Eartha M. M. White — Jacksonville, Florida

Eartha Mary Magdalene White (1876–1974) is documented by the University of North Florida Digital Humanities Institute as one of Jacksonville's most consequential civic figures, known for dedicating her life to materially supporting the city's African American community. She is widely referred to by the honorific Angel of Mercy, a designation the UNF Digital Humanities Institute records in its project dedicated to editing her collected papers. Over the course of roughly seven decades of public service, White established or co-founded a succession of institutions — among them an old folks home, an orphanage, a home for unwed mothers, a hospital, a wartime USO center, and a nursing facility — all in Jacksonville, primarily in the LaVilla neighborhood that served as the center of Black commercial and cultural life in northeastern Florida.

White's career spanned eras as distinct as Reconstruction-era Jacksonville, the catastrophic Great Fire of 1901, two World Wars, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Florida Memory Project of the Florida Department of State documents her simultaneously as a humanitarian, businesswoman, and philanthropist, and notes that the Florida Department of State designated her a Great Floridian in 2000, twenty-six years after her death at age 98.

Eartha White was born in Jacksonville in 1876. According to The Jaxson Magazine, she was adopted by Lafayette and Clara English White, and it was her adoptive mother's name — Clara White — that she later gave to the mission she founded in LaVilla. She attended Stanton School in Jacksonville before graduating from Florida Baptist Academy, the institution now known as Florida Memorial University, as documented in Jacksonville Today's February 2026 Blacksonville 100 civil rights series.

That same series records that White held charter membership in the National Negro Business League in 1900, the year the organization was founded. Her early entrepreneurial activity included operating a laundry business in LaVilla, one of several commercial ventures that established her financial independence and positioned her to fund the institutional work that would define her life. The Jacksonville Historical Society documents that during the catastrophic Great Fire of May 3, 1901 — which Florida State College at Jacksonville identifies as the largest metropolitan fire in the American South — White personally rescued records belonging to an Afro-American insurance organization, an act that preserved financial documentation critical to Jacksonville's Black business community at a moment of citywide devastation.

The breadth of Eartha White's institution-building is documented across multiple sources. In 1902, the year after the Great Fire, she opened the Old Folks Home on Milnor Street in Jacksonville to provide housing and care for elderly African Americans who lacked other options, according to Jacksonville Today. That property eventually expanded to encompass a hospital and an orphanage. The Jacksonville Historical Society additionally documents that White established a home for unwed mothers, a wartime USO center during World War II, and the Clara White Mission — each representing a distinct institutional response to a documented community need.

The Clara White Mission, named in honor of her adoptive mother, is located at 613 West Ashley Street in the LaVilla neighborhood and is best known today for its food program. According to the Florida State College at Jacksonville LibGuide on Jacksonville history, the Mission's second floor houses a museum dedicated to Eartha White. The Florida Memory Project further records her role in founding Mercy Hospital and the Boy's Improvement Club among her institutional contributions to the city.

In 1967, at the age of 91, White established the Eartha M. M. White Nursing Home, a 120-bed facility serving welfare patients, as documented by BlackPast.org. Jacksonville Today reports that the successor institution to that nursing home operates today as the Jacksonville Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare.

Eartha White's civic engagement extended well beyond Jacksonville's city limits and into national policy circles. During World War I, she served as a recreational service coordinator in Savannah, Georgia. The Jaxson Magazine records that she was the only Black woman to attend a White House meeting of the Council of National Defense during that period — a distinction that placed her at the intersection of federal wartime planning and the advocacy for Black Americans' inclusion in national service structures.

During World War II, BlackPast.org documents her service in the Women's National Defense Program, and the Jacksonville Historical Society records that she established a USO center in Jacksonville to serve Black servicemembers — reflecting the segregated structure of wartime recreation facilities in the American South.

The UNF Digital Humanities Institute documents that White was also active in anti-lynching campaigns, universal suffrage advocacy, and the NAACP — causes that situate her institutional work within the broader African American civil rights tradition of the early and mid-twentieth century. These overlapping commitments, running simultaneously with her management of multiple Jacksonville institutions, characterize a public life conducted at sustained scale over many decades.

Formal recognition of Eartha White's contributions accumulated over decades. BlackPast.org documents that she received the Booker T. Washington Symbol of Service Award and the Lane Bryant Award, as well as multiple honorary degrees, in acknowledgment of her philanthropic and civic record. In 2000, the Florida Department of State designated her a Great Floridian, as recorded by the Florida Memory Project — twenty-six years after her death in 1974.

The institutions she founded have had varying trajectories. The Clara White Mission at 613 West Ashley Street continues to operate as a social service organization in the LaVilla neighborhood, maintaining a museum on its second floor. The nursing facility she established in 1967 survives in organizational form as the Jacksonville Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, per Jacksonville Today. Her name is attached to the nursing home that became that institution, making it among the few Jacksonville civic facilities bearing the name of an African American woman from the pre-civil-rights era.

Jacksonville Today's February 2026 Blacksonville 100 series, examining the centennial of civil rights milestones in Jacksonville, treats White's career as a foundational reference point for understanding the city's African American civic history in the LaVilla neighborhood and beyond.

The primary documentary record of Eartha White's life and work is held at the University of North Florida. The UNF Special Collections and University Archives holds the Eartha M. M. White Collection, which encompasses personal papers and primary source materials spanning from the 1870s through the 1970s. The collection documents her involvement in the NAACP, the anti-lynching movement, universal suffragism, and her community advocacy work, according to UNF's LibGuides. The Florida State College at Jacksonville LibGuide records that UNF acquired White's estate papers in 1975, the year after her death.

The UNF Digital Humanities Institute has developed a dedicated digital project — Editing the Eartha M. M. White Collection — focused on processing and making accessible the materials in that collection. UNF's Special Collections division holds over 90 collections documenting Jacksonville and Northeast Florida history, politics, civil rights, education, visual and performing arts, archaeology, and social welfare, positioning the Eartha White Collection within a broader institutional effort to preserve the documentary record of the region.

The Florida Memory Project of the Florida Department of State additionally holds digitized photographs and records pertaining to White and her mother Clara White, available through the state's digital archives. The Jacksonville Historical Society has published research on her life and institutional legacy, drawing on these primary source collections.