans brought to Amelia Island by force. Some of those very same people, after Emancipation, built a community of faith, freedom, and new beginnings.
That new beginning was Franklintown, built on “America’s 40 acres and a mule promise” to those once enslaved.
“Sherman wrote the Special Order 15, which said that the Confederate land would have to be broken into 40 acres and given an animal, in this case a mule,” A.L Lewis Museum Executive Director Carol Alexander said. “So that is that adage, 40 acres and a mule to the newly-freed, because of the Emancipation, Africans. So they would have a start.”
Means, who went on to serve in the Union Army, helped lay the foundation for Franklintown, shaping it into a strong, self-sustaining community for Black families determined to thrive.
“Franklintown, that 40 acres, from the ocean to the marsh, was in existence for over 100 years,” Alexander said. “It was very important, there were carpenters. There were maritime workers, on shrimp boats. They had schools, churches.”
One of those churches, the Franklintown Community Church, was established by Means and his wife, Edith in the late 1800s. Green still worships in the church his ancestors built, a place that held more than prayer.
It was the heart of a community, built from freedom and held together by faith.
“We are privileged to have this going because without this, we wouldn’t be nothing,” Green said.
However, by 1972, Franklintown was gone.
Over the decades, developers took over the land, making way for State Road A1A and the Omni Hotel, forcing families, including the Greens, to move.
“It was kind of sad, because we lost a lot. My dad, he had nine acres down there,” Green said. “They really came to run us out of there. So, it was a bad day for us.”
As those developers closed in and plans to sell the church surfaced. Green and the congregation refused to let their sacred space be erased. What followed was a fight, not just for a building, but for their legacy.
“I said, ‘Well what are we gonna do?’ So the church prayed a lot, to get things done,” Green said through tears. “But we wound up getting an agreement with them, so we could get out because they were going to sell it. And we were getting phone calls, ‘We’re going to move y’all church, we’re going to move this, we’re going to move that.’ For greed and for money, they were going to do anything to get us out of here.”
The historic church was relocated to nearby American Beach, Florida’s Black coastal haven founded by the state’s first Black millionaire, A.L. Lewis.
And within its walls, the spirit of Franklintown still lingers. The old bell, once rung by newly freed hands, still stands on the property today.
A quiet witness to faith, endurance, and the refusal to be forgotten.
“We want something to leave for our grandchildren, and to see their heritage.
Phelts talked about what she wants people to take away from learning about the Black history of Amelia Island.
“Strength,” Phelts said. “I would hope that we would see strength and go forth and through any battles and do right. And know that no storm lasts forever. As your ancestors before you, they made it through, sugar, you’ve got to make it through and you can persevere.”
It’s that legacy of faith, resilience, and remembrance that still echoes through the families who call this community home.
Watch “Tracing the Roots: The Story of Juneteenth” on News4JAX or News4JAX+ at 7 p.m.
