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Jacksonville Legends Mosaic: Rutledge Pearson and Rodney Hurst, Sr.
About the Subjects
Rutledge Pearson
Rutledge Pearson was born in Jacksonville, Florida on September 9, 1929. He was a talented professional baseball player and high school baseball coach, an educator, civil rights leader and human rights activist.
As a young man, Pearson was a successful professional baseball player who played first base for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro League and the Cincinnati Reds. In 1954, Pearson returned to Jacksonville to play for the Jacksonville Beach Seabirds, the city’s professional team. Because he was black, the team’s owners closed the baseball park rather than allowing Pearson to play.
That experience led Pearson to dedicate the rest of his life to fighting for civil and human rights. He became an active member of the Jacksonville community, including as a high school teacher, baseball coach and leader in the local, state and national NAACP organizations. He advised the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP during their peaceful sit-ins to protest segregation in 1960, during which the students were chased through the city by 200 white Klansmen with ax handles and baseball bats.
In May 1967, Pearson was working to extend rights to laundry workers in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was killed in an automobile accident.
Rutledge Pearson was inducted into the Florida Civil Rights hall of Fame in May 2016. In Jacksonville, several locations are named in his honor, including a local high school, a bridge, a city street and the main city post office.
Rodney Hurst, Sr.
Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. is a civil rights activist, a Black historian, and the author of three award-winning books.
Hurst was born on March 2, 1944 in Jacksonville, Florida. As a high school student at Northwestern Junior-Senior High School, he was a protégé of Rutledge Pearson. At 16 years old, Hurst was President of the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP when students organized peaceful sit-ins to protest segregation. During one of the sit-ins, the students were chased through the city by 200 white Klansmen carrying ax handles and baseball bats. It came to be known as Ax Handle Saturday.
Hurst’s book “It was never about a hot dog and a Coke” is his eyewitness account of the 1960 sit-ins and Ax Handle Saturday. It is the only historically accurate description of those events since the local press suppressed coverage when the events were happening. He is the author of two other books about Black history and identity.
In addition to his involvement in the civil rights movement, Hurst served two four-year terms as a member of the Jacksonville City Council. His life is marked by a series of first: he was one of the thirteen original national recipients of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Television Fellowships; he was the first Black to co-host a television talk show in Jacksonville on PBS channel WJCT; he was the first Black male hired at the Prudential South Central Home Office in Jacksonville, Florida; and he was the first Black to serve as the Executive Director of the State of Florida’s Construction Industry Licensing Board. He is also a veteran of the United States Air Force.
Hurst is the recipient of numerous awards and continues to speak extensively on civil rights, Black history and racism.
Artist Statement
Black is beautiful. It is the sum of all colors. Close your eyes, go deep in the infinite black, dream. Look at the sky, go higher into the infinite universe, black. Plant your seed in the ground, it will sprout out of the absence of light, black. Life itself is formed in a dark black womb.
Black is an infinite expression of creation. Embrace blackness through education, art, and civil rights. In honor of our heroes who fought adversity and inspired us to find new meanings and the power to succeed. Let’s keep building an inclusive future together.
About the Art
Celso González, Puerto Rican mosaic artist, was born on May 17, 1973 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. From an early age his motivation was to create monumental murals. From his art studies in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and then architecture in Sci-Arc, California. He has already made numerous exhibitions in countries as diverse as Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, the United States, Italy, France and Taiwan among others. He also develops in the scenography, illumination, film work, furniture design and construction.
Celso’s art is reflective, it is an introspective work, always honored his Loiceña and Rio Grande roots, where some of the magic that abounds in his compositions germinates. Although today he feels more inclined to interpretation and abstract experimentation, his earlier work, the use of allegorical symbolisms to their roots, such as the vejigante, the popular culture masks, the baquiné and bomba and plena among others. More than nostalgia, Celso celebrates where he came from, where he has gone and where he is going.
Throughout his career Celso has collaborated with important artists from different disciplines including Bill Viola, Carlos Cruz Diez, Ted Carrasco, Wayne Isham, Robi Draco Rosa, William Cepeda to name a few. For the past 8 years, Celso has been working on a commission of the government of Puerto Rico, developing around 40 Public Art projects that can be appreciated in monumental murals throughout the island.
He has dedicated himself to artistry and reveals to us in his interior, his hope, that which says: “Look, I am here and from here I have come”.
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