Jacksonville’s child gun injuries cluster on land shaped by redlining and toxic ash

What happened

A boarded-up elementary school named for Mary McLeod Bethune sits on a 250-acre site in Jacksonville once called “Brown’s Dump,” The Trace reported in an investigation with KFF Health News and Action News Jax. From the late 1940s to the mid-1950s the city heaped incinerator ash there; a school and homes were later built on the land. In 1999 federal and state officials said the soil “posed a potential public health hazard.” The school closed in 2001 and cleanup began eight years later. A December 2024 EPA report said much of the site had been cleaned or covered, according to The Trace.

The newsrooms’ analysis of state hospital data found at least 375 Jacksonville children hospitalized for firearm injuries from 2018 to 2024, at least 150 of them from ZIP codes 32206, 32208 and 32209, where Brown’s Dump is located, The Trace reported. Jacksonville has three of Florida’s 10 worst ZIP codes for child firearm injury rates. Organizers built a second “Wall of Compassion” memorial when the first ran out of room. The outlet cited a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study of more than 89,000 people that linked lead exposure before age 6 to a higher risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of gun violence. Jeffrey Goldhagen, a former county health director, told The Trace his department tested “hundreds and hundreds of kids” near the ash and could not find it because the ash was buried, and he said lead paint in homes did more harm.

In 2024 the City Council unanimously passed a resolution to “redress the effects of redlining still felt today.” Parents and activists told The Trace they see little evidence of progress since then, and the experts the outlet interviewed said the same. Residents also protested a new morgue built across from a charter school in Brentwood, a predominantly Black neighborhood, where they had asked for an urgent care center or pharmacy. A spokesperson for Mayor Donna Deegan declined to answer questions about gun violence and racial inequality, the outlet reported.

Council member Ju’Coby Pittman, whose district includes the site, told The Trace that governments have made progress cleaning up contaminated areas, then added, “Remediation of contaminated soil does not, by itself, repair generations of neighborhood disinvestment.” She called for sustained spending on housing, public health, education and economic development.

Our reflection

A memorial wall ran out of room. Every one of those 375 hospital records is a family that got the call, and the blocks behind them are where children played on ground the government flagged in 1999.

This sin was written down. Someone drew red lines on a map. Someone decided ash could go where Black families lived, and a school could go on the ash. Isaiah 58 has hard words for a people who fast and pray while the chains of injustice stay fastened.

Then the prophet turns to the reader. Many of us inherited a quiet street we did not build. Be grateful. But the comfort that hears “another shooting on the north side” and keeps scrolling works on the soul the way lead works on a child. Slowly. You never feel it.

And the young man who fires a gun is not a lab result. Whatever lead took from him, it did not cancel his conscience or his calling. Jesus said evil comes from within (Mark 7:21), and that is true of the shooter and the mapmaker alike. Both need the same mercy and the same turning.

At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept, though he knew what he was about to do. Then he gave the neighbors a job: “Take away the stone.” When Lazarus walked out: “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:39, 44). He did what only he could do and handed the rest to the people standing there.

Some of Jacksonville’s stones are physical. Pittman named them herself. The graveclothes are harder to see: the fear young people carry, and the settled belief that nobody is coming. Credible messengers from the same streets, who reach a young person at first contact and stay, are how those get loosened. That is the heart of our JCVI work in Miami, and every Florida ZIP code on that list deserves it. The reporting does not say who is doing that work on Jacksonville’s north side today. Ask.

These blocks are not lost. Residents marched at City Hall, and organizers built a second wall when the first filled up. Below are a few stones you can help move this week.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:12

Source: The Trace, “In Jacksonville, Florida, Gun Violence Rooted in Redlining and Toxic Waste”