May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and all month long News4JAX is celebrating our local Jewish community and recognizing trailblazers in various fields.
Two local Jewish Americans made their mark on politics before the turn of the 20th century.
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David Levy Yulee, the first Jewish person to be elected to Congress, is the namesake of the town of Yulee in Nassau County.
David Yulee was born into a Sephardic Jewish Family in St. Thomas in 1810 and went to school in Norfolk, Virginia, before studying law in St. Augustine.
Yulee eventually served in the Florida Legislature and led the campaign for statehood.
He was the first person of Jewish ancestry elected to the United States House of Representatives (1841) as well as the first elected to the United States Senate (1845).
Yulee faced antisemitism throughout his life and eventually converted to Christianity to avoid further discrimination.
He also founded the Florida Railroad Company and is considered the “Father of Florida Railroads.”
A few decades after Yulee, Morris Dzialynski became Jacksonville’s only Jewish mayor.
Before serving as mayor, he was part of a group of local Jews who fought in the Civil War.
Around the beginning of the war, he was wounded in action and medically discharged.
Dzialynski later owned a successful dry goods shop and was elected to the city council in 1868. He served as mayor from 1881 to 1883.
He helped raise funds to rebuild the city after the great fire of 1901 and died in 1907.
