James Weldon Johnson Park in Jacksonville, Florida

James Weldon Johnson Park is the downtown Jacksonville public square at 135 Monroe Street West, across from City Hall, and the City calls it Jacksonville's oldest park.

The City of Jacksonville places the park across from City Hall in the heart of downtown Jacksonville, ZIP 32202, and lists benches, bike racks, a drinking fountain, picnic tables, a playground and trash barrels among its amenities. The City describes the plaza as having long been a part of the downtown experience for tourists and local residents because of its central location.

The Friends of James Weldon Johnson Park, a nonprofit founded in 2014, says it is contracted with the City of Jacksonville to revitalize the city's first and most historic public park. The Friends describe the park as adjacent to City Hall, the main branch of the Jacksonville Public Library and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Jacksonville's founder, Isaiah Hart, first set the square aside as a public square around 1857, according to the City of Jacksonville.

The JaxParks history says the park was known first as City Park and then St. James Park before it was renamed in 1899. At various times, the City adds, the park contained bandstands, fountains, comfort stations and Tourist and Convention Bureau buildings, along with many trees. In 1978 the City converted the park into a brick-paved plaza, and it completed additional work in 1986 that turned the area into a single-level, pedestrian-oriented mall. By 2020 the City's legislation referred to the square as Hemming Plaza.

The Jacksonville square took the Hemming name in 1899 to honor a Civil War veteran who had donated its Confederate monument the year before, the City says.

According to the City of Jacksonville, the square was renamed Hemming Park in 1899 to honor Civil War veteran Charles C. Hemming, the donor of that monument.

The City describes that monument as the city's oldest and tallest. It stood in the square for more than a century before it was removed in June 2020, the City records. The Hemming name stayed on the square through the 1978 brick plaza conversion and the 1986 pedestrian mall work, and by 2020 the City's renaming bill used the name Hemming Plaza for the downtown Jacksonville square.

On August 11, 2020, the Jacksonville City Council passed bill 2020-0357-E renaming Hemming Plaza for James Weldon Johnson, two months after the monument's removal.

The City of Jacksonville says Council Members Garrett Dennis and Rory Diamond introduced the legislation and that the bill passed after many debates; Dennis felt the new name would represent progress and bring more light to Jacksonville. The City describes Johnson as a civil rights activist who combated racism through his position in the NAACP, a lawyer, educator and composer from Jacksonville who wrote Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, commonly known as the Black National Anthem.

The Florida Department of State's Florida Artists Hall of Fame, which inducted Johnson in 2000, says he was born in Jacksonville in 1871, enrolled at Atlanta University in 1887 and, after returning to Florida in 1897, became the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar since Reconstruction. In 1905 his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, set to music a poem Johnson had written in 1899, and the result was Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, which by the 1920s was being called The Negro National Anthem.

The same biography says Johnson returned to Jacksonville in 1906 as principal of the all-black Stanton School, the city's largest public school, before diplomatic posts as U.S. consul in Venezuela and, from 1909, Nicaragua. After working as editorial page editor of the New York Age, he became national organizer of the NAACP in 1916, led it for 14 years, edited The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1922, published God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse in 1927, joined Fisk University in 1930 and died in 1938; the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor in 1988. A few blocks west, the City's Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing Park at 120 N Lee Street marks the stretch of LaVilla where the Johnson brothers' home stood and where they grew up.

The City describes that LaVilla park as a place to commemorate the Black National Anthem and the heritage of the once-segregated LaVilla neighborhood. Its design traces the plots of homes, businesses and yards that once stood there, and its elements include the Emerald Trail along Lee Street on the eastern edge, a restored historic LaVilla shotgun house with a stage known as The Megaphone, a lifted lawn, and a plaza whose tabby concrete sculpture spells out the words Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing. The City lists it as open from sunrise to sundown.

The Friends of James Weldon Johnson Park run a recurring calendar of downtown Jacksonville events in the square, from weekday lunch to evening music.

The Friends group event calendar lists Charlie's Cafe at JWJ Park, a lunch program at 135 W. Monroe Street, along with Happy Mondays and a weekly Jazz in the Park evening. Its news listings announced Brew and Barbecue returning to James Weldon Johnson Park for a ninth year, and the group's fifth annual Emancipation Celebration, held in 2025 at Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing Park in LaVilla.

Those programs are the Friends' own; the City's park page lists only the physical amenities and does not post hours for the square. Questions to the City go through MyJax at (904) 630-CITY (2489), the number printed on the JaxParks page for James Weldon Johnson Park.

A redesign of James Weldon Johnson Park is in progress with Hood Design Studio, and the mayor's proposed 2026-27 budget includes $5,750,000 for the park.

The Friends of James Weldon Johnson Park say they are working with the City of Jacksonville and landscape architect Hood Design Studio on a new park design, with a stated vision of a contemporary, green public space. In the FY 2026-27 budget highlights posted by the Mayor's Office, James Weldon Johnson Park appears among the proposed Parks and Recreation capital investments. The allocations below are proposed figures from that page, not final appropriations.

The same page puts the proposed FY 2026-27 Capital Improvement Plan at $586,110,854, the total Capital Improvement Plan (labeled there as the 5-Year Capital Improvement Plan) at $1,227,913,805, and the General Fund allocation for the Parks, Recreation and Community Services department at $58,747,814.

The square also sits on the planned Emerald Trail. Groundwork Jacksonville lists James Weldon Johnson Park among the points of interest on its Hogan Street Link, a 0.9-mile trail linking the St. Johns River to FSCJ and Springfield through the urban core, along with Riverfront Plaza, the VyStar murals under the Skyway, the St. James Building (City Hall), the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Jacksonville Public Library. The Jacksonville Transportation Authority says the Hogan Street Link groundbreaking took place in fall 2025, with construction continuing through 2026.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the JaxParks pages for James Weldon Johnson Park and Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing Park, the Mayor's FY 2026-27 budget highlights, the Florida Artists Hall of Fame biography and the Friends of James Weldon Johnson Park site.