Online Exhibits

Florida has long captured the world’s imagination. Artists and authors have depicted it as an untamed wilderness on the edge of empire and a beautiful paradise. Adventurers, investors, laborers, soldiers, and pleasure seekers responded to this call. Some even made the state their home. No matter what drew them to Florida, many visitors created travel diaries, with race and class dictating their experiences and perceptions of Florida.

From 1927 to 1968, Elmer Harvey Bone, captured the milestones and memories of Gainesville’s residents. These photographs offer a partial view of Gainesville. They promote a lighthearted and people-centered view of the city with a focus on family, celebration, and fun.

Maps of Florida tell stories of battles, exploration, growth, and advertisement. They reflect centuries of change and discovery. These are only some of the stories of the Sunshine State. 

The water of the Panama Canal continues to both give and take. Nature is not a force easily contained. There are few industrial locations in the world so impacted by the ebbs and flows of their environment. Water is of the greatest consequence to the successful operation of the Canal. This exhibition explores a small drop of the incredible history of the water that flows through the Panama Canal.

On election night 2000, NBC News political reporter Tim Russert was asked on air about the key to winning the election. He wrote his response on a whiteboard: “FLORIDA! FLORIDA! FLORIDA!” Russert’s words could have applied to many past presidential elections as well. This exhibit explores the way Florida has and continues to shape the outcome of presidential elections.

Long before a canal cut across the Isthmus of Panama, the first transcontinental railroad charted a similar path between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Built 1850-1855, the Panama Railroad transformed the country’s physical and economic landscape. It propelled Panama into a future of exponential importance as a global crossroad and a tumultuous relationship with the United States that lasted 150 years. The impacts, for better and worse, were profound.

The Alligator began publishing in 1906 as The University News, a student-owned newspaper founded to serve the UF campus. In 1912, the paper became part of the UF administration and changed its name to The Florida Alligator. Though it experienced managerial changes, The Alligator continued as a UF-run publication. In 1973, it once again became an independent, student-run newspaper and moved off-campus. It has been The Independent Florida Alligator ever since. 

This exhibit, inspired by Julia de Burgos’ poem “Yo misma fui mi ruta,” represents various aspects that have contributed to the construction of Puerto Rican women’s image. With images of everyday life, articles about forced sterilizations, and the struggles of Puerto Rican political leaders, this exhibit seeks to create meaningful conversations about Puerto Rican women’s fight against systematic oppression.

Author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston spent a great part of her life in Florida collecting folklore and telling stories. The pull of her adopted home-state brought her back again and again – including to the historic streets of St. Augustine.

As built, the Panama Canal is an extraordinary achievement that would have been impossible to create just a few decades earlier. Recent advancements and innovations in concrete, dredging, electricity, equipment, engines, dynamite, railroads, and many others, meant the difference between success and failure. Individuals and industries capitalized on these improvements and invented solutions to complete an awe-inspiring engineering project in a time frame that pushed the limits of possibility.

Pura Teresa Belpré made significant contributions to librarianship and children’s literature through her 40+ years of activism as a writer, scholar, and the first Black Puerto Rican librarian for the New York Public Libraries (NYPL). Belpré believed in the universality of childhood and dedicated herself to serving children from Puerto Rican and BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color) communities. It is crucial to look at her legacy, as her activism is one that many can learn from and is still relevant to the present day. 

Afrofuturism has grown in popularity in recent years and is present in every sector of popular culture. The literary and artistic style reimagines the past or creates an enhanced present and future through an Afrocentric lens.

Over 450 years of Black history fill the streets of St. Augustine. Yet, the changing tides of history, colonial powers, and racial prejudices buried many of their stories. The experiences of Black St. Augustinians are vast and expansive and are a necessary part of U.S. history, as they have and continue to contribute to shaping this land and nation.

The tremendous public health infrastructure necessary before and during Panama Canal construction evolved into an equally monumental and vital system designed to protect the Canal’s functioning and keep the people operating it safe from injury and disease. Individuals living at the Canal had typical healthcare needs, but they also faced unique and significant challenges brought on by their location at the crossroads of global trade.

Lost Communities of Florida looks back at some of the once thriving Florida communities that have now faded or disappeared. It examines the broad social, economic, and political trends, as well as natural disasters and new technologies, that contributed to their rise and fall.

Beginning August 13, the NAACP Youth Council organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in downtown Jacksonville. On August 27, white Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members attacked Black people in downtown Jacksonville. Although often overlooked, Ax Handle Saturday is a significant part of Florida and American history that mirrors and expands the national civil rights movement.